The Singular Villain Trope: How Superhero Movies Flatten Every Problem to One Bad Guy

(Spoilers for Wonder Woman, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, and Black Panther)

Big crowd-pleasing action movies in America have a basic structure: there is a bad guy and the fate of the world rests on toppling this villain. This is a satisfying formula and its success would be hard to argue against, but it is worryingly simplistic. Problems in the real world just do not get solved this way. If they did, the U.S. invasion of Iraq would have been a resounding success because Saddam Hussein was overthrown within months. Am I saying cancel Marvel movies? No, but action movies are missing an opportunity to address the true complexity of issues, adding to a lack of nuance in our world.

My focus is on superhero movies because they’re incredibly popular right now and they almost always flatten complex often global problems to a singular villain. Wonder Woman is exemplary of the singular villain trope. A wildly altered version of the Greek God Ares is the villain, sowing anger and violence throughout the world, which, naturally, is a significant cause for WWI. To end WWI, Wonder Woman simply needs to defeat Ares (spoiler: she does). All the human and societal causes of WWI are simply replaced by an embodiment of evil. This choice doesn’t make Wonder Woman bad, I liked it, but it is a missed opportunity for a meaningful examination of why people engage in war. Taken just by itself, the singular villain trope in Wonder Woman isn’t…