Although the majority of Marvel actors seem to enjoy playing their roles in the franchise,
a number of stars have ended up pretty upset enough with how their scenes or even whole
movie turned out.
Here are a few of the things Marvel movie actors have seriously regretted having to
do.
For an actor who is known as much for his muscular physique as he is for his acting,
it might come as a surprise to find that Chris Hemsworth doesn't actually enjoy filming scenes
shirtless, especially if it wasn't in the script.
Speaking about his time on 2013's Thor: The Dark World, Hemsworth told MTV that his shirtless
scene was mandated by Joss Whedon.
Hemsworth said:
"He just said that there needed to be something romantic in there.
Then he said, 'Chris, get your shirt off.'
I said, 'Well, I don't know.
What's the why?
What are we doing?'
The justification was that it was him coming home from battle, washing blood off his hands.
It is what it is."
"It's like his muscles are made of katati metal fiber.”
“Stop massaging his muscles."
But he was even more upset during filming on Thor: Ragnarok, since he felt including
yet another shirtless scene for Thor was verging on becoming exploitative.
Hemsworth said:
"This time around, there wasn't one in the script, which I was really happy about.
Then [director Taika Waititi said, 'No, I think we need a shirt off scene.'
I was like, 'Ugh, no we've done that.
Don't make me do it again!'
I just think it has to be different each time.
You have an obligation to mix it up and advance it in some way."
Avengers: Infinity War opens on the aftermath of a fierce battle between the survivors of
Asgard's destruction and Thanos, as the heroes unsuccessfully attempt to stop Thanos from
claiming the Tesseract from Loki.
Loki's attempt to trick and kill Thanos fails, however, and Thanos brutally chokes Loki to
death.
Unlike Loki's many previous deaths, this one actually sticks, and the sequence sets a bleak
tone for one of the darker installments in the MCU.
"No resurrections this time."
For Thanos, killing the God of Mischief might have been just another day at the office,
but it was a good deal harder to process for the man playing him.
Josh Brolin later told USA Today.
"He had been with that character for so long.
And he's so lauded for doing it.
Tom was so vulnerable at that moment.
So choking him out wasn't the most fun thing I have ever done."
In the earlier days of the MCU, Clint Barton often came under fire by fans for being a
little vanilla in terms of character development.
But Hawkeye actor Jeremy Renner had his own problems when it came to the character's presence
in The Avengers.
During the movie, Hawkeye has barely been on-screen for a minute before he's put under
Loki's spell.
Talking to GamesRadar, Renner later said:
"For 90% of the movie, I'm not the character I signed on to play...
It's kind of a vacancy.
[...] I was limited, you know what I mean?
I was a terminator in a way.
Fun stunts.
But is there any sort of emotional content or thought process?
No."
Conveniently enough, Deadpool actor Ryan Reynolds is one of the character's biggest fanboys
and was himself the producer who finally brought the wisecracking assassin to the screen after
many years of trying.
"Maximum effort."
But it's easy to forget that Reynolds played Wade Wilson years before his solo film, with
his small role in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
As Reynolds told People magazine:
"It was a very frustrating experience.
I was already attached to the Deadpool movie.
We hadn't at that point written a script yet.
[Origins] came along and it was sort of like, 'Play Deadpool in this movie or we'll get
someone else to.
And I just said, 'I'll do it, but it's the wrong version.
Deadpool isn't correct in it."
To make matters worse, X-Men Origins was filming during the writers' strike of 2007 and 2008,
so Reynolds had to write his own lines.
He explained:
"So we were in the middle of production, there were no writers, no anything.
Every line I have in the movie I just wrote myself because in the script we had, it said,
'Wade Wilson shows up, talks really fast.'
I was like, 'What?
What am I supposed to do with that?'"
That's understandably frustrating, but let's be honest: letting Ryan Reynolds ad lib his
way through the film may be the only thing that made it watchable.
"You look really nice today.
It's the green - brings out the seriousness in your eyes.”
“Oh my God, do you ever shut up, pal?
“No...not when I'm awake."
Like his predecessor in the role, Sir Ian McKellan, Michael Fassbender brought a wealth
of stage presence to his portrayal of traumatized Holocaust survivor Eric Lehnsherr and his
alter ego, the morally ambiguous mutant Magneto.
Fassbender gave the character a whole new level of humanity in X-Men: First Class.
But by 2016's X-Men: Days of Future Past, he was no longer happy with his work in the
role, and even became visibly embarrassed when scenes from the film aired at the Toronto
International Film Festival.
In particular, he hated the scene that saw him and Professor X getting into an argument
in a plane.
You, know, this scene:
"Where were you, Charles?
We were supposed to protect them.
Where were you when your own people needed you?"
Vulture reported Fassbender as saying:
"I don't actually like that performance there, to be honest.
I just think it's me shouting.
It's just like... some dude shouting."
The Fantastic Four franchise has struggled with a series of setbacks and disappointments
over the years such as those experienced by Jessica Alba, who almost quit acting after
playing Sue Storm in 2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.
According to SyFy, Alba explained:
"The director was like, [...] 'Can you be prettier when you cry?
[...] Don't do that thing with your face.
Just make it flat.
We can CGI the tears in.'
[...] And then it got me thinking: Am I not good enough?
Are my instincts and my emotions not good enough?
Do people hate them so much that they don't want me to be a person?
[...] And so I just said, 'F— it.
I don't care about this business anymore.'"
Hugo Weaving has played a part in some of the biggest movie franchises in history, including
Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Matrix franchises.
So it makes perfect sense that an actor of his caliber would also find a place in the
Marvel Cinematic Universe which he quickly did, when he played the villain Red Skull
in Captain America: The First Avenger.
Unfortunately, while he was glad he gave it a go, he didn't exactly enjoy the experience.
Weaving told Collider:
"It's not something I would want to do again.
I think I've done my dash with that sort of film.
It was good to do it and try it out, but to be honest, it's not the sort of film I seek
out and really am excited by."
Weaving added that he signed a multi-picture deal and said Marvel could have forced him
to reprise the role but also pointed out that it would have been pretty silly to force a
performer to show up for a project they don't want to be in.
Mickey Rourke was an absolute scene-stealer as Ivan Vanko in Iron Man 2.
Rourke brought an underlying empathy and humanity to the role that makes his performance incredibly
compelling, but he told ScreenRant that the way Vanko was written was far too one-dimensional
for his taste.
He explained:
"The bad guy doesn't always have to be one-dimensional, you know?
[...] The performance I tried to bring to [Vanko] ends up on the f---ing floor.
That could cause you not to care as much not to want to put that effort in when you try
to make it an intelligent bad guy [...] This character was hard because he was written
as pure evil."
Unlike many of his colleagues who love being part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Idris
Elba has told The Telegraph that playing Heimdall in the MCU movies quickly became a chore for
him.
After spending eight months in South Africa making the Nelson Mandela biopic Mandela,
Elba added that coming back to shoot scenes for Thor: The Dark World was "torture," explaining:
"I'm actually falling down from a spaceship, so they had to put me in [a] harness in this
green-screen studio.
And in between takes I was stuck there, fake hair stuck on to my head with glue, this f---ing
helmet, while they reset.
And I'm thinking: '24 hours ago, I was Mandela.'
Then there I was, in this stupid harness, with this wig and this sword and these contact
lenses.
It ripped my heart out."
Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield both may have played Spider-Man within a few years
of each other, but only the latter came out of the experience seriously unhappy.
Among other regrets, Garfield said that he thought his scenes and character development
were all wrong.
"I signed up to this story and this incredible character that I’ve been dressing as since
I was three."
"It gets compromised and it breaks your… breaks my heart."
Garfield blamed this misuse of the character on the big-budget nature of the movies as
well as the capitalist machine that is more interested in making money than content.
"I was still young enough to struggle with the uh… the value system I suppose of of
um..
Of ah corporate America really."
Garfield soon exited the role after a pair of films and was replaced by another British
actor, Tom Holland, who took up the web-shooters in Captain America: Civil War.
Marvel took a long time trying to find a version of Hulk that worked for audiences and critics
alike, before finally hitting paydirt with Mark Ruffalo's now-iconic portrayal of the
character.
"Thor, I think I'm freaking out."
Before Ruffalo took the part, however, the studio suffered a serious disappointment with
The Incredible Hulk in 2008, which starred Edward Norton as the title character.
A few years after leaving the MCU, Norton told the audience at Bruce Willis' Comedy
Central roast that he had encountered problems on the set because he, quote, "wanted a better
script."
"I thought maybe we should try to make one Marvel movie that was at least as good as
the worst Chris Nolan movie, but what the hell was I thinking?"
He has also claimed that he was invited to help improve the script but Marvel reneged;
either way, the end result failed to live up to expectations.
The bad blood between Marvel and its erstwhile Hulk actor is apparently mutual, too.
In a statement prior to the release of The Avengers, Marvel announced:
"We have made the decision to not bring Ed Norton back to portray the title role of Bruce
Banner.
Our decision is definitely not one based on monetary factors, but instead rooted in the
need for an actor who embodies the creativity and collaborative spirit of our other talented
cast members."
Long before he played Batman in the DCEU, Ben Affleck starred in one of the lesser-loved
Marvel adaptations as lawyer-by-day, vigilante-by-night Matt Murdock — also known as Daredevil.
Unlike some of the other Marvel-inspired bombs that later turned into cult classics, Affleck's
Daredevil has yet to find any kind of adoration from Marvel fans.
In fact, it's mostly been forgotten… but its star doesn't mind that one bit.
Speaking to Playboy magazine, affleck said:
"The only movie I actually regret is Daredevil.
It just kills me.
I love that story, that character, and the fact that it got f---ed up the way it did
stays with me.
Maybe that's part of the motivation to do Batman."
Unfortunately, when he was announced as the new Batman, it was his performance in Daredevil
that had fans concerned about his ability to pull off the role.
At the time, the actor said:
"If I thought the result would be another Daredevil, I'd be out there picketing myself.
Why would I make the movie if I didn't think it was going to be good?"
Long before Howard the Duck made his brief cameos in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies,
he made his full-length feature film debut in 1986's Howard the Duck.
This was the story of a parallel universe where an alien anthropomorphic duck is brought
to Earth after an accident on his planet and the whole thing turned out a little raunchier
than most Marvel movies.
"No more MISTER NICE DUCK"
When asked about her role as Howard's love interest Beverly in Howard the Duck, star
Lea Thompson told The Hollywood Reporter:
"I was the number one star of it.
It was painful."
Among many of the truly bizarre things that happen in the movie, Howard the Duck also
features an intimate scene between Thompson and Howard, which is as graphic as innuendo
can get without veering straight into bestiality.
Is it any wonder she didn't enjoy it?
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