Luckily Kevin Feige allowed Thor: Ragnarok to be funny, up to Chris Hemsworth’s will.
Almost every movie or TV show these days seems to originate from an existing book, news story, or other form of media – notably comic books. The intriguing thing about all of those adaptations and “based on” productions is how they reinterpret well-known characters.
Writers and directors indeed play key roles in renewing a character, but the part of the actors portraying them should not be neglected as well. During filming, an actor frequently comes up with fresh lines, suggesting a better overall arc for their character, or recognizing more potential in them than anyone else.
Below are 15 Marvel actors who requested fresh renewal for their characters than anyone else did.
1. In 2018, Elizabeth Olsen stated that she wanted to update her Scarlet Witch outfit so that “it wouldn’t just be a cleavage corset.”
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She told Elle, “It’s funny because sometimes I look around and I’m just like — wow, I’m the only one who has cleavage, and that’s a constant joke because they haven’t really evolved my superhero costume that much.”
She got to help design her new costume for WandaVision a few years later, and her opinion on the team’s initial concept influenced the final design.
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She knows what she has to do better than anybody, having done this for years now,” director Matt Shakman told Entertainment Tonight.
2. Originally, The Avengers director Joss Whedon sought to ” separate the characters from their support systems in order to create the isolation you need for a team,” which involves Tony Stark and Pepper Potts being separated.
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However, Robert Downey Jr. “pushed hard” for his character’s love interest to be included because “he didn’t want to be sort of, crazy alone guy, he wanted to be crazy in-a-relationship guy.
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“He really thought Gwyneth [Paltrow] would bring something great to the table, and we all thought so as well, but he was the one who convinced her to come and do it,” Whedon told the LA Times.
3. Chris Hemsworth was “frustrated and bored” after portraying the God of Thunder in his two solo films and two ensemble movies, leading to him visiting Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, to tell him that his next film should be “funnier” and “unpredictable.”
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Tonally, we’ve just needed to wipe the table again,” Hemsworth told Vanity Fair of his conversation with Feige.
Feige listened and agreed, and he let filmmaker Taika Waititi to turn Thor: Ragnarok into somewhat a comedy, thanks to Marvel Studios’ independence from Marvel Entertainment, which gave him more creative flexibility.
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According to Entertainment Weekly, Waititi said: “A lot of what we’re doing with the film is, in a way, kind of dismantling and destroying the old idea and rebuilding it in a new way that’s fresh. Everyone’s got a slightly new take on their characters, so in that way, it feels like [this is] the first Thor.
4. Tessa Thompson wants to assure that Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok is bisexual on film. Waititi was persuaded to film a sequence in which a woman walks out of Valkyrie’s chamber after she suggested the idea to him.
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Even though Waititi tried to keep the moment in as long as he could, it was unfortunately cut. Regardless, Thompson chose to play Valkyrie as a bi lady on purpose.
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Rolling Stone reported that Thompson said, “There were things that we talked about that we allowed to exist in the characterization, but maybe not be explicit in the film. … There’s a great shot of me falling back from one of my sisters who’s just been slain. In my mind, that was my lover.”
She also told Variety, “In the canon, [Valkyrie] is bisexual. You see her with women and men, so that was my intention in playing her. Obviously, at the forefront of most of these stories is not typically their romantic life. They have big stakes, like saving the world, so that tends to sort of trump.”
Valkyrie’s “first mission” in the next Thor: Love and Thunder, according to Thompson, will be to find her queen, however.
Source: Marvel Studios / Via youtube.com
5. The first time Scarlett Johansson saw her Black Widow costume for Iron Man 2, she “had a freak-out moment that lasted about half a day” because of how form-fitting it was.
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She told Sci Fi Movie Page, “Then I said, ‘Okay, time to suck it up’ and just went full force into getting in shape to wear the costume and perform the physical action so it looked just right.
She also shared with Inside the Actors Studio, “Who wants to get into something like that? You just think, ‘Oh God, really?’ Couldn’t it have some sort of peplum skirt or something like that? This thing is so, ‘There you are.'”
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After Iron Man to going into Avengers, there’s been an evolution of her look. I think part of that is just gaining the trust of the executives at Marvel and kind of sitting in the character and just being able to make decisions for her,” she said to Fatherly.
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Black Widow costume designer Jany Temime gave Johansson’s suit a rubber base and an elastic seam allowance for the character’s final film, and she dubbed it “the most comfortable outfit.
6. Following the release of X2, Halle Berry stated that she would only come back to the X-Men franchise if the script included more activities for Storm.
Source: 20th Century Fox / Via youtube.com
She wrote on her own website, “If they have, in fact, written her closer to the comic book, then I’m in. If not, then I’m out. I hope I’m in though. I love Storm and really want to be a part of the last film.”
Source: 20th Century Fox / Via youtube.com
Fans “would really accost [her] on the street and be really unhappy” if Storm didn’t fly with her cape or fight excessively, so she wanted Storm to be more like her comic book version.
Berry explained to Movieweb, “They want to attack me. So I internalized that and went to the studio saying, “I want to fly with my cape!” ‘Well, Halle, you’re insane,’ they’d say.”
Source: 20th Century Fox / Via youtube.com
As a result, Berry informed the studio, “This is the feedback I’m getting. I think Storm does a little bit more in the comic book, and the fans aren’t happy. It’s not about me having more, but if I’m gonna be on for 10 minutes, can I say something important for 10 minutes instead of ‘Where’s the plane?'”
Storm would later be given a larger role in X-Men: The Last Stand, thanks to the contribution of Berry.
7. Vincent D’Onofrio was not prepared to bid farewell Wilson Fisk/Kingpin once Daredevil was stopped. ” I so badly want to play that character again. I love that character,” D’Onofrio said to ScreenRant. “I just have to wait for Marvel to ask me.”
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He further added, “I think it’s very clear that I would, and the fans know that I would jump at the chance to play again. I just need to be asked.”
Source: Marvel Studios / Netflix
When Marvel needed “a really significant threat, like something that…would make Eleanor Bishop quake in her boots and Hawkeye…get a little bit terrified” for Hawkeye a few years later, Feige came up with the concept, “What if this could be Kingpin?
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“[Feige called and] said ‘I want to bring you into the MCU,’ and I’m not gonna say no to that,” D’Onofrio shared in Marvel Studios: Assembled.
8. Mickey Rourke demanded 3 things for his character Ivan Vanko/Whiplash in Iron Man 2, after having a meeting with Kevin Feige and director Jon Favreau about portraying the character, including his hair in a bun, a bird, and a Russian accent.
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All of the requests were fulfilled, while Robert Downey Jr. allegedly agreed a pay cut to allow the producers to accomplish Rourke’s quota.
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Nonetheless, Rourke was disappointed that much of the character development he worked on with Favreau was deleted from the finished film.
9. Lupita Nyong’o workshopped the script with Black Panther director Ryan Coogler after having read it for the 1st time, as they were both very keen for [Nakia] to be more than just the love interest…[and] wanted her to have her own agency, to occupy her own space, as well as, of course, to support T’Challa.”
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“One of the things we worked on was making her part and parcel of the main argument of the story, about whether to keep the borders open,” Nyong’o shared with Hollywood Reporter.
Source: Marvel Studios / Via youtube.com
10. After Ant-Man writer/director Edgar Wright quit the project, Evangeline Lilly joined the movie’s cast as Hope van Dyne/Wasp, but she also joined before Wright’s script was finished. Therefore, Lilly “got a chance to sort of say, ‘Hey, why don’t you beef up my character and give her a really full arc?'”
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“All the suggestions that I put forward and the things that I would ask for, like, ‘What about this?’ or ‘We can do this with her,’ [Marvel was] very amenable to it and they were very open to it. And then they would take it even farther,” Lilly said to Collider.
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The actress kept sharing, “They would go away, and they could come back to me and say, ‘Oh, we’ve really done something incredible with Hope.’ I kind of got lucky. I started out thinking I was walking into a film playing a supporting character. It’s now become a trifecta with myself and Michael Douglas and Paul Rudd.
11. Upon filming the huge ending for Spider-Man: No Way Home, Tom Holland “kept halting” and repeating, ‘I’m so sorry, I just don’t believe what I’m saying.’”
Source: Marvel Studios / Sony / Via youtube.com
As a result, director Jon Watts approached Holland and they came to a conclusion that the scene felt somewhat wrong.
Source: Marvel Studios / Sony / Via youtube.com
The actor shared with GQ, “We sat down, we went through it, and we came up with a new idea. Then we pitched it to the writers, they rewrote it, and it works great.”
Source: Marvel Studios / Sony / Via youtube.com
12. Because Samuel L. Jackson has “been doing Nick Fury for so long, [he] knows what he sounds like and…how he thinks and feels,” the actor frequently assists Marvel screenwriters in nailing down his character’s voice.
Source: Marvel Studios / Sony / Via youtube.com
“There are times, when I’m in the midst of doing or studying the lines for the next day or the scene that we’re doing, that I can tell, ‘The writer knows what he wants to say, but he hadn’t said it, so let me help,’ and I’ll write it,” Jackson told Collider.
Source: Marvel Studios / Via youtube.com
The next day when I go in, I’ll pull that person to the side and say, ‘Look, I know you wrote this, but this is a better way to say that as Nick Fury,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh my God. Well, you’re Nick Fury, so yeah,'” the actor shared.
Source: Marvel Studios / Via youtube.com
13. In the initial version of the Black Widow sequence in which Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian tries to console Yelena Belova, he was going to merely say something and then depart after she requested him to leave, but David Harbour wanted to make it more meaningful.
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According to Insider, Harbour told them that he said, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if back in America when she was little and was terrified, having been taken from her family, the Red Guardian would put her in the car and drive around and play ‘American Pie? So from then on, she tells daddy to put in the tape.”
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He continued, “So for this bedroom scene, I’m thinking, he’s a failure as a father, what can he do at the end of this scene?’ This narcissist who also has a big heart. And so he brings up the song, basically as him saying, ‘I tried.'”
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14. Florence Pugh “really wanted Yelena to be odd and strange and have weird timing and to fight awesomely.”
Source: Marvel Studios / Via youtube.com
Cate Shortland, Black Widow director, let Pugh “think freely, to create this character and to make her as weird as [Pugh] wanted her to [be].”
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Pugh shared with Indianexpress.com, “I was really excited by the possibility of making a new silhouette of a woman in the MCU. There was potential to create new conversations, have new stories, and make new moments for women.”
15. Finally, Chris Evans was originally hesitant to take the lead role in Captain America: The First Avenger at first, and when he finally did, he “was very aware of not wanting sarcasm.”
Source: Marvel Studios / Via youtube.com
It was a very good understanding of Captain America, which is that if this guy’s going to fly as a character and as an authority figure, eventually, he’s got to have the gravity right away, no matter what the situation,” Christopher Markus, the movie screenwriter said to Yahoo.
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His understanding of Captain America helped the screenwriters realize “that Steve Rogers was born Captain America, he just didn’t have the body.
He also “may have taken a joke or two out” of the script.
Source: Marvel Studios / Via youtube.com
