6. Tom Hiddleston as Loki in “Thor” (2011), “The Avengers” (2012) and “Thor: The Dark World” (2013)
It’s probably fair to say that, for all their strengths, Marvel Studios’ movies from “Iron Man” onwards have not featured villains as their strong points. From Jeff Bridges’ rather anonymous businessman in “Iron Man” to the incredibly boring Malekith in “Thor: The Dark World” and the underwritten Bucky in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” the heroes have faced off against some rather forgettable baddies even in their better movies. But there’s one exception to that, and fortunately it’s been in the shape of the Marvel movie universe’s most frequent antagonist, Norse trickster god Loki, as played by Tom Hiddleston. We’d argue that we perhaps still haven’t seen his definitive appearance so far — he’s a touch ill-defined in the first “Thor,” mostly extraneous, though welcome, in the second, and his shift to genocidal megalomania in “The Avengers” is a little clumsy — but the character’s generally been drawn with a welcome complexity, the misunderstood black sheep who just wants to be loved. And we perhaps take for granted what a find Hiddleston was in the part — physically threatening enough to face off against his mountain-sized co-star Chris Hemsworth, blessed with a light comic touch, but able to pull off the pathos without it slipping into melodrama. The coda for ‘The Dark World’ suggests that a third film would see one last battle between Thor and Loki, and despite him appearing in three movies in three years, we’d still be happy to see more of Hiddleston.
5. Alfred Molina as Dr. Otto Octavius in “Spider-Man 2” (2004)
Spider-Man has one of the most colorful and iconic rogues’ galleries in comic books, so it’s rather disappointing how badly they’ve been brought to screen on the whole, as this week’s “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” continues to demonstrate. Arch-nemesis the Green Goblin has been botched not just once, but three times, while Venom, Sandman and The Lizard were all mostly or wholly botched. But one of Spidey’s most famous bad guys was pulled off with aplomb, in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man 2,” easily the best of the five-strong franchise to date. The film does use the same mentor-turned-adversary structure of the first film, but in a much more refined way, with Alfred Molina’s Otto Octavius causing a terrible accident through hubris, robbing him of his wife and melding him to his metallic tentacles. The script makes the smart decision to make Octavius have a kind of multiple personality disorder through his new metallic friends, which keeps the good-hearted man at the film’s center even as his actions become ever more dastardly. Molina, so often underrated as an actor, gets one of his best big-screen showcases here: he can go broad enough to chew scenery in Raimi’s big, bold comic book vision of the universe, but lends real pathos and warmth to his relationship with Peter Parker. Plus he looks great in the costume, which not everyone would.
...[ Continue to next page ]
Share This Post
