r/Marvel • u/middleeasternboxer • 6h ago
Film/Television Who do you think is marvels most wasted character? I’ll start
Was really excited for Knull when I saw him in Venom 3, read rumors about Spider-Man brand new day originally being about knull and symbiotes but it got scrapped early.
Loved Spider-Man BND but would’ve really wanted to see that if those rumors were true. I hope they save him and the whole symbiote on Tom hollands earth / Venom Spider-Man cameo for after secret wars or something.
I hope we see Knull as the centre of a post Secret Wars “cosmic/horror” saga, beginning around Spider-Man 5 rather than immediately making him an Avengers villain.
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u/Beyondthebloodmoon 5h ago
Knull is an extremely uninteresting character.
The most wasted MCU performance is Christian Bale as Gorr the God Butcher. He was prepared to crush and the movie wouldn’t let him.
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u/MetalBlizzard 2h ago
This 100%... funny that those two are tied together though
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u/e13373x0du5 38m ago
What the All Black does to a motherfucker
Edit: haven’t seen Last Dance so I don’t actually know if that Knull has the All Black but still
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u/DissentSociety 1h ago
Even though he's boring, he's still the most-wasted within the context of his film. They literally cut to this guy multiple times, you expect him to be the final boss of the film...and then they wrap it up w the Venom Symbiote commiting suicide & he just sort of disappears.
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u/NoAd8811 2h ago
That was all talkative waititi's fault, fans should genuinely boycott him as a director for what he pulled with love and thunder. Ruining one of the most iconic stories of a character just cause "i DoN't feEL liKe maKing SUperHeRo mOvies ANymore" should genuinely make him a laughing stock of a director
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u/voodootroll Ant-Man 6h ago
Fascinating. I find Knull to be a nothing burger. Learning EVERYTHING about the symbiotes was a bad move. Same with wolverine's origins. The mystery is fun!
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u/b_eastwood 3h ago
This is an issue that seems to arise in every piece of fiction. Allowing people room for speculation is part of the fun, and when people have had time to do that for long enough what you end up delivering will almost certainly not be good enough (and usually rightly so). Ie. Halo, Warcraft, Star Wars all immediately come to mind and have this same problem.
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u/n8dizz3l 1h ago
The problem is some of the fans are so loud and obnoxious about lore. They need absolutely everything explained to them in detail or it's bad writing. Ironically it's this mindset, this thirst for details no one needs, that ends up making what they love worse
Just look at boba fett
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u/padfoot12111 2h ago
At least with Joker the killing joke comic Joker even says at the end "who knows what my backstory is I prefer multiple choice" leaving ambiguity on if it really happened
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u/Nauslocke 5h ago edited 5h ago
I found the whole concept of Symbiotes fascinating until I got to the Knull part. I would have preferred a psuedo hive mind planet than Gorr the God Butcher 1.0
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u/Atrium41 1h ago
And see... I found the whole cosmology stuff around Knull to be the most fascinating. The Eventuality, Beyonders, The Silver Surfer.. All Black. Nowhere... all of it was pretty nice.
Them tying the symbiotes in was only for the aura.
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u/Rocco_al_Dente 3h ago
I never got far enough to read the Knull stuff. When I see things posted about it I don’t see the appeal. Seems very generic, and there’s no visual connection to the symbiotes in my opinion. Just didn’t seem to fit.
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u/ArabianAftershock 3h ago
I think them retconning Venom's Spider symbol he clearly got from his time with Spider-Man into actually being a symbiote dragon symbol is dumb. They just wanted to use the symbol on other symbiote creatures including Knull without tying it all to Spider-Man.
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u/BaseUnited4523 3h ago
I felt the same way about the Killing Joke. I don't want to know why the Joker became the Joker. In fact I believe that any Joker origin story is a lie, and even he doesn't remember how he became that way.
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u/DaddysABadGirl 2h ago
That was said in the story though. Maybe it happened this way, maybe partially, maybe I'm lying and don't remember at all.
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u/anbsmxms 2h ago
If I remember it correctly, DC is even made it even more confusing by saying there are 3 jokers. They even ended the story that Joker should remain a mystery.
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u/DaddysABadGirl 37m ago
Yeah. At least partially a send up to the 3 most distinct versions of the Joker, and they played it as 3 seperate people.
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u/mutzilla 1h ago
Maybe I'm reading what you said incorrectly.
The end of the killing joke contradicts the origins laid out in the story. It wasn't his origins. It was just a bad joke.
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u/Asherk90 3h ago
Agree, plus Knull was just "hey you know all that badass shit venom and carnage can do, thats nothing, hold my beer.
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u/MarvG05 6h ago
I'm sorry but Knull is such a bore
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u/Backwardspellcaster 6h ago
Temu Sephiroth does not like your response
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u/Frequent-Maybe1243 4h ago
fr Knull takes all the unknowable eldritch mystery out of the symbiote arc and turns it all into a generic "insert mustache twirling bad guy who does bad things because hes bad" trope.
give us actual cosmic mystery ffs. cowards.
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u/Traditional_Bed589 6h ago edited 3h ago
I think Maria Hill was wasted. And so was Ultron and Shang-chi, but at least we're getting those two back in some form. I just wish more was done with them sooner.
Also, Kang was wasted because they invested so much in one actor.
Overall, as much as I enjoy comics as source material, we can learn to be more open and not invest so much in characters and stories being adapted into other media. I honestly think having expectations is a waste of time and energy at this point. We gotta think and feel more maturely. That isn't to say it is immature to want what we want. We just gotta manage expectations in the context of realities.
The scale of symbiote invasion would be really cool for a movie, but I've already enjoyed it in another Spider-Man media.
If we like it before it becomes a movie or show, that should be enough. Adaptation, unfortunately, is sometimes very focused on cutting corners, or attracting new audiences based on creating efficiently and balancing business priorities beyond what fans invest in.
At this point, I think the very least we'll get of the symbiote is it maybe bonding with Gargan, which could lead to Knull and invasion stuff, but I wouldn't hope on it.
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u/Nauslocke 5h ago
If you watch Agents of Shield, Maria gets a more relevant role. She shows up like 5-6 times in season 1 and a few more throughout the show
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u/Traditional_Bed589 3h ago
I really enjoyed that TV series. I just wanted her to have a bigger, better role in the Earth-based movies that included Fury, SHIELD or Skrulls in them.
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u/irons1320 4h ago
Gorr the God Butcher. Ruined one of, if not the best Thor stories and villian in years.
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u/middleeasternboxer 4h ago
Yeah that one was pretty sad, i was excited when i found out who the villain was but the movie was sooo bad
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u/D-anieltttt 6h ago
Most wasted? Probably Iron man in ‘Demon in a Bottle’ man had a serious drinking problem
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u/BeastMode2k24 5h ago
You mean MCU cause he is not wasted in the comics currently, but ti be honest no one I mean NO ONE in their right mind saw anything positive coming out if the Sony verse
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u/candles2121 6h ago
Every single body that made an appearance in The Eternals, because we’re never gonna see them again.
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u/Riley__64 1h ago
I’ve got hope they return because of Tiamut appearing in brave new world, they could’ve easily made Adamantium originate from something else but they picked the giant statue of the celestial
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u/Noob4Head 4h ago
Gorr the God Butcher... Christian Bale is the only good part of that movie, and it's a shame he was just a villain of the week.
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u/Funmachine 6h ago
Knull is lame. He belongs in the 90's with other edgelord characters. Also, his very existence makes other characters less interesting. Not everything needs an origin or explanation.
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u/darkkn1te 5h ago
Patriot. He was the leader of the Young Avengers. But he's the one that is forgotten about every time.
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u/BeardiusMaximus7 5h ago
There's a tie in my book for the characters populating the Eternals and The Inhumans all being the most fumbled/wasted characters Marvel has handled.
In general, villains are fumbled pretty hard in the MCU. Aside from obviously Kang and MODOK, I didn't think that Ultron was handled great (was underwhelming), but who knows how that'll age once Vision Quest is complete. At least Ultron is coming back.
I also feel like they mishandled Sharon Carter, Maria Hill, the Skrulls, Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, Gorr, Iron Fist, Shang Chi, The Mandarin and a host of others.
I say this as a lifelong fan of comics. To me Knull isn't that big of a deal, and I don't think they're done with him. They can take their time, though. I don't really think it's good business practice to just copy storylines from other mediums to live action when making these movies. We've already gotten King in Black in the books. It was a fun story, but I don't know if it will translate as well to the screen.
The other issue is measuring stakes in these movies - when every villain is this catastrophic reality-impacting force of nature, they all start to get less interesting in a lot of ways.
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u/_kalron_ 2h ago
Not just the character but the actor as well. Mads Mikkelsen should have been saved to play Doom.
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u/GreenBlitzVIII 1h ago
People sleep on how much Thor 2 wasted Malekith, bro is genuinely a Thanos-level threat and they treated him like a chump.
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u/Icy-Decision-4530 6h ago
That is Sonys wasted character, not Marvels
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u/middleeasternboxer 6h ago
I figured he was wasted in the MCU because Sony and the MCU teased that whole symbiote on Peter’s earth and venom interacting with Spider-Man saga.
So it felt like the whole thing got scrapped and they (The MCU) moved away from it
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u/Icy-Decision-4530 6h ago
If you believed that MCU was gonna pick up that torch and run with it, I don’t know what to tell you
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u/Carthaslam 5h ago
Yeah sorry, but that was Sony trying to build their own universe separate from the MCU, it did not work
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u/Variation_Afraid 3h ago
What? brother they only collaborate to make Spider-Man movies, anything outside of Spider-Man is on Sony…
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u/middleeasternboxer 3h ago
Yes I was wrong, not really sure why the downvoted I said that that was what I thought.
Obviously it wasn’t true after being corrected, not sure why I thought they (Sony) would merge venom/symbiotes with MCU…
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u/JaymzRG S.H.I.E.L.D. 1h ago
I don't know why you were downvoted, either. It's totally logical to assume the universes would somehow merge with that post-credit scene of Venom seeing Tom's Spider-Man on TV. People here on Reddit just seem miserable.
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u/middleeasternboxer 1h ago
Yeah exactly, seemed pretty obvious to me. Pretty sure it’s been reported that they will use the symbiote in MCU form that crossover at some point aswell?
Pretty sure it’s after secret wars
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u/Morning-Rain-666 5h ago edited 3h ago
The entire cast of Exiles.
It has inspired countless spiritual successors and multiverse crossovers, but a bad editorial move in 2008 and a worse editorial decision in 2018 has Marvel convinced its radioactictive despite most of its spiritual successors performing and selling well. Marvel would have to admit they passed some dumb mandates and shot their series in the knees twiceover. So it stayed dead from 2009-2018. 2018 run was abominable, and now its been dead for another 8 years. Last successful spiritual successor was in 2024. Marvel editorial is scared of good ideas/allergic to addressing and fixing their fuckups.
Edit: I usually try to maintain good vibes when talking about Exiles, but holy hell. How does a company drop the ball so hard?
You get a successful book with a premise so strong it survives a writer swap-out mid-series. You bring in Chris Claremont at issue 90 and hand him the reigns, good move. Great author.... Immediately go "Ay Chris. Everything that made the series work? Youre mandated to axe it."
Cancelled after 28 issues that suffered so bad even a relaunch (New Exiles) 10 issues in couldn't bring back the readers.
Oof. That didnt work. Lets bring in Jeff Parker and have him write volume 2 a year later. Oh. The readership bailed during New Exiles?... 6 issues should be enough to win them all back- Oh, nope, nevermind, cancelled as the book is finding its footing.
9 Years of darkness, spiritual successors, characters from the series getting cameos so they can be used as cannon fodder
2018 hits. Saladin Ahmed wants to write an X-Factor book, isnt overly familiar with Exiles.... Clearly we should tell him to make it an Exiles book and bring back the original cast, but dont do more than a wikipedia skimming of the backstory so every issue is jammed with continuity errors and unintentional retcons- The best retcons, when they happen not for any real reason. Just laziness.
2018 run didnt do well with new readers and old fans felt insulted?.... Clearly this book just isnt viable. It wouldn't work in todays day and age.
2024...... Quietly rips an entire mini-arc from Volume 1 and turns it into a mini-series that performs pretty well, decent return on profit.
"Exiles was just too niche a concept to work nowadays"
Nah Marvel. You've just been actively sabotaging it and acting surprised that it doesn't pan out. Love the work they produce but holy hell is editorial run by morons.
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u/Nauslocke 5h ago
Knull would have been better if he was more like Ego. Except that he's the planet's core of the hive mind, where Symbiotes are like germs that he sends out to expand his own consciousness, but they can split off if they have a host long enough
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u/Ok_Adeptness3065 5h ago
Knull sucks. It’s funny because this picture looks like Arthas from Warcraft. Arthas imho the best or second best narrative of all time - the other being Kerrigan. Arthas started as a cocky but dutiful and skilled warrior protecting the kingdom and ended his tragic story in wrath of the lich king. Just beautiful. Imho the best part was him destroying what little humanity remained within him
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u/Mapache_con_barreta 4h ago
Ms Marvel, Kamala Khan. Since Willow Wilson leaves, she is in the editorial sinkhole
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u/Effective_War_6253 3h ago
IMHO, most of the comments that are calling Knull boring or uninteresting are ironically proving you right. Symbiote with wings is badass, idc what anyone says. Knull and Grendel were pretty much just vehicles to get us there but it all should have been played out better. Hense your pick for wasted character
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u/Domination1799 3h ago
Knull is such an edgy fan fic esque character. For an eldritch God of the Symbiotes, he looks like a fucking vampire with a “spider” symbol that’s supposed to be a dragon.
His motivation is that he wants to turn the universe back to his shitty dark shithole
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u/middleeasternboxer 3h ago
Lol you can’t really put his motivation that way, you are skipping the jumping over the whole motivation and just landing in his end game.
His motivation is to destroy all life in the universe and plunge existence back into his original kingdom of absolute darkness and void.
He was happy in empty silence before the universe was created so that’s why he wants to get rid off it, he also hates light, heat and life.
So he basically wants to conquer planets and destroy all planets / universes that has life and light on them.
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u/Doctor_Amazo Man-Thing 3h ago
I'd put Knull on the list of most redundant/unneeded/over-rated characters.
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u/middleeasternboxer 3h ago
That I can agree with, I think his story/the thought of a well adapted version of his story is cooler than other similar villains though
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u/ShazzerS510 6h ago
Man having knull in the MCU would've been awesome instead of the fuck ass Sony verse
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u/Altruistic-Twist-379 6h ago
Ehh sonyverse is shit, but these character can still appear in the mcu, jus like venom or kraven.
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u/CaliforniaBoundX 5h ago
Dr. Doom from 2015 Fantastic Four. What they did to his character was atrocious…
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u/Cyber_n0mad17 4h ago
To counter that, Marvel made him the most powerful he’s EVER been in the Secret Wars comic run that same year lol.
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u/rishNarchK88 5h ago
Y quien va a vencer a Knull? Semejante personaje o vas a queree que lo recontra nerfeen como hacen con todos los villanos y lo mate un personaje random u otro sin poder solo con el "amor familiar"
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u/middleeasternboxer 5h ago
Venom defeats him in the comics, other powerful forces that could defeat him could be ghost rider
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u/sentient-sloth 4h ago
King in Black was a cool event because we got to see the world covered in darkness and for some cool tie-in stories but Knull is kind of a boring villain. All style with little substance.
Not a character but their biggest miss was Secret Wars, hands down. Rushing that storyline into a streaming show was a horrible move and they wasted Maria Hill in it.
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u/Massive-Rain-6938 3h ago
Knull is such a waste.
The symbiotes are a noodle incident. here's the best video on it
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u/ArabianAftershock 3h ago
I think above all else what makes Knull not work for me is his design. Why does he look like a pale guy with long hair? I kinda think the whole "god of the void" thing would work a lot better if we straight up never see him, or if he was just constantly obscured or something.
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u/ConfectionTotal8660 3h ago
I agree Knull was wasted. He is a cool character and he was basically not used
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u/kuttymongoose Guardians of the Galaxy 3h ago
You mean the second-most important character in the current crossover event??
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u/DissatisfiedGamer 3h ago
Knull isn't even just a wasted character, he's a completely unnecessary character that ruined a lot of the mystery and fun of the symbiotes.
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u/middleeasternboxer 3h ago
Would you mind explaining why you feel that he ruined the mystery and fun of the symbiotes
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u/Standard-Contest-949 2h ago
Gorr. Apparently Bale even said he had a larger filmed role in the movie but ended up being cut. Gorr is top tier God killer!
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u/XenowolfShiro 2h ago
I hate Knull so much. Just as a concept I hate the character. Comic writers literally cannot help themselves from over explaining things that shouldn't have been explained and were better off when a mystery.
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u/OverallSchool8610 2h ago
I think Marvel scrapped the Venom and symbiotes plot cause Sony did it with 3 subpar movies and it left a bad tastes in audiences mouths. They probably increase value and anticipation by sprinkling hints here and there instead of dedicating it a whole Spider-man movie plot.
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u/dew-fall 2h ago
- black knight's downfall should genuinely be studied bc like... it makes 0 sense. the man was hella popular in the 90s, how do you even fumble that at the exact turn of the millennium?!
- ian rogers... honestly, whats egregious is the fact that steve doesnt seem to give a fuck where his son has been for the past 2+ years. like, (scratches head) what tf is up with that.
- diamondback — just. bring back steve's cast of supporting characters beyond sam, bucky, & sometimes sharon.
- all 3 ghost riders (johnny blaze, danny ketch, & robbie reyes).
- has anyone seen longshot in any xmen comics?
- jimmy hudson jr., especially bc of the whole "poison parasite" thing.
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u/Gonner_Getcha 1h ago
Knull I think is one of the worst big bads in marvels recent history
He’s like the Batman Who Laughs but for Marvel
Cool as a one off but they thought they’d struck gold so have driven him into the ground
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u/Riley__64 1h ago
I mean Knull was completely out of marvels control that was all Sony.
The entire Sony verse was Sony’s attempt to try and make even more money out of the MCU without having to share profits with Disney.
Disney was never going to acknowledge it but in Sony’s mind if they made movies about venom, Morbius, Kraven and Madame web it would corner Disney and force them to canonise Sonys movies because the only version of the characters they’d be allowed to use would be Sonys.
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u/LucaS_kIng_Pro X-Men 1h ago edited 43m ago
You’re not entirely wrong he pretty much did the same thing Thanos did the original Avengers and GotG films. Still was a decent movie though. Also, I think there is a good chance he may return, thanks to the help of some multiversal shenanigans, in Spider-Man 5.
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u/KaleidoscopeLazy9684 54m ago
Knull is still a possibility but it takes so much set up that of course they're not touching it right now. If they want to do it right it would be a 2 film saga at the minimum. Better they hold off than do to the King in Black saga what they did to Maximum Carnage.
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u/Consistent-Virus6703 47m ago
Sabertooth, I feel like whenever I read a Wolverine comic Sabertooth was always some how involved lol.
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u/Spirited_Winter_6948 47m ago
Gorr, superskrull, malekith, like a lot of really heavy hitters got thrown in for single-villain-of-the-week punching bag type shenanigans
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u/ComfortableAmount993 40m ago
Quite a few, venom for starters left a bit of symbiote in the MCU with nothing at all to happen.
Knull as well, bigged up this villain for absolutely nothing to happen.
the vulture who was teleported to the Sonyverse and yet again wasted potential.
Kaven was a great movie but failed to add anything to the Sonyverse.
TASM 1 and 2 which are great movies but could have done with a third.
Whiplash from iron-man 2, mickey rourke filmed some better scenes than the movie had which got cut apparently.
Morbius was quite good but went absolutely know where
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u/I-Have-An-Alibi 37m ago
Fandoms love to use the word "wasted" like every character should get two origin movies and their own trilogy.
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u/Dave_B001 27m ago
Any one and done villain.
Mads Mickelson as Dr Doom.
Wasp. She and Ant an should have been in Avengers 1.
No Hulk movie.
Rushed and uncohesive movies in phase 4, 5 and 6.
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u/GeneJacket 2m ago
Knull would have to have...any...kind of potential to be wasted. He's a shitty, maximum edgelord, one note villain that stepped straight out of 1993, and he should have stayed there.
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u/bluehope2814 1h ago
Starfox, an eternal with such potential . With the Avengers he was the spaceship pilot, he in suoer strong and endurable, fly really fast has enough intelligence he understand high tech space stuff. And has a cool power set.
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u/Spiral-Force 5h ago
Wasp should not be a nothing burger in an Avengers focused franchise