A Handful of Logical Reasons to Join the MCU

“Lifelong” for Iman Vellani is a shorter time than “lifelong” for, say, Ryan Gosling. She’s still a fairly young woman. But when she was nineteen years old and auditioning for the role of Kamala Khan, she was able to show Sana Amanat, co-creator of the character of Kamala Khan, a room covered in Marvel memorabilia, including her closet. Since playing the role, she even got to write a Kamala Khan comic miniseries. For someone like Vellani, it’s clear that playing Khan was a dream role. She was also an unknown, auditioning for the role out of nowhere. It’s no great surprise to anyone that she wanted and took the role.

When it’s actors people have heard of, that’s when the questions start. It’s a running joke in Hollywood at this point that Adam Driver keeps turning Marvel down. He’s been offered many MCU roles—I’m curious as to exactly which ones—and keeps turning them down. And then when Ryan Gosling says, “Yes, I’d love to play Johnny Blaze,” film buffs come out of the woodwork to ask exactly why he’d want to do that. After all, Gosling has three Oscar nominations and can surely be in just about anything he wants to, with the success of Barbie, and why would he be in an MCU movie?

Well, because he wants to, obviously. It’s clear that he likes Ghost Rider and wants to play that specific character. Yes. He can be in just about anything he wants to. Quite a lot of people in the MCU could be in just about anything they wanted to. I’ve been building a database, which is only at the moment through the end of Phase Five and doesn’t include the TV shows, of Oscar and BAFTA nominees and winners of the MCU, and there are 97 people on the list. And, sure, a lot of them only became noticed by being in the MCU and were nominated afterward. But you can’t say that about, say, Cate Blanchett or Robert Redford.

When people talk about being in one of the movies, they focus on the special effects shots and the costuming and talk about how exhausting it must be. And that’s certainly true. However, it’s still clear to me that actually playing some of the characters must be enormous fun. Not just being in a movie full of some of the greatest actors working today but some of the things you say and do as the character. Tell me Russell Crowe isn’t having a blast playing Zeus, using whatever accent that is. That Sir Ben Kingsley doesn’t love playing Trevor Slattery.

Not only that, but Iman Vellani isn’t the only person to grow up loving superheroes. So sure, she’s one of the few MCU stars who could possibly have grown up loving the MCU. But Ryan Gosling’s younger than I am, and I certainly grew up loving superheroes. I remember being considered too young to see Batman in the theatre, and in fact I saw Batman Forever in the theatre twice. Robert Downey Jr. would have been a teenager when Christopher Reeve was showing us that a man could fly. Hell, Sir Anthony Hopkins was a teenager when Wertham was writing Seduction of the Innocent. There’s not a single person there who is too old to have grown up loving superheroes.

I’m not saying they necessarily did, mind. I’m sure Sir Anthony Hopkins took the role of Odin because Kenneth Branagh was directing. (I didn’t put him on my database until he was “Asgardian Distress Call (voice, uncredited)” in Infinity War, because my list isn’t even looking at directors.) Meanwhile I’m sure Tom Hiddleston took the role of Loki at least in part because it was working with Kenneth Branagh and Sir Anthony Hopkins. Hiddleston wasn’t a nobody at the time, but goodness knows he wasn’t a star.

At least one of the reasons RDJ took the role of Tony Stark was that his wife is firm in the belief that he doesn’t use when he’s working, and the appeal of resisting his addiction must’ve been strong. And of course we forget now that he was considered a huge risk at the time and that Marvel didn’t want to cast him because of his history. Hell, we forget now that the whole movie was a risk, cast notwithstanding, because who even knew who Iron Man was? Gwenyth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, and Terrance Howard were taking a risk, given how superheroes had been doing in the theatre at the time.

Instead, now, there’s got to be the lure of further exposure. Who knew who Clark Gregg was in 2008? There are several younger actors whose Oscar and BAFTA nominations all postdate their MCU appearances, who went on to make more beloved indie fare after putting on a bodysuit for a video. Or even middle-aged ones who were character actors for ages who now have a strong fan base because wider audiences learned who they were. While Stellan Skarsgård did a lot of work, even in the US, pre-Thor, that’s arguably the launch of the clan for American audiences.

Oh, and of course let’s not underestimate the appeal of fat sacks of cash money. RDJ’s Marvel paychecks have gone up by more than an order of magnitude, and they didn’t start at chicken feed, either. He also lobbied for his coworkers to be paid similarly to his own massive checks, at least the other actual Avengers. And good for him. I don’t know how much Black Widow paid relative to Midsommar, but I’m sure Florence Pugh’s not complaining. You could argue that Hollywood stars don’t need that level of paychecks, and I don’t even disagree. But if Marvel’s handing them out, it’s hard to blame someone for taking one.