Following on from an interesting collage that matched MCU heroes with their concept art, we now have a similar collection that showcases how the designs for the villains of the Marvel Cinematic Universe changed from the preliminary stage to the final costumes seen on screen.
The image below features Ant-Man‘s Yellowjacket, the titular evil robot from Avengers: Age of Ultron, Peter Quill’s celestial father Ego from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Doctor Strange‘s Kaecilius and Dormammu. While none of it’s hugely revealing, it’s still cool to see just how different the finished product is to the early ideas for the character.
Yellowjacket and Ultron remained largely the same, but the more inhuman edges of both were shaved off for their final designs. Ego’s concept art, meanwhile, is impressive, looking like a character from a Guillermo del Toro movie. However, it’s probably for the best that they went with the stripped-back appearance Kurt Russell sported in the film. After all, it wouldn’t have been much of a surprise if the creepy concept art seen here for Ego turned out to be a villain.
While Kaecilius’ look is fairly similar to Mads Mikkelsen’s portrayal in Doctor Strange, the early rendering of Dormammu, the all-powerful ruler of the Dark Dimension, is wildly different from what we got in the movie. In contrast to the floating space head Strange faces off against, the concept art depicts Dormammu as a humanoid figure, as per the comics. However, it still doesn’t give him his iconic flaming head. It does lend him the feel of being an intergalactic deity, though, which is nice.
Overall, we probably prefer what we ended up with than what we have here. Much has been said in the past about Marvel‘s villains lacking personality, but they usually look awesome all the same and on a visual level, we really can’t complain.
