Nov 27, 2017

Ranking Marvel Films by Villain Bangability: Part 2 [Top 10]

Loki Bad | High-Key Hot

Above all else, Tableau Your Mind endeavors to entertain, enlighten, and exhaust its readers. So, in our entertaining and enlightening efforts to look at the bangability of Marvel Villains, we have also exhausted the patience of many by waiting to put up the second half of our two-part series. Well, wait no more! We've looked at the also-rans in Part 1. Now it's time for Tableau (along with Guest Bloggers Square Peg and Christmas Pug) to look at the certified hate-able hotties of Part 2:

Bangability: 5.14
Logan Marshall-Green as Jackson Brice / Montana

Really, Michael Keaton’s Vulture is the only real villain in this bish, and he’s about as bangable as any version of Michael Keaton that’s ever existed. So, medium? Donald Glover’s villain Aaron Davis barely gets to do anything, but he also elevates the bangability scale by just existing and being Donald Glover.

Tableau: Everyone’s just so angry in this movie. I don’t need that energy around me. 
Square Peg: I love Michael Keaton as an actor, but he often has this expression on his face like he just smelled something repugnant while also sucking on a sour candy. 
Christmas Pug: Donald Glover, please take me.

#9 Thor
Bangability: 5.66
The Destroyer

Lil Baby Loki’s film debut is also his least sexy, but he’s still doing it for the two women on this jury. What he provides is a preview of the bangability to come, and Loki’s mix of suave Britishness and good bone structure do seem to carry a lot of his films into the upper echelon of the bangosphere.

Square Peg: If anyone has a way to get in touch with Tom Hiddleston to let him know that I want to bang him, please do. Put it through the grapevine. 
Tableau: I feel like I added The Destroyer to the film’s list of villains to bring the average down a little and be a better representation of the quality of the movie. It’s fun and Shakespearean, but it’s not the best. And The Destroyer, while displaying some great leg and arm definition, loses points due to the fact that he shoots fire out of his only opening. He’s literally unbangable. 
Christmas Pug: Hole or no hole, you can’t really deter me from wanting to eff Tom Hiddleston.

Bangability: 5.77
Alexis Denisof as the Other

Loki’s back from the dead and ready to sexually frustrate all our heroes. As a central villain, he’s great, and he’s also at his most sexually alluring. His fun outfits, the way he teases The Hulk, that weird ball-gaggy headpiece he has to wear at the end -- he’s a sexual force with which to be reckoned. And while square-jawed Thanos and cage-masked The Other bring the average down a bit, the power of Loki easily breaks this film into the top 50%.

Square Peg: I’ll be singing this until the cows come home, but Thanos does nothing for me in any of his incarnations. 
Tableau: This is definitely Top Loki, and really the last movie where he’s the clear villain. After this, he veers into ‘shitty brother who is a little villainous’ territory.
Christmas Pug: Said it once and will say it again: would eff.

Bangability: 5.80
Daniel Brühl as Helmut Zemo
Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow / Crossbones

This movie is just full of sexiness. At the core you have mastermind Helmut Zemo, a grieving father and husband who is pretty hot to trot with that sexy widow stank on him. And then, on the periphery, you have Tony Stark, whose sexiness is elusive to some, dom-gear Brock Rumlow, and zaddy/daddy Thaddeus. All told, it’s a pretty bangable group of whiteys.

Tableau: I’m not into any of this, really. But I understand, objectively, the attraction to these dudes.
Square Peg: Daniel Brühl is just so attractive. Look at how that one lock of hair flops so perfectly over his forehead!
Christmas Pug: I’m literally bored just thinking about banging these dudes (boom, roasted).

Bangability 6.07
Kurt Russell as Ego
Chris Sullivan as Taserface

For a movie as unevenly written and produced as GOTG2, it still manages to have a ton of extremely attractive and alluring villains. Ayesha, the High Priestess of the quasi-master-racey Sovereign, gets more attractive the more unhinged she becomes. And Kurt Russell as Ego the Living Planet maintains the high level of bangability he’s had since the beginning of his film career. And a huge part of his character is sexing up as many species as possible. That's hot (tm Paris Hilton). Taserface’s scrotal visage brings the score down considerably, as does Ego once he goes true baddie and gets all grey and sandy.

Tableau: Taserface gets no respect, even on this board. Without him, this movie would definitely have ranked higher on this list.
Square Peg: There’s no denying the appeal of that twinkle in Kurt Russell’s eye.
Christmas Pug: Yes to Ayesha. Yes to space ladies in general.

Bangability: 6.37 
 
Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow
Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce 
Toby Jones as Arnim Zola (computer)

It makes sense that Bucky Barnes has been in suspended animation, because his hair and overall gravel-y sexiness is more reminiscent of early 90s Kurt Cobain or Ethan Hawke than any present-day dreamboats. But, because it’s a Marvel movie, he’s also jacked AF. Rounding out the trio of sexiness is Brock Rumlow (less charred than he is in Avengers 2) and forever Sexiest Man Alive Robert Redford (playing secret Hydra agent Alexander Pierce). Though Pierce’s smoldering sexiness is anything but agreed upon (Tableau is the cheese that stands alone on that one), everyone agrees that Computer Zola isn’t really much to bang home about. 

Christmas Pug: I don’t care what you say, Alexander Pierce is basically dead in “sexy woman years,” and I can’t stand behind a society that would sexualize him and not a lady counterpart of the same generation. 
Tableau: I’m all for pudgy elf Zola in the first Captain America, but the Commodore 64 version is more floppy disk than hard drive. I've never had a sexual thought about The Oregon Trail, and I don't intend to start now.
Square Peg: Brock Rumlow is definitely attractive, but he’s such an asshole that it cancels out.

Bangability: 6.43
Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser
Michael Rooker as Yondu Udonta
Karen Gillan as Nebula
Josh Brolin as Thanos 

For the first Guardians film, it’s the battle of the sexy blue baddies. Since all the protagonists are also criminals, it’s a little hard to parse out the true villains. Still, if you’re blue in this movie, you’re at least on notice. And Ronan the Accuser definitely tries to kill a whole planet full of people, so his villainy is not under dispute. Neither are THOSE ABS and DAT BUTT:

Tableau: This whole movie is filled with a bunch of Sexy Smurfs. 
Square Peg: I definitely have a Lee Pace thing, but the cakey black blood on his face and his overall growly nature makes him a lot less bangable. Even if he is the first Marvel Villain to give us a butt shot.
Christmas Pug: I don’t know what it is about alien women that just GETS ME. All the points to Nebula.

Bangability: 7.17
Rebecca Hall as Maya Hansen 
Ben Kingsley as Trevor Slattery/The Mandarin

Once again, Tony goes up against a business rival who’s not as smart as him and hates him for his intellect and suaveness. Yawn. Thankfully, the rivals (Aldrich Killian and Maya Hansen) in this movie are bangable, which makes the high-stakes business one-upmanship a little more fun to watch. Maya Hansen was originally going to be the main villain of the film, which would have been a welcome change of pace for Marvel films (so few have a female villain, let alone a female MAIN villain). Thankfully, even with a diminished role, her bangability remains at an all-time high. This film’s hot quotient is ultimately done in by Aldrich’s awkward tattoo placement and Trevor Slattery’s general existence. Only Square Peg’s high score for Faux-Mandarin kept him afloat.

Tableau: Maya Hansen is incredibly attractive and has believable sexual chemistry with both Tony Stark and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts.
Square Peg: There’s something oddly appealing about The Mandarin, and we do literally see him post-coitally getting out of bed. So, we know he bangs.
Christmas Pug: Maya Hansen is v bangable, and I wish I could say I wouldn’t bang someone with Aldrich’s tattoos, but we all know I would.

Bangability: 7.67

The only movie on this list with only one villain, its bangability ranking is firmly high because the single bad guy is also extremely attractive. Sure, he kills without mercy and uses Ant-Man’s daughter as a hostage, but you can’t deny the swagger.

Tableau: I’m not going to really comment on the attractiveness, except to say that he is seemingly a psychopath. So that maybe knocks a point off?
Christmas Pug: I love da baldies!!!
Square Peg: Corey is an attractive fella, but I don’t go in for suits.

Bangability: 9.0
Cate Blanchett as Hela
Jeff Goldblum as Grandmaster
Karl Urban as Skurge

Without much competition, the latest Thor movie is the sexiest film through and through. You’ve got sexy-ass Thor, super sexual (and bisexual) Valkyrie, and Hulk butt. And that’s just on the good guy side. On the bad side, you have sexual chameleon Jeff Goldblum as the Grandmaster, noted hottie-with-a-body Tom Hiddleston, and Cate Blanchett as the Goddess of Death (and God’s Sexual Gift to Humanity), Hela. The heat coming off this movie is intense, and it’s basically hemorrhaging horniness. This movie is a bang-fest, and that’s without even mentioning the long sequence where the heroes ride around in an orgy spaceship. Genitals are basically exploding off the screen.

Christmas Pug: Five thousand stars to Cate Blanchett! 
Tableau: Like every young person who watched Jurassic Park, I’ve been low-key sexually attracted to Jeff Goldblum for most of my life. And this is just the cherry on the sexy sundae. 
Square Peg: The horns only make Cate more attractive. Plus, I’m weirdly turned on by the fact that, if I were banging Jeff Goldblum, he could kill me at any moment with his weird melty death stick.

***

This whole list started as an experiment to see if a Marvel film's villain bangability matched up with the overall quality of the film. And, with a few exceptions, things do line up nicely. Maybe Ant-Man and Thor: Ragnarok aren't the best MCU films, but they are the most fun. Perhaps Iron Man 3 isn't the best Iron Man movie, but it is the most artfully directed and deep. And maybe we shouldn't look too hard at this list. Let's instead look to Hollywood and the entire celebrity-fueled industry and thank them all for being so bangable and willing to be exploited for our pleasure (and their extreme financial gain). And then, after you've heaped praise onto the already overpraised, go out into the world and bang on.

Nov 17, 2017

Ranking Marvel Films by Villain Bangability: Part 1

Hela Scary | Hella Bangable
There’s no denying that Marvel has, over the last 10 years, created a critically-lauded and commercially-successful film franchise. However, that doesn’t mean that the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) are beyond critique. When dissecting these blockbusters, a common refrain is that, though the heroes are compelling, the villains have paper thin motivations and are almost universally disposable (also like paper). 

Guest Bloggers and Me
While I don’t disagree, I think that critics have missed the mark by looking too hard at what villains are trying to achieve and the ways they go about doing it, and not hard enough at how incredibly bangable these dastardly dudes and dudettes really are. And with the release of Thor: Ragnarok, it’s clear that, while Marvel may not care about getting into the heads of these villains, viewers still want to get into these villains’ pants. 

Below is the Part 1 of Tableau’s scientific ranking of the “bangability” of Marvel villains, weighing their physical attractiveness, overall demeanor, and importance to the plot. To aide in my journey, and to feel less gross about the whole thing, I enlisted the help of previous guest blogger Square Peg and new correspondent Christmas Pug for a look at these sexy, sexy ne’er-do-wells. 

To focus on the main villains of each film, some minor villains and lackeys were left out, especially if they switched allegiances before the final battle.  

Which film has best bros and babes for boudoir boinking? Let’s find out! 

#17 Doctor Strange
Bangability: 2.4

Benedict Cumberbatch as Dormammu 

It’s no surprise that Doctor Strange is at the bottom of the list. With his high pony, botched smokey eye, and frequent accidental duckface, Kaecilius is possibly the most basic-bitch villain in the entire MCU. And Tilda Swinton, while ethereally interesting and sexually frustrating, loses some bangability points for her casting being the end result of a lot of whitewashing. 

Square Peg: Normally all about the Mads-life, but I can’t sign off on this look. It’s unsettling. 
Christmas Pug: Bonus points for Tilda Swinton, but these villains are all a hard pass. 
Tableau: Dormammu kills Benedict Cumberbatch’s titular doctor a bunch, which gets me going, but it’s also voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch, so it kind of nullifies any sexy feelings I might have initially felt. But space is sexy, I guess?

Bangability: 3.27
Original Tableau Your Mind Review 
James Spader as Ultron
Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark / Iron Man 
Andy Serkis as Ulysses Klaue 

There’s no denying that Ultron’s got a rocking robot bod, but it also comes equipped with James Spader’s 80s-movie-asshole voice. So, it’s a mixed bag, to be sure. Tony Stark’s accidental villainy helps bump up this movie’s average up a bit, as does Square Peg’s strangely strong attraction to Andy Serkis’s Ulysses Klaue. 

Christmas Pug: My high score for Stark really points to my weakness for mediocre white men. 
Square Peg: I can’t really describe why, but Andy Serkis really does it for me. Even dirty. Especially dirty. 
Tableau: James Spader is the antithesis of sexy to me. All I can picture is him in a bathrobe smoking cigars with William Shatner, and no. Just no. 

#15 Thor: The Dark World 
Bangability: 3.33
Original Tableau Your Mind Review 
Christopher Eccleston as Malekith  
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Algrim / Kurse 

This movie is pretty unsexy. Like, all the pieces are there for sexiness, but it just doesn’t come together. And, unlike other Thor films, Loki isn’t really a villain. So, the average is particularly low. We’ve just got the elfin Malekith (who really divided the votes) and the ultimately monstrous Algrim. Everyone is very brooding, but not sexy brooding. More like “pop a Xanax, already” brooding. 

Christmas Pug: Malekith resembles the star athlete at my high school, so hard pass. 
Square Peg: Malekith is a sexy little elf with cheekbones you can cut glass with, so hard yes. 
Tableau: I’m a big fan of Mr. Eko on Lost, but Algrim’s weird eye and eyebrow situation makes him more scary than sexy.

#14 Captain America: The First Avenger 
Bangability: 3.33 
Original Tableau Your Mind Review 

Hugo Weaving as Johann Schmidt / Red Skull 
Toby Jones as Arnim Zola 

When a film’s villains are Nazis, it’s kind of hard for them to be bangable. Objectively, Nazis were trying to bang their way to becoming the master race, but we don’t really want to think about it. And that’s for the most attractive Nazis. And Johann Schmidt and Arnim Zola are not the most attractive Nazis. 

Tableau: Nazis are definitely having a moment, pop culturally, but Arnim Zola’s little pug face is cute. Still, I’m a little sad that this is ranked so high. 
Christmas Pug: I resent the pug comment, but I agree about the Nazi shit 
Square Peg: I like Hugo a lot. He's an attractive man, but this isn’t his best look. 

#13 Iron Man 2 
Bangability: 3.44
 
Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko  
Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer 

With this movie, we have a situation where one villain ranked as extremely bangable and the other as extremely not that. Ivan Vanko is aggressively unsettling. There’s a way to make danger into something bangable. This is not the way to do that. 

Tableau: Sam Rockwell definitely has a dancer-like sensibility to him. He’s like a graceful cockroach.This is far from his sexiest role, but he could still get it. 
Square Peg: Really, I just find Sam Rockwell attractive in everything. But Mickey Rourke’s hair is so bad and his outfit is so bad and it’s all just so bad. 
Christmas Pug: Ugh, hair. 

#12 The Incredible Hulk 
Bangability: 3.5
 
Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky / Abomination
William Hurt as Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross 

This film has no business being this high, and the blame rests squarely (and pegly) on Square Peg’s shoulders. Lil Peg has both a thing for William Hurt (which we get) and Tim Roth (which we do not). Thank god Tim Roth’s turn as “Abomination” brought this average down, because we were almost veering into Top 10 Bangs category. 

Square Peg: William Hurt’s an attractive man. I feel like Tim Roth is sometimes kind of attractive. Not in this movie. But residual hotness is there. 
Tableau: I understand William Hurt's sexiness, I guess, but the military stooge thing is a no. 
Christmas Pug: These guys can’t sit with bang me. 

#11 Iron Man
Average: 3.67
 
Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane
Faran Tahir as Raza 

Turns out, Jeff Bridges is only bangable with hair. And the “good old boy” swagger he brings to Obadiah is a definite turnoff to the assembled panel of judges. And Raza, as a fairly one-note villain, never really gets a chance to shine, and there’s nothing sexy about the sweatiness of the desert. 

Square Peg: I think it’s the combination of the baldness and the beard that make Obadiah particularly unattractive. Because Jeff Bridges is normally a totally sexy dude. 
Christmas Pug: Real hot n’ cold sitch here. 
Tableau: Raza is one of the only Middle Eastern villains in Marvel’s rolodex, which is both good (that they’re not relying on racist terrorist tropes) and bad (that the villain roster is fairly white dude heavy). And, while the desert seems like an unwelcome environment for banging, there is something alluring about a cave. 

*** 
 
Which film will make it to number one on our super scientific list? Click Here to Read Part 2:

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