You might have heard a minor geek uproar over the interwebs yesterday. It seems someone has dared to say that if they had a choice, they'd prefer not to feature in any more Marvel movies. And that man is Hugo Weaving.
Chatting with Collider, the actor — who played the villainous Red Skull in "Captain America: The First Avenger" — confirmed that like pretty much every other actor involved with those comic movies, he signed a multiple-picture contract. However, he's not keen on reprising the role, though obviously he will if he's asked. "I think the tendency, with those films, would be to probably not bring a villain back. They might for 'The Avengers,' but I didn’t think I’d be in 'Captain America 2 or 3.' I don’t think Red Skull will be there," he pondered. "And it’s not something I would want to do again. I’m glad I did it. I did sign up for a number of pictures and I suppose, contractually, I would be obliged to, if they forced me to, but they wouldn’t want to force someone to do it, if they didn’t want to. I think I’ve done my dash with that sort of film. It was good to do it and try it out, but to be honest, it’s not the sort of film I seek out and really am excited by. As an actor, to do all sorts of different films is great. It stretches you in different ways. But, I increasingly like to go back to what I used to always do, which is to get involved with projects that I really have a personal affiliation with."
So in short: he did it, realized it wasn't quite his cup of tea, and he'd prefer to move on. According to some, this is high treason. But we like the actor's honesty, and frankly, is anyone itching for Red Skull to return? Wouldn't we rather see Captain America or The Avengers (or whoever) face off against other foe? We suppose Weaving might be called up for kind of flashback work, but again, other than the hardcore fanbase, we're not sure anyone is going to miss Weaving if he never comes back to the Marvel universe.
And while it might seem that Weaving is a picky guy, never discount the power of the paycheck. He admits that his work on the "Transformers" franchise voicing Megatron is the kind of thing he can knock out in a couple of hours, and oddly enough, he's never even met the director of the films. "That’s a weird job for me because it honestly was a two-hour voice job, initially…It was one of the only things I’ve ever done where I had no knowledge of it, I didn’t care about it, I didn’t think about it. They wanted me to do it. In one way, I regret that bit. I don’t regret doing it, but I very rarely do something if it’s meaningless. It was meaningless to me, honestly. I don’t mean that in any nasty way," he said, adding: "But, my link to that and to Michael Bay is so minimal. I have never met him. I was never on set. I’ve seen his face on Skype. I know nothing about him, really. I just went in and did it. I never read the script. I just have my lines, and I don’t know what they mean. That sounds absolutely pathetic! I’ve never done anything like that, in my life. It’s hard to say any more about it than that, really."
Weaving says he hasn't been contacted yet about the next installment, but if he is, it doesn't seem like the work is too laborious. Krusty The Klown would be proud.
