10 Worst Marvel And DC Supervillain Redesigns To Ever Grace The Big Screen

10 Worst Marvel And DC Supervillain Redesigns To Ever Grace The Big Screen

Many of our favourite Marvel and DC supervillains have been brought to life on screen over the years, but the translation from page to screen doesn't always go smoothly. Here, we look at 10 of the worst...

Feature Opinion
By JoshWilding - Jun 09, 2025 12:06 PM EST
Filed Under: Marvel Studios

Even the greatest superhero is nothing without an equally great supervillain. Unfortunately, we often see bad guys underserved in the movies they appear in, an issue that's plagued the Marvel Cinematic Universe from the start. 

Regardless of whether they steal the spotlight from the hero the movie is named after or are forgotten before the credits even roll, many an iconic villain's appearance has been redesigned during the transition from page to screen. 

In this feature, we're singling out the baddies whose iconic costumes (or overall look) only got worse when they showed up in theaters. From classic superhero outings to more recent efforts, none of the Marvel and DC villains featured did right by the source material.

You can see who we've singled out by clicking on the "Next"/"View List" buttons below.
 

10. Doomsday (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice)

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Love or hate Zack Snyder, there's no denying that the man embraced the comics. His interpretation didn't always line up with what fans wanted, but he also didn't shy away from them in the same way many of the other filmmakers responsible for the characters featured here did. 

Until Doomsday, that is. Bringing this behemoth to the big screen should have been easy; you take what's on the page, enlist some talented VFX artists, and boom, Superman's deadliest foe has arrived. Even Krypton and Superman & Lois managed it on TV budgets.

Snyder's interpretation, unfortunately, was more akin to a cave troll from The Lord of the Rings. Watching Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman fight this monster was incredible, and damn near ruined by one of the worst takes on Doomsday you could ever hope to see. 
 

9. Electro (The Amazing Spider-Man 2)

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Jamie Foxx returned as Electro in Spider-Man: No Way Home, and we'll be forever grateful that he wasn't blue. Marvel Studios ditched the goofy rubber suit that was inspired by the Ultimate Spider-Man comics and instead paid homage to his green and yellow suit with a few clever visual cues. 

Back to The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and everything from those garish veins to the microchip in Electro's head meant we had good reason to hate pretty much everything about this take on the classic Spidey villain. 

There's probably a version of this blue Electro that would have worked on screen. He and the Green Goblin were fortunate to get a second chance in the MCU. However, Sony Pictures really dropped the ball on Max Dillon the first time around. 
 

8. The Joker (Suicide Squad)

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It's not exactly difficult to dislike Suicide Squad's take on The Joker. While some of you will have a soft spot for this Clown Prince of Crime, we believe that David Ayer and Jared Leto's take on this classic Batman baddie was a total failure. 

While the tattoos are unfortunate and ultimately pretty cringeworthy, nothing that Leto was given to wear here looked good on him or immediately made us think "Joker." This attempt to bring the Batman villain into the real world as a gangster fell flat, and a movie as wacky as Suicide Squad would have been the perfect place to embrace the comics.

There may have been a story behind the teeth, but this was still just a gangster in silly makeup. He did look a little better in Zack Snyder's Justice League, so there's that.
 

7. Green Goblin II (Spider-Man 3)

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The final few minutes of Spider-Man 2 left us all believing that we would finally see Harry Osborn take up the Green Goblin mantle in the threequel just as he did in the comics.

Would he wear his father’s suit or a version closer to the comic books? There was even speculation at the time that we might get to see the Hobgoblin. What we got instead was James Franco riding a flying snowboard in a green ski mask and bland jumpsuit.

Of all the options they could have gone for, this bizarre costume was just one of the many decisions that made Sam Raimi's massively disappointing final part of the trilogy so utterly disappointing. Was The Amazing Spider-Man 2's take any better? Absolutely not.
 

6. Mister Freeze (Batman And Robin)

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Even in the comics, Mister Freeze has often looked a little lame, but unlike a lot of adaptations that help legitimise cheesy costumes from the source material, Batman and Robin somehow made this one even worse.

Even though it’s supposed to be made from some sort of metallic alloy, it came across like the cheap, chunky piece of plastic garbage that it undeniably was. This whole movie was only really made to sell toys, but there’s got to be a better way of achieving that than turning Arnold Schwarzenegger into a giant action figure. 

Gotham didn't do much better with Mister Freeze, so we're still waiting on the villain's definitive costume on screen. If Matt Reeves gets his hands on Freeze in The Batman Part II, we'd bet on seeing a much more grounded - and terrifying - take on this iconic bad guy.
 

5. Doctor Doom (Fantastic Four)

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Tim Story's take on Doctor Doom in the Fantastic Four films from the mid-2000s was cheesy and disappointing enough, but Fox failed to redeem themselves with Josh Trank's 2015 reboot.

Doom was transformed into some sort of human/robot hybrid, saddling us with a poorly CGI'd version of the iconic villain with glowing green eyes and a weird cloak supposed to pay homage to the comics. Poor Toby Kebbell has said openly on multiple occasions just how much he hated letting fans down with this dismal take on Doom.

It's the opposite of how the classic villain should look on screen, and it's now going to be up to Marvel Studios to make things right with Robert Downey Jr.'s Victor Von Doom in Avengers: Doomsday.
 

4. Gorr The God Butcher (Thor: Love And Thunder)

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We can understand not wanting to bury an actor like Christian Bale either beneath heaps of makeup or throwing a mo-cap suit on him as a CG character, Thanos-style. Then again, would that really have been the worst idea in the world?

Thor: Love and Thunder's Gorr ended up losing almost everything that made his comic book counterpart such a sinister menace, and Bale's bad teeth and skin markings left us with a villain who was more weird than threatening. 

Like the movie itself, Gorr was a disappointment. Poor writing did him few favours, but combining that with a forgettable design left Bale completely wasted in a role which should have made him one of the MCU's best bad guys to date. 
 

3. Dark Flash (The Flash)

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Almost the entire movie was abysmal, but as bad as The Flash himself looked, we can't fault the suits worn by Batman and Supergirl. Alas, we're not here to talk about superheroes and Dark Flash...well, he was a CG clusterf***.

Ezra Miller was made up to look like an old man and his "costume" looked as messy and poorly realised as the rest of the "Chronobowl." Dark Flash's appearance on the page is easy to translate to screen - The CW's TV series proved that - so how did this The Flash it so wrong?

Who knows. The fact is, Dark Flash's appearance was as messy and convoluted as his story arc in a movie hyped up as "one of the greatest superhero movies ever made" before it was released. To that, we say, "LOL."
 

2. Green Goblin (Spider-Man)

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The Green Goblin’s appearance is iconic, but by no means a costume that's easy to adapt for live-action. Sadly, Sam Raimi’s only real misstep in this spectacular big screen debut for Spider-Man was the Power Rangers-style battle suit donned by Norman Osborn.

We'll give them credit for finding a story reason for its inclusion, and it cleverly allowed Willem Dafoe to show off his eyes as a way of portraying emotion through an otherwise static mask. However, it’s still a very disappointing take on Spidey’s greatest villain.

Looking at concept art and pre-production footage for Spider-Man, it’s heartbreaking to see that they did consider numerous versions that adhered to the source material. Shockingly, Marvel Studios failed to drastically improve on this when Norman returned in No Way Home.
 

1. Galactus (Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer)

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The Fantastic Four movies from the mid-2000s embraced colourful costumes and delivered a pitch-perfect take on the Silver Surfer. However, when it came time to bring the Eater of Worlds to the big screen, the decision was made to make him a cloud.

Keep squinting, and you might eventually see a vague shape resembling Galactus in that cloud of fire and ash. This infamous decision has never been forgotten, and it's mind-blowing that 20th Century Fox and filmmaker Tim Story couldn't dream up something, anything, better. 

Marvel Studios looks set to make this right with The Fantastic Four: First Steps, proving that a comic-accurate Galactus can work in live-action. The MCU's Silver Surfer, however, is proving to be a little more...divisive
 

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TheVisionary25
TheVisionary25 - 6/9/2025, 12:20 PM
I thought Gorr while different from the comic version still looked fine & creepy on his own…

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While I wish he was utilized more then he was , i still enjoyed what we got of the character and Bale’s performance.
Patient2670
Patient2670 - 6/9/2025, 2:14 PM
@TheVisionary25 - I agree. I actually think Gorr was one oof the few good things in the movie. It was cool to see Bale look like he was actually letting loose a bit.
ModHaterSLADE
ModHaterSLADE - 6/9/2025, 12:23 PM
I'd definitely put Doomsday and Electro higher, but overall seems solid.
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 6/9/2025, 12:25 PM
I'm not a fan of BvS in the least bit, but to be fair, his appearance in that movie is actually pretty comic accurate to what Doomsday looked like in flashbacks when he was first created.
Goldboink
Goldboink - 6/9/2025, 12:32 PM
Nothing wrong with that original Green Goblin.
SATW42
SATW42 - 6/9/2025, 12:44 PM
@Goldboink - Nostalgia glasses. It really does play like a poor Power Rangers outfit.
Goldboink
Goldboink - 6/9/2025, 1:02 PM
@SATW42 -
All a matter of opinion.
SATW42
SATW42 - 6/9/2025, 1:10 PM
@Goldboink - i mean, of course. It played ok at the time so maybe that's really what should be said. it was fine for the time, but didn't hold up. I think that's pretty objectively true. If a new spider-man came out and green goblin looked EXACTLY like this with all ADR talking and the mouth not matching what's being said, we'd all say it was awful.

Dr. Doom looked bad THEN, so that's a bad redesign. Green Goblin looks bad NOW so that should be accounted for that it wasn't necessarily terrible in 2002
HashTagSwagg
HashTagSwagg - 6/9/2025, 12:36 PM
Pi55 off! Freeze doesn't belong on your sh1t list, replace him for that fart cloud in Green Lantern or something, Freeze looked cool
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PC04
PC04 - 6/9/2025, 12:38 PM
@HashTagSwagg - Me too. I thought he looked cool. Still do.
dragon316
dragon316 - 6/9/2025, 2:53 PM
@HashTagSwagg - that was only winning best thing about that movie villains costumes look like they did from comics
thedrudo
thedrudo - 6/9/2025, 12:38 PM
I don’t know. I kind of dig that Electro
MotherGooseUPus
MotherGooseUPus - 6/9/2025, 12:39 PM
Ummm where is The Leader and Green goblin from Amazing Spiderman2. Those are f*cking terrible.
SATW42
SATW42 - 6/9/2025, 12:53 PM
@MotherGooseUPus - the leader was not great. I'd rather the leaked original designs with him just being kinda off green with a slightly larger head.

I finally watched that this weekend btw. Didn't hate it, but instantly forgettable. It just seemed like a collection of ideas thrown together. Here's sidewinder, here's the leader, here's the president, here's a war about to break out by the celestial you might remember from Eternals (my wife really enjoyed eternals, didn't remember that at all - which i think is important for people to realize when they talk about plotholes that are seemingly forgotten. Sometimes it's matter of the general audience not remembering or caring and it not being worth going bak to)

And now here's red hulk, yay! the end. Like I said entertaining enough, but just a real mess.
MotherGooseUPus
MotherGooseUPus - 6/9/2025, 1:03 PM
@SATW42 - its not good by any means But i dont think it deserves the hate it gets here. def an easy forgettable movie but it wasnt a dumpster fire like Thor L&T or The Marvels.
SATW42
SATW42 - 6/9/2025, 1:14 PM
@MotherGooseUPus - I like the marvels more to be honest. At least it had a cohesive plot that went from point a to point b. It also made my daughter laugh harder than i'd ever seen her laugh before when the flerken were eating the crew for easier transport while cats played. It was goofy but it did make sense at least.
SATW42
SATW42 - 6/9/2025, 1:18 PM
@MotherGooseUPus - It's all opinion, I guess i just personally would choose a cohesive story that makes sense, instead of 4 plot points thrown together that barely even work as connecting pieces to set pieces that weren't all that impressive (I did enjoy Red Hulk bit at the end)
Odekahn
Odekahn - 6/9/2025, 12:42 PM
Parallax from Green Lantern should be towards the top of this list. How this got missed is 🤯 Especially considering how high up on the list Green Goblin is.
DannyBrandy20
DannyBrandy20 - 6/9/2025, 12:43 PM
Worst is TASM Electro

This could've worked

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SATW42
SATW42 - 6/9/2025, 12:49 PM
I don't agree with Mister Freeze. The character was goofy, the costume I think was fine.

"Shockingly, Marvel Studios failed to drastically improve on this when Norman returned in No Way Home."

Huh? @joshwilding i know you said "drastically" but they were never going to mutate Willem Dafoes face, they did the best thing possible with getting rid of the mask and giving him the ripped up green hoodie with the costume underneath I thought was pretty clever. Any drastic changes and it would feel like it wasn't the same character.
Pictilli
Pictilli - 6/9/2025, 1:40 PM
Mr Freeze and Green Goblin were awesome.

Yellow costume Sinestro should be on this list though.
LebaneseSpidey1
LebaneseSpidey1 - 6/9/2025, 2:10 PM
WTF Bro green goblin and Harry’s design were great. I mean Sam Raimi wanted to go with a mix of realism and accuracy. How do you think it would have worked out if they put a creepy goblin with a man purse on the big screen? This is the same as with Modok. Some things will never work in live action. Anyway if I judge by the majority they love James Franco’s and Willem Dafoes Green Goblin better than the original comic version otherwise do you think they would have risked to release that?
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dragon316
dragon316 - 6/9/2025, 2:55 PM
@LebaneseSpidey1 - annoying fans probably will have wanted green goblin with purse same people who demanded Superman wear underwear on his costume not comic accurate costumes in books look good in live action movies fans don’t see fail realize that wolverine costume got lucky with but weapon x helmet look goofy almost laughed first time saw it in theater could have made that better
LebaneseSpidey1
LebaneseSpidey1 - 6/9/2025, 2:12 PM
Thank god that this list present only a very TINNNNNNY Minority.
I mean the Designs were ok to very good by public reception mostly.
Blergh
Blergh - 6/9/2025, 2:37 PM
10. I don't mind Doomsday's look in BvS, he's clearly in an early evolutionary stage. What bothered me was HOW we got to Doomsday. Sure, using Zod's genetic material is part of the lore but using his dead Body to grow the creature was a weak explaination. I would have prefered the creature to be a genetic failsafe on Zod's ship that could be created in case Kryptionian's rose up against them.

09. Electro was alright, he reminded me a lot of the Ultimate Comics take on the character, or at least how he was depicted in the Ultimate Spider-Man game. It's much like with Doomsday, the depiction. Showing Electro as a dweeb with zero social skills and a psychotic parasocial Obsession with Spider-Man was a choice that I didn't and still don't appreciate.

08. No way around it, that was terrible design, wouldn't have been bad if they left the tats and grill. It should be pretty hard to mess Joker's design up but this was the perfect encapsulation of what bothered me about the, then fledgling, DCEU. The tryhard edginess to elevate themselves from Marvel made these movies tailored to one specific audience, and that was the same audience that enjoyed "Hatred" and "The Darkness" unironically.

07. Harry simply should have worn a take on his father's costume if not the exact armor. The Goblin II suit looked cool for a GI Joe character or AIM soldier but didn't evoke any remnance of the Goblin.

06. What exactly is bad about Freeze's armor? The movie sucked, sure. But the armor was pretty much a solid, albeit a little overdesigned, take. There are worse suits in that movie alone.

05. Some folks hate the Tim Story movies for not handling Doom perfectly and I'll admit that his backstory and powers were a long way off but the mask and suit was perfect in those (aide that McMahon really played him perfectly vile and vein). The reboot was a step down from EVERY take, even the '94 Version. Not only did his origin story suck and make him nothing but a lame edgelord with zero aristocratic charme or the beautfiful "I can rule humanity best because I know what they need" mental gymnastics. I totally see how he was supposed to be a herald of Galactus in the original cut but that would have sucked even worse.

04. I disagree about Gorr, he was a boring nothing-character in the books and served only as a brute without much agency. Sure the tentacles looked cool but giving him a more dramatic origin elevated the Character beyond the original iteration.

03. Less said about that movie the better, the idea of a molten Batsuit is nice but the entire creation of Para-Barry was a mess. Should have gone with Thawne stepping out of the shadows in the center of time. Nevermind him not showing up in the movie before, we know this guy is the catalyst for Barry's woes. He's a meme at this point.

02. I won't tolerate Raimi slander, begone vile fool!

01. Classic case of "how do I explain cosmic entities to 2000s audiences". I appreciatedthat we saw his skull in the middle of the storm. But also didn't mind the way he was portrayed as an opressive devouring storm of darkness. I'm still nerveous about how he'll be depicted in the new one. Because this can go from threatening to hilarious quick.
dragon316
dragon316 - 6/9/2025, 3:07 PM
Green goblin and mr freeze no problems with electro tell myself electro looks like ultimate electro in blue color not yellow
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