5 Incredible Marvel Characters That The MCU Completely Ruined

Following the booming success of "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," it feels like something is about to happen that hasn't happened in an age — the Marvel Cinematic Universe is finally getting its groove back. Tom Holland's heroic seventh outing hints that the franchise is back to its former level of greatness, and it's just in time for "Avengers: Doomsday" to arrive later this year. But even with fans clinging to the former incredible highs from the golden years, those rose-tinted glasses from Stark Industries aren't fully clouding our vision, as the MCU has had its issues in the past with certain characters and continues to do so.

Over the years, certain heroes and villains who helped fuel the hype engine with the announcement of their arrival were handled poorly. As a result, the movies or shows they became part of almost tarnished the reputation they had already built in the comics. With that in mind, we've pulled out five characters (and an entire group) that were dealt a bad hand in a world of infinity gauntlets. In some cases, they might have another chance further down the line. Unfortunately for others, though, they were doomed long before Doom even arrived.

There's a lot to dislike about "Thor: Love and Thunder," but perhaps the movie's biggest crime is casting one of the greatest actors in modern cinema as a villain named Gorr the God Butcher, and rarely seeing him doing much butchering. That was one of the many creative flubs Taika Waititi made in his second outing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which was tonally all over the place and included a villain that was barely present.

The elements were all there to make Gorr one of the greatest bad guys in all of MCU history. Broken by the grief of losing his entire family and being ignored by the very gods he prayed for help, Gorr sets out on a mission of vengeance to kill all deities that abuse their duties, becoming a nemesis for Thor that is one worth fearing. It's a simple route, but effective because Gorr is a villain we can sympathize with, and perhaps if we had more time, we could've gotten there. Instead, we got Gorr dipping in and out of a story that struggled to compete with the arrival and swift departure of our hero's former flame, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who had become a hammer-wielder herself.

Ultimately, Bale's Gorr was a foe that deserved better and, like so many others, became a one-shot villain that deserved more than a single appearance. We curse the gods for it going this way.

We're not even going to address gender-swapping, Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), because, well, we're grown-ups and it really doesn't matter. What we can't deal with, however, is that one of the coolest assassins in the Marvel universe, who appeared in two MCU movies, was killed off by a bullet to the brain. The mercenary who has downed the likes of Venom, Hawkeye, and even Captain America in the comics has repeatedly proven they can handle themselves, thanks to their photographic reflexes and ability to predict their opponent's movements.

They could've made for an interesting and welcome character that makes repeated appearances whenever a villain or shady suit needed a gun-for-hire. They could've even stuck to the comic history and remained a member of the Thunderbolts, as was expected in the titular team's movie from 2025. Instead, Taskmaster, who barely spoke a word, showed up during the team meeting and was quickly gunned down by equally underused Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen). Even Yelena (Florence Pugh), who had something of a history with Taskmaster, barely batted an eye at the event, proving that the most adaptable killer in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was nothing but a necessary casualty to show how serious this movie was being.

Perhaps, given how we've seen the titles of Black Panther and Captain America passed between heroes, the same might be done for Taskmaster, somewhere down the line. That is, of course, if someone is up to the task.

He might be making a comeback in "VisionQuest," but it still doesn't erase the misuse of one of the greatest foes ever to face Earth's Mightiest Heroes. James Spader's take on that pesky artificial intelligence, Ultron, is without a doubt, the highlight of "Avengers: Age of Ultron." Skim through any scene of the 2015 movie, and you're guaranteed to hear an absolute quotable bomb dropped by the highly advanced brainchild of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). Wielding a smugness beneath the steel that even Iron Man couldn't outsmart, Ultron evokes the same dastardly characteristics of Hans Gruber or a futuristic Bond villain, which made it all the more annoying when Vision blew him to smithereens.

Okay, we know he appeared in "What If...?" But that doesn't really count, and fans might say the same when Spader appears in human form for the upcoming Disney+ series. In the end, Ultron could've been a foil who made far more appearances, facing off against the likes of Ant-Man (fitting, given that Hank Pym was Ultron's original creator in the comics), or even appearing in that "Armor Wars" series that has been promised since 2020. Perhaps after "VisionQuest" arrives, the love for Ultron might be reignited, and his strings will get clipped once more to spark some carnage in the future. For now, though, he's just another one-and-done villain who deserved so much more time, whether he ended the world or not.

There's no doubt that when utilized correctly, the big green rage machine that is the Incredible Hulk has worked wonders in the MCU, but we've perhaps spent too much time with Bruce Banner controlling his alter ego's body rather than being imprisoned by it. The smaller the vocabulary and the greater the brutality, the more perfectly Hulk lands as the secret, nearly unstoppable weapon that makes him the character he is. That's why it became so annoying that he was swiftly taken out of action in "Infinity War," only for the brain and the brawn to be put together in the follow-up film. From there, Marvel Studios began cherry-picking crucial locations and characters from great Hulk storylines and shoehorning them into movies.

Sure, our time on Sakaar in "Thor: Raganarok" was fun, as were the gladiatorial games he was fighting in, but that meant completely ignoring "Planet Hulk" or indeed the aftermath of the extra peed-off hero's return to Earth in "World War Hulk." It's also led to characters like Skaar, his son, just being thrown into "She-Hulk" at the last minute and never addressed again. We can only hope that Banner's inner battle with his rage is back; following the events of "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," Hulk might be used in a better way in the future. All that we ask is that you don't stick him in a poncho and a pair of spectacles because, well, that makes fans angry, and you wouldn't like us when we're angry.

Not to generalize an entire alien race or anything, but perhaps one of the biggest missteps in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not making the Skrulls, the deceptive and devious world invaders they've been known as in the comics. In "Captain Marvel," the shapeshifting species was turned into victims of a planetary invasion, forcing them to find a home elsewhere. Sure, the likes of Ben Mendelsohn made them a new group of people that were bordering on interesting, but the comic book version provided far more opportunities and a long-lasting storyline that could've rocked the MCU to its core.

"Secret Invasion" was a major event in 2007 that revealed the Skrulls had been hiding as sleeper agents before taking Earth for themselves. Both heroes and villains who readers had been following for months, even years, were revealed to be green-skinned doppelgangers, sending the Marvel universe into a tailspin. The adaptation was anything but, leading to a slow and frustratingly flat spy show, "Secret Invasion," that wasted the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Olivia Colman, and Emilia Clarke and pointlessly killed off Cobie Smulders' longtime SHIELD agent, Maria Hill. The result was widely regarded as one of the lowest points in the post-"Endgame" era of Marvel Studios projects.

They might be able to take any form, but trying to depict both good and bad Skrulls was a complication that wasn't necessary. They're bad to their green-skinned bones in the comics, and they should've been like that from the beginning in the MCU.