There is a shared thread that binds Skyfall’s Raoul Silva, Gone Girl’s Amy Elliot Dunne and The Dark Knight’s Joker.
The commonality isn’t that they were ‘right.’ The three individuals may or may not have been standing on sturdy moral ground, but that matters nil, because all three of them won.
At the conclusion of the three respective films, these villains emerged triumphantly. And more often than not, such a narrative development injects an added layer of intrigue to the story; it enhances it.
And if the villain both wins, and their moral vantage point is relatively elevated, then you have a recipe for an antagonist worth waxing poetic about.
Of the three named above, Skyfall’s Silva checks both the boxes.
But there is another, rather unheralded villainous turn that fulfills both criteria – Daniel Bruhl’s outing as Helmut Zemo in Civil War.
It was he who began course-correcting the MCU’s calamitous affair with mediocre to atrocious villains. Zemo was certainly neither of those things.
What was he? He was a soldier, a fighter, a patriot. But his life was torn apart on a chilly day in Sokovia. He lost his wife, son and father during the Avengers’ battle with Ultron in Age of Ultron.
“We don’t trade in lives” Steve Rogers would later say.
But Zemo’s family’s lives were traded that day to save Sokovia and defeat a megalomaniacal monster that Tony Stark created; he of the arrogant I don’t want to hear the man shouldn’t meddle medley rhetoric.
Zemo is devoured by vengeance and re-dedicates his life to tearing the Avengers apart. He knew he couldn’t ‘beat’ them, not with force anyhow. So he set out to crumble the empire from within.
And he did it. He succeeded. At the conclusion of Civil War, the Avengers are toast and Earth’s two best defenders are trading blows bathed in blood.
Vengeance consumed Zemo. And he committed vile acts in the name of exacting that vengeance.
But he was a wonderful villain not merely because he had a sympathetic origin point, i.e. one could argue he was ‘right,’ but also because he perfectly represented the overarching narrative tension at the heart of Civil War – one of accountability.
Zemo is the ghost of the lack of accountability that the Avengers revelled in; he is their mild-mannered bogeyman.
Zemo is the spectre of the sins of their past.
Our very strength invites challenge. Challenge incites conflict. And conflict breeds catastrophe.
Helmut Zemo caused more suffering to the Avengers than anyone not named Thanos. He beat them and exposed the cracks in their character.
And the genesis of his crusade? Because one fine day, the Avengers dropped a building on his family while they were kicking ass and taking names.
If anything, it is Helmut Zemo who was the avenger.
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