Elizabeth Olsen Says Making Marvel Movies “Feels Like a 7-Year-Old Playing Make Believ…see more

After recently teasing that she would be interested in returning to Marvel as the Scarlet Witch “if they could find the right writers,” Elizabeth Olsen now has some more eye-opening words on what it’s like to work in a Marvel movie. During a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Olsen expressed her frustration with acting in front of a green screen, and working in an environment that is so heavily centered around visual effects. Olsen’s character in particular, the Scarlet Witch, features powers that are entirely brought to life by CGI, meaning the bare-bones version is mostly her swinging her arms around and making symbols with her hands. Olsen talked about this specifically, and also mentioned something a bit unorthodox she’d like to see from Marvel going forward to give people an extra layer of appreciation for the work green screen actors do:

“It’s like acting with nothing. You really have to embrace this dumb point of view, where you feel like a 7-year-old playing make-believe. I do believe that at some point they should release a full version of one of the movies, without any of the special effects so people can see how hard it is.”

It has to feel ridiculous for characters like Wanda Maximoff or, more recently, Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), who rely so heavily on digitally-added powers to give their characters that on-screen pop. There are other characters like Thor (Chris Hemsworth), who are largely just swinging around a giant hammer and having to pretend that there’s lightning coming out of it. Marvel has also proven that it does not need to have two actors in the same room together at any time for them to share the screen, proven by Elizabeth Olsen mentioning during promotion for Multiverse of Madness that she’d never met John Krasinski, who she turns to blue spaghetti in the movie after exchanging words with him. Marvel may have brought a lot of joy to fans over the years, but it certainly doesn’t always make things easy for its performers.