Even the best superhero is nothing without a great villain. 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 a supervillain's appearance has been redesigned during the transition from page to screen.
In this feature, we're singling out the baddies whose iconic costumes only got worse when they showed up in theaters. From classic superhero outings to more recent efforts, none of the villains featured here looked as good as they should have done.
See who we've singled out by clicking on the "Next"/"View List" buttons below...
8. Green Goblin (Spider-Man)
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.
7. Electro (The Amazing Spider-Man 2)
Jamie Foxx also reprised his role of 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, though, and everything from those ugly veins to the microchip in Electro's head ensured we had good reason to hate everything about this take on the classic Spidey villain.
There's probably a version of this blue Electro that would have worked on screen and he and the Green Goblin were fortunate to get a second chance in the MCU Everyone else listed here, however, wasn't quite so lucky...
6. The Joker (Suicide Squad)
There's a lot that's easy to dislike about Suicide Squad's take on The Joker, and David Ayer and Jared Leto's take on this classic Batman baddie was a total failure.
While the tattoos are unfortunate and ultimately pretty cringe-worthy, nothing that Leto was given to wear here either 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, 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.
5. Green Goblin II (Spider-Man 3)
The closing 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? Barely.
4. Mister Freeze (Batman And Robin)
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 II, we'd bet on seeing a much more grounded - and terrifying - take on this iconic bad guy.
3. Doctor Doom (Fantastic Four)
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.
Once again deciding to transform Doom into some sort of human/robot hybrid, we were left with a poorly CGI'd version of the iconic villain with glowing green eyes and a weird cloak that was supposed to remind us of the comics. Poor Toby Kebbell has said openly on multiple occasions just how much he hated letting fans down as this dismal take on Doom.
This is 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 Victor Von Doom in The Fantastic Four or a future sequel.
2. Gorr The God Butcher (Thor: Love And Thunder)
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 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 Gorr 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.
1. Dark Flash (The Flash)
Almost this 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 appearances was as messy and convoluted as his story arc in a movie the man now in charge of DC once described as the "one of the greatest superhero movies ever made."