Robert Downey Jr. won’t accept Chris Hemsworth‘s gripes over Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As part of Hemsworth’s recent Vanity Fair cover story, the Thor star revealed he grew frustrated playing the Asgardian hero across four standalone movies and several more “Avengers” films.
“Sometimes I felt like a security guard for the team,” Hemsworth admitted. “I would read everyone else’s lines, and go, ‘Oh, they got way cooler stuff. They’re having more fun. What’s my character doing?’ It was always about, ‘You’ve got the wig on. You’ve got the muscles. You’ve got the costume. Where’s the lighting?’ Yeah, I’m part of this big thing, but I’m probably pretty replaceable.”
Downey shut down Hemsworth’s frustration, telling the publication: “First off, Thor as a character was super tricky to adapt — lots of implied limitations — but he and Ken Branagh figured out how to transcend, make him somehow relatable but godlike.
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“Hemsworth is, in my opinion, the most complex psyche out of all us Avengers,” Downey added. “He’s got wit and gravitas, but also such restraint, fire and gentleness.”
Downey went on to praise Hemsworth and the arc of his performance in Marvel movies “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers Endgame” as “a formidable hat trick.”
While Marvel has yet to confirm Downey’s Iron Man and Hemsworth’s Thor will return, both actors have expressed interest in putting their superhero costumes back on for the big screen. Hemsworth wants to give Marvel fans the Thor movie they deserve after whiffing on 2022’s “Thor: Love and Thunder” (“I got caught up in the improv and the wackiness, and I became a parody of myself,” the actor said. “I didn’t stick the landing”). Downey, meanwhile, told Esquire magazine last month that he’d certainly be open to playing Iron Man again, even if the character died in “Endgame.”
“Happily. It’s too integral a part of my DNA,” Downey said about returning to the MCU. “That role chose me. And look, I always say, ‘Never, ever bet against Kevin Feige.’ It is a losing bet. He’s the house. He will always win.”
In a recent interview with GamesRadar+, “Avengers: Endgame” directors Joe and Anthony Russo expressed some confusion over Downey’s Iron Man popping back up in the MCU after they killed the character off so heroically in their record-breaking film.
“I don’t know how they would do it,” Anthony said. “I don’t know what the road to that would be [laughs].”
Joe added, “I mean we closed that book so it would be up to them to figure out how to reopen it.”
For what it’s worth, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige didn’t appear too interested in bringing Downey’s Iron Man back to the big screen when he spoke to Vanity Fair last December.
“We are going to keep that moment and not touch that moment again,” Feige said at the time about Iron Man’s death. “We all worked very hard for many years to get to that, and we would never want to magically undo it in any way.”
However, those comments were made before Downey went public saying he’d be open to putting the Iron Man suit back on. Given Marvel’s recent box office disappointments (including last year’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels”), Downey’s return might be more appealing as Iron Man has proven to be box office gold for the studio.
