Ben Mendelsohn reveals how AC/DC inspired his gangsta alien villain Talos in Captain Marvel
Ben Mendelsohn brings some Aussie attitude to his villainous Skrull warrior Talos in Captain Marvel and admits that Bond bad guy is the “glaring omission” on his impressive resume.
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There’s a distinct Aussie flavour to Ben Mendelsohn’s latest big screen bad guy role.
In Captain Marvel, the latest instalment in the phenomenally successful Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Melbourne actor plays Talos, a warrior from a race of shapeshifting aliens called the Skrulls.
And while much has been made of his red-hot streak as Hollywood’s go-to villain after his nasty pieces of work in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One and last year’s Robin Hood, he concedes he might have just made history this time.
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His green-skinned character, in his natural form, might just be the first intergalactic space villain to sport an Aussie accent.
“You know what”, he says after a long pause to consider the unlikely proposition.
“You may well be right. It may just be that I have kicked open the door for a few years of little Aussie space villains to crowd through the portal in the same way that the great Paul Hogan kicked this door open for all of us.”
Not only that, he says that the ferocious, fighting Skrulls, who invade Earth only to come up against Brie Larsen’s super-powered title character in the ‘90s-set action adventure, have borrowed some of their attitude from Aussie rock powerhouse AC/DC to become the “the Marvel Universe equivalent of gangsta rap”. He’s even come up with word to describe that state of mind — Skrullin’.
“When you talk about Skrullin’, that has more of a gangsta roll but I have also talked about them as the heavy metal or punk or thrashy villains of the Marvel Universe,” he says.
“But in a way, AC/DC are just too dignified, you know what I mean?
“I fancy that we have some of the thump of our beloved Acca Dacca but I also think that AC/DC are far too stately for the Skrulls.”
As a shapeshifter, who also assumes the form of a government agent, Mendelsohn’s Talos employs other accents in Captain Marvel, but he says it was directors Emma Boden and Ryan Fleck who insisted on the Aussie drawl that is so unmistakably Mendo.
The three had worked together on Mississippi Grind and while that acclaimed, but little seen 2015 drama co-starring Ryan Reynolds barely troubled the box office, it was a happy experience for all concerned.
None of them likely could have imagined at the time that they would reunite as an integral part of the most successful movie franchise of all time, whose 20 movies so far have grossed more than $24 billion. Mendelsohn, who has endured plenty of peaks of troughs in a career spanning more than 30 years, says that’s a pretty fair summation of his entire career — “weird things, lead to weird things” — but reckons if previous colleagues want to collaborate again, he must be doing something right.
“If you get return business, to me as from a long-time jobbing actor’s perspective, I like that a lot,” he says. “If I work with someone and we have a good working relationship and they still feel good about me at the end of it and want to do something else, I take a lot of heart from that.”
While Mendelsohn spent the 1990s as a big wheel in the Australian industry, scoring AACTA nominations for The Big Steal, Spotswood and Metal Skin, international success eluded him for more than a decade until he dazzled critics, audiences and filmmakers alike in David Michod’s gritty 2010 crime thriller, Animal Kingdom. Nevertheless, the soon-to-be 50-year-old relished revisiting the decade for Captain Marvel, even if the current wave of nostalgia for all things ‘90s seems strange for someone who still considers it a relatively recent memory.
“That’s the thing about becoming an old bugger isn’t it?,” he says with a laugh. “It was beautiful — and there were a lot of things I had forgotten, like how sh — y all the computer stuff used to be. I mean, things like Blockbuster and videos and DVDs — I get all that — but just how crap computers were, I had forgotten all that.
“It’s weird, when you get to age where people are nostalgic about the times that you lived through, you don’t expect it.”
A long-time comic book fan (Spawn was his favourite comic, Dr Doom his favourite character), Mendelsohn also is proud to be part of the MCU phenomenon, particularly after the timely Black Panther, with its predominantly black cast, and now Captain Marvel, with its long-overdue female lead.
“Marvel has a very proud and long history of being able to take the temperature of society really well and make something that people are really doing to dig. I mean Kevin Feige is a genius.
“If you think what they have done in a decade, it’s remarkable. He’s an incredible studio boss and it’s great to have great studio bosses around running the studios in a way that for the most part makes people pretty happy and works.”
Early reactions to Captain Marvel have suggest that the studio has yet another hit on its hands — and that Mendelsohn’s dastardly chops are once again put to good use. But he concedes that there is at least one slot on his CV yet to be filled — the James Bond franchise, of which he is a devotee and where the villain is at least as important as the hero.
“You are absolutely right,” he agrees. “And it is a glaring omission. And if you want to talk about a movie franchise, there is nothing that stands up next to Bond. Nothing has been going as long. Bond is THE big one. And it terms of its villains — I mean ‘wow’.
“I am absolutely game. I don’t know what they have got cooking — they may want to go with someone a little fresher and more unknown.”
In the meantime though, his call sheet remains full.
He recently reunited with Michod for Shakespeare adaptation The King and then returned to his homeland for indie drama Babyteeth, with Essie Davis and rising star Eliza Scanlen.
He says it was a welcome reality check to return to a filmmaking industry where the entire budget for a movie might just make up the catering bill for a blockbuster like Captain Marvel.
“Oh yeah,” he laughs. “If they are lucky. I hadn’t done one at home for the better part of a decade and in a lot of ways it’s very comforting. And in another way I have a renewed marvel at how we are able to do it.
“We really do get by on the smell of an oily rag — and sometimes we knock ‘em dead.”
Captain Marvel opens on Thursday.
Originally published as Ben Mendelsohn reveals how AC/DC inspired his gangsta alien villain Talos in Captain Marvel
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