Four separate Marvel projects tried to adapt a famous comic book villain, and all of them have failed to do him justice so far. Many live-action Marvel villains have become just as popular as the heroes, or even more. Antagonist portrayals such as Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, and Josh Brolin’s Thanos have been on par with hero portrayals like Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man. Recent MCU movies have presented many impressive villain performances, including Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary, and Tenoch Huerta as Namor.

These villains have benefited from good writing and the inherent appeal of their comic book counterparts. For instance, Green Goblin and Thanos starred in popular comic storylines and other adaptations before they made their live-action debut, and their respective movies have understood how to use them within the plot. Other villains are inherently more difficult to adapt, both due to their smaller impact on the source material and their unconventional nature. Of these, a few antagonists successfully make it to the big or the small screen, while others struggle to even make their live-action debut.

Four Marvel Projects’ Plans To Adapt MODOK Fell Through

MODOK Only Made It To Live-Action After Four Failed Attempts

Plans for MODOK’s live-action debut started as early as 1997. Before the MCU was even devised, writer Jeff Vintar envisioned an Iron Man movie where Tony Stark fought MODOK, who would have been the leader of AIM and would have had a “Cobra Commander lisp.” Vintar’s script was scrapped, and Iron Monger became Iron Man’s first movie antagonist eleven years later in the MCU’s first movie. A few years later, MCU writer Christopher Markus wanter Peter Dinklage to play MODOK in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but his idea was sH๏τ down, possibly due to MODOK’s absurd appearance.

Outside the MCU, Freeform was developing a New Warriors TV show parallel to Cloak & Dagger. According to showrunner Kevin Biegel, New Warriors‘ main villain would have been MODOK, played by Keith David. However, New Warriors was canceled before Biegel’s plans could move forward. Similarly, Zach McGowan’s Anton Ivanov a.k.a. Superior was on track to becoming a sentient head “only designed for killing“ inspired by MODOK in ABC’s Agents of SHIELD, but Marvel blocked the writers from using the character in the show.

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania’s MODOK Didn’t Do The Villain Justice

Quantumania’s MODOK Was Neither The Original Villain Nor A Well-Received Reinvention Of The Character

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania revealed that Scott Lang and Hank Pym’s enemy Darren Cross, who took up the Yellowjacket idenтιтy in 2015’s Ant-Man, shrunk to subatomic level and landed in the Quantum Realm, where Kang the Conqueror provided him with robotic armor and weapons, transforming him into MODOK. While visually similar, Corey Stoll’s MODOK is a far cry from his comic book counterpart — the AIM technician George Tarleton, who gains a taste for killing when his intellect is enhanced by AIM’s experiments. Introduced in 1967, Tarleton has a long history being a major enemy to the Avengers and a wide variety of Marvel heroes.

Besides replacing MODOK with an original MCU character, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania wasted the villain. Corey Stoll’s MODOK served as the movie’s primary comic relief character, and he spent most of his stay in the Quantum Realm being Kang the Conqueror’s helpless servant. MODOK’s betrayal and heroic turn in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania‘s final battle came out of left field, and he apparently died immediately afterward. In short, the MCU’s MODOK adaptation came off as an afterthought in another villain’s debut movie.

The MCU Can Still Make MODOK A Real Menace

Nothing Prevents Marvel Studios From Reintroducing MODOK Soon

While MODOK sacrificed himself to defeat Kang the Conqueror in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, his death wasn’t really confirmed. When Avengers: Doomsday starts another Multiverse War in the MCU, MODOK could find a way out of the Quantum Realm and gain an interest in taking over the world or in fulfilling his new purpose as a killing machine back on Earth. Otherwise, a post-Secret Wars MCU reboot could introduce a modified version of MODOK, this time with a more accurate background separate from Jonathan Majors’ Kang the Conqueror and Corey Stoll’s Yellowjacket. Either way, MODOK is too big of a Marvel villain to remain a one-off minor antagonist.

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