George RR Martin on Ant-Man: Game of Thrones writer criticises disappointing trend in Marvel villains

'I am tired of this Marvel movie trope where the bad guy has the same powers as the hero'

Marvel movies attract fans in their droves, but there’s one on-going criticism about the similarities of their heroes and villains that George RR Martin also agrees with.

The Game of Thrones creator, who is finishing off his next novel The Winds of Winter, took some time out of his hopefully busy schedule to write a blog post on his Live Journal about his views of Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man.

Martin was full of praise for the latest Marvel movie, but had some reservations about the villains.

“I am tired of this Marvel movie trope where the bad guy has the same powers as the hero. The Hulk fought the Abomination, who is just a bad Hulk. Spider-Man fights Venom, who is just a bad Spider-Man. Iron Man fights Ironmonger, a bad Iron Man,” he wrote.

But Martin’s “quibble” should not be interpreted as major criticism of the movie.

The writer, who admits to once being a member of the “Merry Marvel Marching Society”, said he preferred Ant-Man to the recent Avengers: Age of Ultron.

While he wouldn’t go so far as to call it the best Marvel movie of all time, as some have done, he said: “There’s a lot of humour in this film, but it is not a farce, as I feared it might be….Ant-Man has a proper balance of story, character, humour and action, I think.”

“Overall, I had a swell time. For a few hours I was thirteen years old again,” he wrote.