13 Great Actors Completely Wasted In MCU Movies
2. Thomas Kretschmann - Avengers: Age Of Ultron
The Role: Colonel Strucker
When he was introduced in the post-credits scene of The Winter Soldier, it looked like Thomas Kretchmann's Strucker was being set up as the next big villain. He looked the part, had a whole division of evil scientists and Nazi-like soldiers and he'd developed the twins as super-powered special weapons to use in the fight against the Avengers (while ignoring the cost of life to the other "volunteers"). In other words, he looked like the real deal of traditional villains.
But then, when Age Of Ultron came around, Strucker was relegated to being nothing more than the opening act of James Spader's big show. He and his HYDRA division were wiped out almost effortlessly by the Avengers while the twins escaped to go and work with a villain with more than a handful of lines and some actual character development.
Quite why they bothered to cast Kretschmann remains to be seen, given that they clearly had no intention of giving him any actual material to play with.