10 Awesome Actors Totally Wasted By The MCU
9. Rebecca Hall - Iron Man 3
It's fair to say that the earlier years of the MCU struggled to create compelling female characters, often squandering the talents of wildly over-qualified actresses in the process.
That's certainly true of Rebecca Hall, who was cast as Extremis scientist Maya Hansen in Iron Man 3, in what was originally planned to be a much larger and more significant role.
In fact, Hansen was supposed to be revealed as the real puppet-master villain behind Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), but this was nixed at the behest of at-the-time Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, who felt that young boys wouldn't buy toys of a female villain. Yikes.
And so, Hansen was reduced to a forgettable supporting character who gets unceremoniously offed by Killian in a scene that plays out like it was thought up on the spot.
Hall later explained that her part was actually changed during shooting and she was only told about her expedited fate shortly before her death scene was actually filmed. Of the experience, she said:
"I signed on to do something that was a substantial role. She wasn't entirely the villain - there have been several phases of this - but I signed on to do something very different to what I ended up doing."