Are The Big Villains TOO COOL For Live Action ?

If Marvel has taught us anything it's that the BIG villains are indeed doable if you give them the proper time and build up to lead into their badassness. However, the recent Avengers movie wasn't the first attempt at putting a HUGE villain on screen, it was just the first to successfully introduce the concept. But let me take a step back and explain this article. There are comic book villains who are VERY intense and their appearance is VERY involved, they're almost larger than life characters who endure a reputation of being the biggest of the baddest. Characters like these are almost too much for the human brain to comprehend in a live action setting. Or maybe not too much to comprehend...but perhaps TOO COOL for live action.

We live in an era where CGI is the dominate driving force behind A LOT of things. CGI in MANY cases can be a VERY GOOD THING and in other cases can be VERY BAD! However I think I speak for a lot of us when I say that sometimes CGI is exhausting and us movie-goers would like to see more practical means of bringing characters from the page to life. But recently, X-Men director Bryan Singer announced that he'd be tackling my  #1 favorite villain of ALL TIME Apocalypse in 2016, and rampant speculation has concluded that Darkseid maybe making his cinematic debut if not in the upcoming "Superman/Batman" film or whatever it is they're calling it, then in the "Justice League" movie down the road. Both Apocalypse and Darkseid seem to transcend conventional means of bringing them to the live action realm. Which leads me to ask, how exactly are they going to execute this?

By FAR my favorite villain EVER!

I think Hollywood has a Human principle when it comes to comic book movies. The more Human the characters are, the easier the translation. Hence for the last several years Superman's villains in the cinematic universe have been human or humanoid; and while "Smallville" certainly expanded Superman's rogues gallery, they succumbed to the same pattern of keeping more involved villains at a minimum. The most involved villain they introduced was Doomsday, and even he had a human form. And since we're on the subject of "Smallville" I'll use this time to go ahead and admit that while Darkseid has YET to appear on the big screen, he did indeed make his live action TV debut. But once again, instead of giving us the full bodied, rock-like, hate-filled deity we've all come to know and love, Darkseid was predominately incarnated as black smoke, and (once again) when it came to the final confrontation between him and Superman, Darkseid was incarnated in the body of Lionel Luthor...are you noticing a pattern?

I was pretty disappointed with how Darkseid was handled in "Smallville" but I gotta admit, this is kinda cool.

Getting back on topic, I think The Human Principle keeps the studios from having to go over budget in terms of effects and how much they have to do to legitimately bring these characters to life. After all, why try to create a planet eating deity who can grow 100x larger than Earth so he can swallow it in his chest cavity, when you can depict him as an ominous cloud? If it's NOT The Human Principle then I think it's The Extravagant Factor. These characters just maybe too otherworldly to make sense on the big screen. After all, Apocalypse, Darkseid and Galactus aren't villains that can be stopped in one issue, a movie with a running time of 120 minutes is HARDLY enough time grasp the full scope of just how powerful these guys are. And I think movie studios may get that on some level and aren't willing to take the risk on characters of that magnitude. But in this day and age when CGI lovefests like "Avatar" and "Planet Of The Apes" are kicking ass at the box office the door just might be open for these big bads.

That outline is pretty bad ass though...

We'll find out if this has a chance of working with Marvel's biggest gamble "Guardians Of The Galaxy" which features a full on CGI racoon. If this movie gets taken seriously, then the door is open for the others. But the biggest test will come some years down the road when "Avengers 3" finally rolls around and Thanos gets to make his debut. Needless to say, we're all waiting with baited breath to see if Marvel can capture Thanos' essence in a live action performance OR will he unfortunately be a pile of CGI shlock that'll just look as goofy and fake as The Green Lantern costume in the end. These are strange times we're living in  and they're only gonna get stranger. Let me know what you guys think!