Iron Man 2 Star Mickey Rourke REALLY Hates Marvel
Marvel might be dominating cinema at the moment, Guardians of the Galaxy is a mega hit and the studio has announced plans to increase its output, but not everyone’s a fan, especially Iron Man 2 star Mickey Rourke.
Mickey has been mouthing off about his experience playing villain Ivan Vanko in the Robert Downey Jr starring follow-up. It turns out the actor spent months prepping for his role, only to find much of his scenes ending up on the cutting room floor.
Appearing on Seth Meyers’ Late Night this week to talk about his new project, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Mickey laid into Marvel following an innocent question about whether he was a comic book fan.
“I’m not a Marvel fan,” he declared. “I did, once, a movie for Marvel… and they cut the whole f**king thing out…”
Mickey only had gushing praise though for Sin City directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, who he worked with on the 2005 movie adaptation of the graphic novel as well as this year’s upcoming sequel.
“When you work with Robert, he knows what he wants so you’re not doing a whole bunch of (unnecessary work),” he explained. “I do a whole bunch of research, work on the character a lot, so when you bring it to the table, it’s disappointing when they cut stuff out…
He loves Sin City though…
“And then Frank’s on the set and he puts his two cents in, so it’s great because you’ve got two guys who are very enthusiastic and know exactly what they want.”
It’s fair to say Mickey won’t be starring in another Marvel movie, take a look back at his previous bashing of director Jon Favreau and the Iron Man team:
He didn’t want to play your typical villain:
“[W]hen I did Ivan Vanko in Iron Man, I fought… You know, I explained to Justin Theroux, to the writer, and to [Jon] Favreau, that I wanted to bring some other layers and colors [to the character], not just make this Russian a complete murderous revenging bad guy. And they allowed me to do that. Unfortunately, the [people] at Marvel just wanted a one-dimensional bad guy, so most of the performance ended up the floor.”
He worked for three months on that accent!
“[It’s] ****ing too bad, but it’s their loss. If they want to make mindless comic book movies, then I don’t want to be a part of that. I don’t want to have to care so much and work so hard, and then fight them for intelligent reasoning, and just because they’re calling the shots they… You know, I didn’t work for three months on the accent and all the adjustments and go to Russia just so I could end up on the floor. Because that can make somebody say at the end of the day, oh **** ‘em, I’m just going to mail it in. But I’m not that kind of guy. I’m never going to mail it in.”
He thinks Jon Favreau needs to grow a pair:
“If they let you play the bad guy with other dimensions other than one-dimensional. You have to fight for that though, to bring layers to the character. Otherwise, if you’re working for the wrong studio or let’s say a director that doesn’t have any balls, then they’re just gonna want it to be the evil bad guy. […] So, if you’re working with some good studio guys that got brains and you’re working with a director with a set of nuts that’ll let you incorporate that then it’s fun. Otherwise, you end up with what happened on ‘Iron Man.’”
