Not only has Ryan Coogler's Black Panther been a staggering success with both audiences and the box office, taking in a worldwide gross of over $1.3 billion dollars and sitting currently at a 96% critic rating on RottenTomatoes, but it has also been a big hit with those inside the MCU family.
Tom Hiddleston, who will reprise his role as Loki for the fifth time in the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War, was asked by ScreenRant who his favorite villains in the franchise have been and, perhaps unsurprisingly, he had a lot of praise for Black Panther's Erik Killmonger:
SR: Loki’s almost like the torch bearer for the Marvel cinematic villain. What other villains do you like? Who are your top three, besides Loki, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
Hiddleston: I just saw Black Panther like everybody else, months ago. Michael B Jordan as Killmonger, absolutely extraordinary performance, really amazing.And for me specifically, because I felt as an audience member, I could understand his point of view, you know, even though the logic is misguided or that he’s kind of evacuating his anger on to people who don’t deserve it. You could still, you could understand why he was angry and there was a kind of flawed but comprehensible logic in it.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been somewhat criticized for its two-dimensional and lackluster villains, with Hiddleston's Loki being the only real exception to the rule until that is Black Panther gave us Michael B Jordan's Killmonger. Whether Josh Brolin's Thanos will join them as complex and compelling antagonists remains to be seen.
What do you think of Hiddleston's comments? Were you a fan of KIllmonger? Who are some of your favorite villains in the MCU? Leave your thoughts below.