Anthony Mackie Reveals He Ate Dirt While Trying To Nail Falcon’s Superhero Landing

Thanks largely to Deadpool, the ‘superhero landing’ only becomes more obvious every time you see it. The idea of people running around in spandex costumes while pretending to fight things that will be added later in post-production has always been an inherently ridiculous idea, but at the very least, the actors in question get to look cool while they’re doing it.

Given that his character spends the vast majority of his action scenes in the air, Anthony Mackie’s Falcon has to make more superhero landings than most, and having starred in six Marvel Cinematic Universe movies so far, as well as playing the co-lead in upcoming Disney Plus exclusive The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, you’d imagine he’d have it down pretty well by now.

However, the 41 year-old recently admitted that it took him a while to get the hang of it, after revealing in an interview that his first attempt at sticking the landing when shooting Captain America: Civil War didn’t exactly go to plan.

“The first day, I think we were doing Civil War, and there’s the scene where Vision shoots Rhodey out of the sky and I land to see if he’s okay. I’m supposed to land, so they pull me up like 30 feet off the ground and I’m on a pendulum, so I’m supposed to pull my legs under me and land to a stop. I didn’t realize how much my lower body weighed, so I pull on the ropes to try and bring my legs under but I can’t get my core in, and I literally land face-first in the dirt and bounce for about 10 feet. I have grass and mud all in my face. The crew is just dying laughing. Everybody is dying laughing.”

With Sam Wilson widely expected to suit up as the MCU’s new Captain America at the end of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s first season, there’s every chance he’ll stay closer to Steve Rogers’ boots-on-the-ground version of the star-spangled superhero, which would also save him the potential embarrassment of hitting the ground flat on his face in front of the entire cast and crew again.

That being said, what we know so far about the show indicates that there’s going to be no shortage of action sequences for Mackie to prove once and for all that he’s managed to nail Falcon’s superhero landing, even if he’s destined to be hanging up the wings for good in the near future.