MCU: 12 Worst Casting Decisions In Marvel Movies

Most Marvel fans were quite taken with British actor Idris Elba’s performance as Asgardian gatekeeper Heimdall in both the Thor movies and Avengers: Age of Ultron, but if we’re being entirely honest his acting was a little bit ‘meh’. All he really did was stand there glowering and, you know, gatekeeping.

You could argue that this was down to how underused Heimdall was, but if Elba’s comments on working on Thor are anything to go by it would seem his heart wasn’t really in it to begin with.

After playing Nelson Mandela in the biopic Long Walk to Freedom, he returned to the set of Thor: The Dark World for reshoots and described the experience as torture, saying “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.”

Of course, it would be hard for any actor going from playing humanitarian hero to comic book character, but it seems Elba thought the role was a bit beneath him by that point.