10 Things The MCU Wishes It Could've Done Differently

7. Avoided Wasting Talented Actors

Doctor Strange Kaecilius
Marvel Studios

Alongside its humour problem, bad villains has been another major issue with the MCU over the years. Whiplash, Abomination, Kaecilius, and Yellowjacket - to name but a few - were all just a bit naff, either not being given enough screen time to properly flesh them out, being an uninspired evil version of the hero, or both.

But again, this can be linked to a much larger problem within the MCU: the fact that it's wasted an enormous amount of fantastic actors.

Looking at those villains again, we've had the likes of Mads Mikkelsen, Christopher Eccleston and Mickey Rourke all being handed flat, one-note antagonists, but the misused talent doesn't end with the bad guys. Natalie Dormer, Kate Mara, Rachel McAdams, David Bradley, Glenn Close and Michelle Yeoh all had bit-parts or underwhelming roles, and besides the few that are likely to be brought back in a future film (like McAdams), their talents have just been squandered.

To give the MCU a bit of credit here, some of these actors were included in the movies before they blew up (Dormer is a fan-favourite these days, but her career didn't take off until Game Of Thrones' second season in 2012, a year after her minor role in Captain America: The First Avenger), but imagine how much better it would've been if these talented, familiar faces had been given more stories or better stories to chew on.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!