Chris Evans Opens Up About His Unlikely Return to the MCU

Marvel may always want you to keep spoilers from flying whenever one of their new movies drops, but they can’t stop themselves–or their own stars–from doing it by talking to the press.

If you’ve already seen Deadpool and Wolverine, you’ll know by now Chris Evans makes a cameo: not as the geriatric Captain America of Endgame, but as Johnny “The Human Torch” Storm from the 2005 Fantastic Four movie. Surprise!

While the actor is rumored to have renewed his contract with Disney to return in future MCUs projects as Captain America, he apparently still could’ve legally wriggled out of a Johnny Storm cameo. However, as Entertainment Weekly describes, his friendship with Ryan Reynolds made agreeing to do so an easy decision. “I was so excited. Ryan’s a buddy. He just shot me a text saying, ‘Listen, might be a long shot, but would you have any interest in reprising something from 20 years ago?’ I said, ‘Oh my God! Of course,’” Evans said, after making a surprise appearance alongside several other cameo stars from the movie at Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine Celebration of Life panel at San Diego Comic-Con. “Honestly, Ryan might be the only guy that I would’ve done it for because he’s just got the Midas touch. His self-awareness makes him almost invincible. He makes the joke before the audience gets a chance to make the joke, so if you’re going to revisit a character and you have to find a way to make it work, Ryan’s humor makes just about everything work, so you feel an automatic sense of safety.”

As for the scene in question, Deadpool and Wolverine meet Johnny in “The Void,” a location where discarded incarnations of various Marvel characters are put on ice before being deleted from existence, permanently. At first, Deadpool believes he’s come across the legendary Captain America, only to discover its the fabled Human Torch, instead. The cameo was “real quick” and “pretty easy,” according to Evans.  “I just had to fly in real quick, do a couple days of filming, and fly out. For me, it was pretty easy. Primarily because where we find Johnny, he’s meant to be a little more rundown, so the costume didn’t have to be pristine. Those first two movies, that’s when Marvel was really still trying to find their footing. So everything had to be very precise and had a lot of meetings, a lot of opinions. This was a little more like, ‘Yeah, we know it. We’ve seen it.’”

Still, it was nice to see the Marvel star, now better known for playing a marquee Avenger, back in action as his earlier character. Just in time, before the character regenerates into Joseph Quinn in the Marvel’s upcoming reboot! Did you enjoy Evans’ cameo, or were you (like myself) more excited by the return of Kelly Hu’s Lady Deathstrike and her blink-and-you’ll-miss it battle with Wesley Snipe’s Blade? Now that‘s cinema.

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