Which Marvel villain could pull off the similar standalone film that “Joker” has

[Blind Wedjat]

I'm still voting for Stilt-Man.

You know there's potential there. Don't deny it.

[Michael Watkins]

Wasn’t saying that at all. Was just saying First Class also could have been a Magneto story.

should have been imo. if you remove the x-kid parts, it was a great movie. it was so satisfying to see him drive that coin through Shaw's forehead.

[Jabare]

I don't want any Marvel villain to have a solo if they are going to alter the character like they did the Joker. The film was more of an art-house avant-garde character piece unlike other previous incarnations of the character..... and honestly, it wasn't that dark or radical.

[williamtheday]

The Circus of Crime, directed by Tim Burton (he has a thing for twisted circuses). Throw in Stilt Man too and maybe it'll be another Batman '89.

[williamtheday]

Oh, wait, Batman Returns was the one with a dark circus!

[cable guy]

I'd like to see Apocalypse.

[Hypestyle]

a serious journalism movie drama with a younger Joe Robertson interacting at the Daily Bugle could be good. No superheroes/villains, but a more traditional crime mystery.

[Killerbee911]

The answer is Punisher

[Sutekh]

should have been imo. if you remove the x-kid parts, it was a great movie. it was so satisfying to see him drive that coin through Shaw's forehead.

My favorite parts of that movie did seem to be the Magneto-Nazi-Hunter segments, in South America.

The bits with the kids, or Shaw and Emma and Azrael, less so.

[DC Classics]

Oh, wait, Batman Returns was the one with a dark circus!

The Red Triangle Circus Gang!

[catbellysqueezer]

Carnage maybe

[Punisher007]

Doctor Doom first and foremost.
Magneto.
Emma Frost.
Kingpin.
Black Cat (not really a full-on villain, but morally iffy nonetheless).
Apocalypse.
Kang the Conqueror.
Baron Zeno.
Taskmaster.
Doc Ock.

[Electricmastro]

Green Goblin.

[Master Planner]

Depends.

If you want a movie about a villain, but not caring about the tone of the film, any villain can be used for that.

If you want something to emulate Joker, it's far more difficult.Joker is a unique character, easy to mold and easy to adapt his lore or change it without a big uproar. Plus,it's easy to create a gritty, street level drama and use a character of big recongision as the main attraction. Marvel doesn't have a street character that big to create something similar and i can't see Disney doing something outside of MCU formula.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The real trick to me is in casting. Who you cast communicates a lot to audiences about the character. The thing about Joker is that he's usually been played by actors who are A-list names, guys like Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, Phoenix. (Leto who never really played a leading man was a poor choice for that reason). All three of them carried movies on their own as leading men...in the case of Nicholson, he got top billing in the first Batman movie. This kind of established in the eyes of audience that Joker is as big as Batman, because they cast an actor who is also a leading man. The casting communicated that the villain is the hero's equal, that he's as big an actor as the hero so the character is as big as the hero's. I mean compare the actors who played Batman (Keaton, Kilmer, Clooney, Bale, Affleck) with the ones who played Joker (Nicholson, Ledger, Phoenix)...and you can see it's equally prestigious.

So that makes it easier to make Joker a lead character in his own story. The audience and public are primed to thinking of Joker as a character with a certain prestige...which he does have as the only comic character to ever become an Oscar-winning role (Ledger for The Dark Knight). Whereas other villains who are usually not cast that big. And the MCU in general, with the exception of maybe Brolin, haven't cast really big actors for villains. It's usually character actors, cult actors, and so on.

As it is Disney is doing a Loki miniseries on Disney Plus, thanks to Tom Hiddleston becoming a star in his performance but he's yet to establish himself as a leading man. I think if you want a feature film then it has to be Doctor Doom. Doing Doctor Doom in live-action is a hard challenge because whoever you cast has to be willing to spend a lot of time behind a face mask. This would require a performer and actor that hearkens back to Boris Karloff, an actor who managed to be brilliant despite all the makeup he wore, and Lon Chaney. Both Karloff and Chaney were leading men. Edward Norton's brilliant performance as the Leper King Baldwin in Kingdom of Heaven is another reference. Norton spent the entirety of Kingdom of Heaven behind a metal face mask used by the King of Jerusalem to cover his lesions. Getting Norton to play Doom might be hard since he might be a little old at this point for the part (and he seems to have burned his bridges with Feige) but he is a leading man.

To do Doom justice you need to cast an actor like Adam Driver or DiCaprio. DiCaprio is in his 40s but looks a decade younger which works. Driver is mid-30s. Another option is Daniel Radcliffe who is now 30 years old and is famous for playing an orphan kid who became a hero because of his parents' sacrifice...which is who Doom is when he starts out and you kind of want to sell the idea that Dr. Doom has a traditional European epic hero's journey origin even if he twists later, and having Harry Potter become a bad guy is how you might want to approach Victor. Radcliffe is now 30 years old which means he's the right age for Doom when he started out and he can age into the '40s. if you want Doom to be the big-deal in live-action he is in comics. This is a character who has never been properly introduced to the moviegoing public and if you want to sell his story you need an actor with the right associations and backdrop to do it.