The MCU Infinity Saga, held together by the unifying thread connecting Iron Man and Captain America, has pulled the narrative out from the shadows and into the light. And although the story began and ended with six heroes who deserved way more than they got, it all started on the shoulders of Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans.
As such, imagining the Marvel of 2008 and 2011 and the epic scale of vision it transformed into within the next decade, no wonder some particularly involved partisans of some of the films felt left out when their expectations failed to be met by the expansive arc of the MCU.
Captain America Actor Criticizes Marvel’s Flawed Arc
Frank Grillo has spoken at length about his upsetting run in the Marvel Cinematic Universe ever since his entry in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Portraying the STRIKE agent turned mercenary villain, Grillo’s stay in the MCU was promised to be significantly more important than what he was given in the beginning. Marvel, however, did not keep its word of delivering a more fleshed-out arc for his villainous turn as Crossbones.
“They never told a story [about Crossbones]. The mythology of the MCU and just what Marvel has in its pool of characters, it’s so deep. Crossbones was there for a minute, but he was supposed to be there longer, then they went the direction they did.
I think Crossbones serves a purpose, but I think the interesting thing is that if you see how many people around the world have responded to Crossbones, and again, he’s on the screen for a very f-cking short amount of time, I think there’s more there.”
Frank Grillo’s character, Brock Rumlow, was introduced in the 2014 action espionage film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, as leader of the counter-terrorism tactical unit STRIKE that operates under SHIELD. Grillo’s character appeared to seemingly meet his demise when a building fell on Rumlow during the climactic fight at the film’s end. But he would go on to return as Crossbones for a short while in the third Captain America film and cause a series of events that would eventually lead to the Avengers’ fallout in Civil War.
Frank Grillo Regrets Lashing Out at Marvel After Endgame
The ambitious scale of storytelling that guides the Marvel Cinematic Universe to its crescendoes and epic showdowns leaves very little room for fleshing out the arcs of secondary villains like Crossbones. However, Frank Grillo was partially right to be angry as he was initially promised a 7-movie deal by Marvel when he signed on to take the role. The span of his stay indicated by the deal also made Grillo assume he would take on a more hands-on antagonistic role in a movie sometime in the near future.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Grillo was never called back after his Captain America: Civil War appearance in 2016. This led to him lashing out in 2019 when he was asked to appear in Endgame in an epic re-enactment of the infamous elevator scene from Winter Soldier during the Avengers Time Heist.
“There was supposed to be a lot more of Crossbones. I was the one character who I think should be in more of them, and these other idiot characters are still there. I was being an asshole, being a bit petulant. The trajectory of Crossbones took a turn and he was out of the series really quickly, right? And I was a little pissed off about it because, y’know, I signed a seven-picture deal with them.”
However, the actor’s son was the one to point out to him – “This is going to be the biggest movie in the world” – which of course it was. Grillo later set aside his differences to return for a week’s worth of shoot for the Time Heist sequence, recalling the entire experience being beautiful and admitting that he was being somewhat of an “assh*le” and “a bit petulant.”
Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Civil War, and Avengers: Endgame are now available to stream on Disney+
Source: ComicBook
