Idris Elba is doing everything that he can to get kicked out of Marvel’s exclusive club. Recently, he let it slip that his Thor character would be part of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Those comments got the ire of Joss Whedon, who abhors spoilers. Wait until they see how he feels about the "torture" involved with filming a Marvel sequel.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Idris Elba recalls having to return to the set of Thor: The Dark World for contractually obligated reshoots. Elba had just wrapped shooting on the prestige biopic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, where he played the title character. Now, he was back pretending to be an Asgardian. And the process, according to Elba, was "torture."
The way he describes it, he had been in South Africa for eight months, and had to jump back into Thor reshoots the day after arriving back in England.
And in the actual scene my hair was different, my… [Sigh] I was like, ‘This is torture, man. I don’t want to do this.’ My agent said: ‘You have to, it’s part of the deal.’I’m actually falling down from a spaceship, so they had to put me in harness in this green-screen studio. And in between takes I was stuck there, fake hair stuck on to my head with glue, this fucking 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."
The "heartbreaking" scene in question looked like this.
I’m sorry, Idris Elba, but there’s no way to sell those comments in an interview without coming off like a pretentious, high-brow jerk. There’s no question that the physical commitment that comes with filming a massive superhero tentpole is demanding. Some relish the opportunities that a Marvel career affords them. Others, like Ed Norton for example, try it once and decide that it isn’t for them. But Elba, with his public comments, is biting a hand that continues to feed him… complaining that he’d rather make an "important" movie no one will see versus the blockbuster for which fans are clamoring. (For the record, Thor: The Dark World earned $644 million globally, while Mandela banked $27.3 million worldwide.)
Is Elba wrong about the process? No. I’ve been on enough movie sets to know that building a massive world like Asgard – or any component of the Marvel universe – is a grueling task. But if Elba finds it so torturous, don’t do it. Don’t continue to do it. Don’t do it, then bitch about it in public via a print interview. And don’t crap on a studio that’s likely looking to have you back for Thor: Ragnarok, because that’s the definition of unprofessional.
