A hero is nothing without a villain, and the MCU has had some humdingers. Highlights go all the way back to Iron Man‘s Obadiah Stane, as played by a forceful and charismatic Jeff Bridges. Since then, we’ve seen awesome turns from Tom Hiddleston as Loki, Cate Blanchett as Hela, Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, and Michael Keaton as Vulture to name just a few.
But there are a lot of amazing actors whose potential has been wasted by Marvel Studios. An ongoing Reddit thread is discussing some of them: ranging from top actors cast in roles too small for them or simply talent buried under a bad script and movie.
One of the most discussed is Mads Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius in Doctor Strange. We know from Hannibal, Another Round, and Death Stranding that he has a magnetic presence, but this role didn’t utilize his skills effectively. Plus, Kaecilius was a secondary villain to Dormammu and died before the end of the movie.
What makes this sting especially hard is that Mikkelsen would be a perfect Victor Von Doom, though the fact that he’s already played an MCU villain may rule him out when they make the MCU Fantastic Four.
Other names include Donald Glover’s tiny role in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Forest Whitaker in Black Panther, and Walton Goggins’ rather thankless villain in Ant-Man and the Wasp.
But when it comes to wasted talent, top of the pile by some way is Thor: The Dark World‘s ridiculous misuse of Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston as Malekith. Not only was he burdened by heavy make-up and forced to deliver all his lines in a made-up language, but his part was drastically cut in editing down to a measly eight minutes. You could have put basically any actor in that role and got the same result.
Eccleston didn’t mince his words when describing his experience making Thor: The Dark World, saying that the part made him feel like a “whore” and that after the shoot he wanted to put a gun in his mouth. Fair enough.
If there are any MCU actors you think were misused, let us know in the comments.
Published: Nov 25, 2021 08:21 am