Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe came along, it was common to have a well-developed villain. We saw full-on origin stories for characters like the Joker (showcasing his transformation from hired gun to clownish crime boss) and the Penguin (Oswald's rise from neglected child to political prominence and power). Green Goblin was given a complex arc in Spider-Man as we followed his descent into madness, and Magneto served as the ultimate well-developed villain in his journey from persecuted child to powerful adult..

The MCU's first villains started out pretty weak. Even with Jeff Bridges hamming it up in Iron Man, Obadiah Stane mostly comes across as the dark mirror of Tony Stark, a metaphor made literal in the "good Iron Man vs. evil Iron Man" finale. In The Incredible Hulk, Hulk fights the Abomination, whose characterization is "evil Hulk." Loki is typically held up as the example of a good MCU villain, but it took three movie appearances to give him any real character arc, and his motivations are constantly murky and ill-defined.

Eventually, the MCU all but gave up: characters like Ronan the Accuser and Kaecilius just exist to be mouthpieces for their nameless henchmen. This eventually rippled out to other superhero movies, with Batman v Superman giving us villains like a nonsensical Lex Luthor and an electric cave troll Doomsday. Suicide Squad's villain was literally a dancing witch with zero characterization, and the X-Men: Apocalypse movie gave us more backstory for characters' hair changes than it did for Apocalypse or the specifics of his goals.