Marvel Studios has forgotten this crucial lesson from the first Thor movie

It's time to go back to basics

Before he was cast as Superman, nobody knew who Christopher Reeve was. The same was true of Hugh Jackman before he played Wolverine. Yet in both cases, the casting choices were so perfect that those actors managed to define their respective characters for at least a generation, if not more. If anything, their lack of fame was an asset to their casting, as it allowed the audience to just see Superman or Wolverine in a way they may not be able to with more established actors.

I cite these examples specifically because both, in their own way, have operated as guideposts for Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige. Of Jackman’s casting, Feige has said, “Who cares that he's so tall? He embodies the spirit of Wolverine, and that was a big lesson that I always took from that. It doesn't have to match the comic frame exactly. It has to match the spirit of it.” As for Superman, Feige has mentioned that he watches Richard Donner’s 1978 film before every single MCU project.

Yet despite how personally important these two casting choices have been to Fiege, and how successful the Superman and X-Men franchises were because of those choices, Marvel Studios almost never casts unknowns as its biggest heroes. Instead, Feige usually banks on known quantities, with 2011's Thor being the only major exception.

Now, I’m sure there’s some room to quibble about this, but hear me out. While Robert Downey Jr. was certainly a risky casting choice given his personal issues, he was not an unknown. Neither was Edward Norton when he was cast as the Hulk. Chris Evans wasn’t a superstar, but he had played Johnny Storm in Fox’s Fantastic Four films. Tom Holland might fit the definition of an unknown when he was cast, but Marvel Studios made sure to introduce him in Captain America: Civil War before he got his first solo outing. There are more examples of Marvel Studios casting unknowns for TV shows like Ms. Marvel, but a lot less is at stake with those Disney Plus series. The closest example is Simu Liu’s casting as Shang-Chi, who is inarguably a less important character than Thor and Loki in the larger architecture of the Marvel universe.

Back when Chris Hemsworth was cast as Thor in 2009, his biggest credit had been as Captain Kirk’s dad in flashbacks of the J. J. Abrams Star Trek movie. (Cabin in the Woods hadn’t even been released yet.) Of Hemsworth’s casting, director Kenneth Branagh recently said in an interview, “We needed someone who wasn't bringing previous baggage, even if the baggage was brilliance and familiar roles. It felt as though we needed someone with a clean slate who was bringing a physical heft and an innocence.”

Similarly, when Tom Hiddleston was cast as Loki, his biggest credit was Winston Churchill’s son in the HBO’s TV movie The Gathering Storm. As Hiddleston once explained on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, “At the time, they were looking for sort of less well-established actors so that the audience didn’t have an association. They just wanted people to see these new characters, these new actors.”

Famously, Hiddleston originally auditioned for Thor originally, but Branagh, who knew Hiddleston, cast him as Loki instead. “Tom gave you an impression that he could be ready for anything, performance-wise,” Branagh told Entertainment Weekly. “Tom has a wild imagination, so does Loki. He’s got a mischievous sense of humor and he was ready to play. It felt like he had a star personality, but he was a team player.”

To say the casting of Hemsworth and Hiddleston worked out is an absurd understatement. Both actors managed to bring a mix of grandiosity and humanity to their Marvel roles. This was a particularly big achievement in the early days of the MCU, when many worried that Thor, as a concept, wouldn't fit into the same, semi-grounded world Jon Favreau crafted with the first Iron Man film.

Yet since then, Marvel has not sought to repeat this formula, instead mostly casting established actors as its heroes. Given the success of the Thor films, the change is truly perplexing and may simply be a factor of money. Now that Marvel Studios, with Disney’s ownership, has way more cash to make these movies, it can attract way bigger stars.

Hopefully, after the star-studded events that will be Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, Marvel Studios will return to casting unknowns. This is especially important with X-Men, with director Jake Schreier seemingly aiming for younger versions of the characters, many of whom have already been played by A-list talent in the 20th Century Fox movies. Casting an unknown for a character like Cyclops gives the audience a chance to see just Cyclops, as opposed to some actor from Game of Thrones or The Bear dressed as Cyclops. If Marvel Studios really wants to start fresh with the mutants after Secret Wars, the way forward is to look back at Thor and Loki.