A joke is often made about how Marvel movie villains won’t live through the movie, and won’t do much. This is played off for laughs by the fans, as Marvel movies are great fun and action and even can hit deep topics. sure, they’re not as tough as their comic book counterparts, but the villains do their job for the film and act as the foil to the heroes. Sadly, this isn’t true. Marvel movie villains are some of the dumbest, inefficient, ineffectual, and pathetic supervillains of all time. From geniuses to the literal gods, to shadow corporations and more, they all just…suck at their jobs and practically force themselves to lose by being idiots.

Red Skull (Captain America: The First Avenger)

Red Skull seems like a big, bad, monster of a villain at first glance. He’s a nazi who leads the German efforts for World War II, and manages to push the Allies (Read: America) to the point that they considered and went through with the process of making Captain America.

But if you think about what he did, what he accomplished, I mean really really think about it, then you’ll notice he’s incompetent at best. The man has a literal beacon of infinite power, literally called an Infinity Stone in the Tesseract. For one, he uses it only to make small arms, a huge waste of it’s power, and more importantly he still manages to lose to just one super soldier in Captain America. To make things worse, he’s ALSO a super soldier on the level of Cap, and while Cap has a damn good frisbee, he has so much more. And he loses.

Let’s count what he TRULY does, outside of being a normal general in the army. He kills the German scientist who makes Cap, but only AFTER making Cap. He captures a small group of soldiers (who Cap rescues) and…that’s about it. The rest of Hydra’s “rise” is based on Zola and the others. Red Skull didn’t really do anything.

Whiplash (Iron Man 2)

Yes, his name is somewhat underwhelming (his villain name, his real name: Ivan Vanko is pretty badass sounding), yes his origin is pretty meh, but that doesn’t excuse why Whiplash does absolutely nothing in Iron Man 2. His first real appearance is him catching Tony Stark off-guard at a racing event, dancing about like an idiot, and being taken down by a normal car as someone noticed that he had special whips, but no real armor on.

From then one he’s imprisoned, broken out by an idiot genius in Justin Hammer, builds some drones and attacks a crowd of people at a showcase. Seems reasonable and effective for what’s essentially just a terrorist version of Iron Man, but in the end, he fails even at that, as Iron Man and War Machine save everyone and clean up the drones without issue.

At the end of the movie, Whiplash confronts both men and after about a…minute long fight, he’s taken down in basically one hit. Whiplash has zero impact on anything and does nothing but help Iron Man not give his technology to the government. Somehow with the benefit of surprise, time to prepare, and drones outnumbering Iron Man by the dozen, he still loses without doing anything of note.

Loki (The Avengers)

Loki’s even worse than Red Skull. He’s a god, on a planet with lesser beings, armed with TWO infinity stones and he still manages to lose. Loki can literally mind control anyone with a heart, but is so inept and unbefitting of his ‘trickster’ and ‘God of Mischief’ title, that he immediately starts a full frontal attack rather than say, mind control government leaders and taking over that way.

Once he starts the full frontal attack and MAKES SURE the Avengers come together (by killing their mascot), he fails pitifully at that as well. Loki claims to want to rule ALL of Midgard AKA The Earth. He manages to kill barely a hundred people, destroy a few buildings, and get demolished by The Avengers (having a moment where he’s embarrassed by every member, even the humans), not even taking one city. And this is all with an infinite army that has units that take out buildings just by swimming through them.

To put that to scale, there’s around 4500 cities in the world with a population over 150,000 and over a hundred times more if we include smaller towns and cities. Loki got about half of a city at best, so he accomplished approximately 1/9000 of his goal. He basically put a dent in a wall when trying to destroy a building.

And remember that in later movies, the Mind Stone is shown to be able to give humans powers and is stated to be able to level an entire city. One has to try to be so pitiful with a weapon like that on your side.

Ultron (Avengers: Age of Ultron)

The Age of Ultron is a short time period, maybe a few days in length, that…killed about one hundred people and destroyed a decently sized landmass in Sokovia somewhere. That’s it. Now this might be a decent accomplishment for a terrorist group or some random gang, but this is Ultron: AI extraordinaire, a being that can hack ANYTHING, had access to a nuke, and again had an infinity stone in his possession at one point.

Out of the thousands upon thousands of Nukes in the world, Ultron hacked zero of them. Out of the thousands upon thousands of governments in the world, Ultron shut down zero of them. Out of the thousands of cities in the world who rely on electricity or power of some kind, Ultron shut down…well you’re getting the picture. Ultron had all of this power at his fingertips, and instead chooses to go with a cartoonish plan of lifting a city and dropping it out of the sky.

But that’s not it, Ultron also has an issue with combat. Ultron’s a sentient Iron Man suit with improvements and vibranium added. He has an army of thousands, if not millions of Iron Man bots, and somehow he still loses while only taking one casualty from the Avengers (and that was very circumstantial).

Even worse, once defeated Ultron didn’t even appear to have a backup plan or a contingency for surviving, like putting his consciousness into the internet somewhere, or a thumb drive, or anything of the sorts. For a living, evil computer, Ultron was really really stupid and didn’t seem to calculate anything.

Malekith (Thor 2: The Dark World)

The Dark Elves start off the movie decently enough. They give a serious fight to the Asgardians and seemingly threaten the universe. Kurse then enters Asgard, takes down their shields, launches an attack, and even kills Thor’s mother. Kurse does all of this, not Malekith. Malekith, the leader of the Dark Elves, is surprisingly terrible at everything.

When he tries to attack Thor’s mother, he’s instantly beaten and fooled by her illusions. Then Thor comes an fries half of his face and he has to be carried off the battlefield by Kurse. THEN, once he’s gifted the Aether (an infinity stone that turns the entire UNIVERSE to darkness), he still manages to fight evenly with Thor and lose to a bunch of humans doing wonky science.

Malekith’s big defeat comes when a building-sized ship falls on him and crushes him. A building. When he was just the host for a universe-destroying stone. That’s like having a speck of dust fall on a human’s chest and kill them. Malekith manages to outdo any and every one of the villains with his inaptitude to succeed, as he gets everything he wants, gets universal power, and loses to a bunch of humans and a moderately powerful Asgardian. For shame Malekith, for shame.

Hydra (Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier)

A big reveal is made in Captain America 2, The Winter Soldier: Hydra has infiltrated the SHIELD and have been in control of EVERYTHING. They use this power to build three airships, each designed to take out millions of lives, based on an algorithm for who threatens Hydra most. Hydra also managed to kidnap and brainwash Captain America’s best friend Bucky and use him to assassinate key players over the years.

Now this seems like a pretty efficient group at first hand. They infiltrated their enemies, rose to power, killed their enemies, and now control everything. But remember that they still lose to literally one super soldier and one spy. Not the Avengers, not even Thor or Hulk, just two humans that may or may not be somewhat enhanced. And again they have a super soldier on their side as well in Winter Soldier.

But that’s not the worst part. With the revelation that Hydra has taken over Shield, also comes the revelation that Hydra are a bunch of idiots. Hydra literally had the Avengers on their side and used them for absolutely nothing. No secret plans, no dominating the world or setting up any contingency plans, nothing. A more egregious failure is that SHIELD (and by definition Hydra) had access to the Tesseract ONCE AGAIN, and still failed to use it for anything. For a short time period, they also had a god (Loki) in their captivity, a god (Thor) and a monster (Hulk) on their side to easily take blood from (they can make up some excuse), and a super genius (Stark) and a super soldier (Cap) to help create their tech and also to get blood from.

Hydra utilizes none of it. Absolutely none of it. They don’t even use their government connections to spread out throughout the world’s different governments, or even have a Hydra man as the leader of SHIELD (letting Fury take the reins), and instead are all taken out virtually in one night by two slightly enhanced humans.

With all that power in their fingertips, Hydra still lost to the same super soldier that beat them before. That’s godly levels of inefficiency.