When the MCU unleashes Doomsday on us in December, Robert Downey Jr. will be back to play the franchise’s latest villain after living and dying as Iron Man, while Chris Evans’ Captain America will be pulled out of a touching, hard-earned retirement to help stop him. Evans had previously said he would only return to the MCU “if there was a real reason” to do so, and he presumably found that reason on his front lawn after Marvel dumped a cement mixer full of cash on it.
The reusing and reinventing of actors and characters we thought we were done with may strike moviegoers as a desperate plea for continued relevance, but it’s par for the course of comic books, where the Punisher had a stint as an undead monster, and Spider-Man once accidentally slew Mary Jane with his own radioactive semen. Beloved superheroes have survived for decades because they’re malleable, able to be thrown into countless disparate scenarios while still being instantly recognizable (albeit sometimes as part of a desperate plea for continued relevance).
