10 Awesome Actors Totally Wasted By The MCU
8. Idris Elba - Thor & The Avengers
With a heap of prestige TV under his belt before he ever joined the MCU, Idris Elba seemed like a ripe pick to play Thor's Bifrost gatekeeper Heimdall - once a lot of very silly people vented their foaming racism, of course.
Yet despite ultimately appearing in five of the franchise's movies, never once was Elba given much of an opportunity to actually establish Heimdall as a character in his own right.
In his scant screen time throughout these films, all Elba had to do was attempt to look menacing while wearing a ridiculous get-up - which he does about as well as anyone possibly could.
The Wire actor later called the experience of playing the character "torture" due to the extensive makeup and costuming process, yet even when he got a neat dreadlocked makeover in Thor: Ragnarok, he was still a pure cardboard cutout of a character.
And so, when Heimdall was offed by Thanos (Josh Brolin) at the start of Avengers: Infinity War, fans felt scarcely a flicker of emotion.