The directors of the biggest Marvel movies ever have some very particular actors in mind to go bad.
In their new movie, Anthony and Joe Russo reunite with an actor that they’ve worked with on four different movies already.
Chris Evans played Steve Rogers in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and over the course of those movies, cemented the character as one of modern cinema’s greatest heroes.
So it is clearly with some joy that the Russos and Evans reunite on The Gray Man, which allows Evans to portray a truly despicable bad guy.
Evans plays Lloyd, a sociopathic agent-for-hire who doesn’t question how a job gets done, so long as it gets done. So when he is assigned to take down an on-the-run asset by the name of Six (played by Ryan Gosling), he doesn’t question how much collateral damage might occur along the way.
In the run-up to the release of The Gray Man, JOE chatted to The Russo Brothers about their new huge blockbuster, and you can check that chat out right here:
During the chat – in which they also revealed which directors they’d love to see take on an Marvel movie – we mentioned the fact that audiences might have already been prepared for Evans as a great bad guy, because he was such a tremendous douchebag in Knives Out.
But were there any other heroes within the MCU that they reckon could make for potentially great villains?
Anthony answers first: “At one level, there are so many great actors, and any great actor can go there. And there are a lot of great actors in the MCU. But the first person that popped into my head when you asked that question was Anthony Mackie.”
Joe responds: “Weirdly, I thought of Paul Rudd. I’d like to see him go unhinged.”
Anthony continues: “A lot of these stars, they’re so handsome, they’re so appealing, they’re so charismatic, so everybody wants to see them in these positive hero roles. Protagonist roles. But look, they’ve all got those life experiences that go bad, we all do.”
Joe adds: “It is the entertainment factor of just turning them loose, you know? And [in The Gray Man], Lloyd loves being an asshole, so that is part of the entertainment factor. We worked with George Clooney years ago, and he told us it is really hard playing the leading man, because it is your job to let everybody else steal the scenes from you. And now Chris [Evans] gets to steal the scenes, because he’s not the leading man here. And it is entertaining and fun, and as audience member there is a bit of a weird wish fulfilment, were you get to see them be the opposite of what they’ve been.”
You can also check out our chats with The Gray Man star Ryan Gosling right here, and below you can watch Gosling and The Russos play “Best Of Frenemies”, in which they react to some of the greatest hero and villain pairings in cinematic history:
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