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Five Marvel Cinematic Universe characters we’d love to see Keanu Reeves play

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Keanu Reeves has been showing up just about everywhere lately. John Wick: Chapter 3, the newest installment in the actor’s action-packed gun-fu series, tore it up at the box office. His Toy Story 4 character, Duke Caboom, steals every scene he’s in. Reeves’ appearance at Microsoft’s E3 press conference was positively breathtaking, and Bill & Ted Face the Music, the third installment in the franchise that helped make Reeves a star, begins filming this summer.

Naturally, Marvel wants a piece of that hot Keanu action. Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios’ president/adaptation guru, told ComicBook.com that Marvel talks to Reeves about “almost every film we make.” For his part, Reeves said that he wouldn’t mind stepping into Wolverine’s yellow spandex now that Disney controls the X-Men and Hugh Jackman is done with the character.

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That probably won’t happen — Reeves is four years older than Jackman, and Marvel will probably want to go with someone younger — but that’s fine. There are many roles in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that Reeves is better-suited for. Here are just a few of our favorite choices for Reeves’ next cinematic conquest.

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The Silver Surfer

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Heroic sacrifices? Tussling with mind-bending philosophical questions? Reacting to cosmic-level events with a mixture of curiosity and awe? In The Matrix and its sequels, Keanu Reeves did all three, and his performance is a big reason those movies succeed. (The groundbreaking special effects, brilliant twist, and innovative action scenes didn’t hurt, either.)

That’s why Reeves is such a natural fit for Galactus’ former herald, the Silver Surfer. The Surfer originally debuted as a villain in The Fantastic Four, but his adventures with Reed Richards’ family and his subsequent solo series quickly transformed him into one of Marvel’s most introspective heroes. We already know that Reeves is a pretty thoughtful guy, and we can easily picture him cruising the cosmos while dealing with cosmic threats and exploring what it means to be human. Besides, as Point Break proves, the guy can definitely handle a surfboard.

Kraven the Hunter

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Most of Spider-Man’s major villains have already hit the big screen, and this summer’s Spider-Man: Far From Home is set to introduce one more. That makes Kraven the Hunter, a big-game hunter who wants to take down Spider-Man to prove he’s the best sportsman on the planet, one of the few classic Spidey villains yet to appear in a movie — and, lo and behold, Keanu would be perfect for him.

Just imagine the visuals: Keanu Reeves decked out in a flowing lion vest, leopard-skin pants, and a goatee, chucking spears and shooting arrows at Spider-Man. Who wouldn’t want to see that? Kraven isn’t just good in a fight, though. His biggest story arc, Kraven’s Last Hunt, plays up nobility just as much as his brutality. John Wick proved that Keanu can make the switch from quiet dignity to murderous rage in a snap, and if Marvel and Sony want to bring Kraven to theaters, there’s really only one choice.

Corsair

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The Guardians of the Galaxy aren’t Marvel’s only crew of sci-fi outlaws. In the comics, there are also the Starjammers, a band of space pirates led by Corsair, father of the X-Men’s Cyclops and Havok. While the Guardians are reminiscent of interstellar misfits like Han Solo and the cast of Firefly, the Starjammers evoke Hollywood swashbucklers like Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks. That goes double for Corsair. He’s handsome, he’s charming, he has a wry sense of humor, and he just might be up to no good. Remind you of anyone you know?

Introducing the Starjammers would be a great way to tie together Marvel’s cosmic storylines (the Starjammers have ties to the Shi’ar, the Kree, the Skrulls, the Silver Surfer, and Thanos), while also paving the way for the X-Men’s eventual (and inevitable) introduction to the MCU. Marvel just needs a strong, charismatic actor to anchor the whole thing. Thankfully, Keanu has charisma to spare, and we think he’d be great when it comes to tackling Starjammer’s campier elements, too.

Moon Knight

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On the other hand, if Marvel really wants to play up Keanu’s hand-to-hand combat experience it’s hard to imagine a better fit for the actor than Moon Knight. After all, you don’t become an on-screen martial artist badass without picking up a few tricks along the way, and we all know Keanu is no stranger to intense combat training. In the comics, Moon Knight is a former mercenary who uses his fortune to wage a one-man war against crime. He’s basically Batman, but with a twist: He’s also completely crazy.

In addition to dressing up in a white suit and hunting criminals, Moon Knight also maintains a number of separate secret identities, which are often portrayed as full-on split personalities. Moon Knight’s different personas would give Keanu room to show off his acting chops, while the hero’s unforgiving fighting style would provide numerous opportunities for the type of hard-hitting action scenes that made Keanu a star. With Marvel’s Netflix shows dead and gone, there’s room in the MCU for a new ground-level superhero. The spot is Keanu’s — and Moon Knight’s — for the taking.

Druig

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We know that Marvel is moving ahead on a film version of The Eternals, Jack Kirby’s superheroic take on classic Greek mythology, and reports suggest that the cast will include heavy hitters like Angelina Jolie, The Big Sick‘s Kumail Nanjiani, and Game of Thrones‘ Richard Madden as heroes. That’s a lot of star power, and the villains are going to need to recruit some big names if they want to stand a chance. They might’ve already found one: The rumor mill suggests that Keanu Reeves is in consideration for Druig, The Eternals‘ big bad.

Druig, also known as the Lord of Flames and Nightmares, spent most of his time on Earth as a KGB agent who specializes in torture. He uses his telepathic powers to dredge up his opponents’ most painful memories, and once conquered an entire country. A ruthless, masochistic dictator is a far cry from Reeves’ current public persona, but actors have played against type before. Give Keanu a shot. We think he’ll nail it.

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Chris Gates
Chris Gates
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Vin Diesel in Pitch Black USA Films
More than almost any other movie star working today, Vin Diesel seems to think only in franchises. Skim the last two decades of this muscle man’s filmography, and you’ll see almost nothing but sequels or movies designed (not always successfully) to spawn sequels. Once Vin got a taste of life in the fast lane, he never really looked back. Maybe he was always just destined to become a Hollywood action hero: When you’re built like a bullet and talk like a subwoofer, the Italian Stallion career path makes a lot more sense than anything else.
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What’s wild is that you can pinpoint to the day the pinnacle of Diesel’s time as a dramatic performer as opposed to a box-office draw. Said day was 25 years ago tomorrow, when not one but two movies featuring the future star hit theaters nationwide. There he was as a likable off- Wall Street stock broker in the financial drama Boiler Room, and there he was again as a mythic outlaw in the deep-space creature feature Pitch Black. Diesel has never been better than he was in these two very different movies, which kind of makes February 18th, 2000 the best day of his career — and also the last moment before that career changed directions.
Boiler Room (2000) Official Trailer #1 - Vin Diesel Movie HD
Of the two films, Boiler Room is the more obvious acting showcase, though Vin has a much smaller part in it. Written and directed by Ben Younger, this Martin Scorsese-indebted procedural essentially fictionalizes the true story the actual Scorsese would later dramatize with The Wolf of Wall Street. Younger looks at the fraudulent practices of brokerage houses like Stratton Oakmont from the perspective of one of the cold callers, a Long Island entrepreneur played by Giovanni Ribisi. Maybe fourth or fifth booked in the cast is Diesel, who steps in as one of the more experienced brokers who takes Ribisi’s snake-oil salesman under his wing.
“He’s like gravity —everything gets pulled to him,” is how someone describes Diesel’s most famous character, Dominic Toretto, in the following year’s franchise-launching melodrama The Fast and the Furious. But he’s much more conventionally magnetic in Boiler Room as a slick but approachable young millionaire swindler. Vin’s first big scene in the movie puts his signature bravado to good use, as he gregariously coerces a doctor into buying a bunch of shares over the phone — a hard sell that he makes look effortless. It’s a kind of initiation, laying out the seductive thrill of how these chop-shop frat boys make their fortune. They’re really just actors, playing a part for the clients they unscrupulously exploit.
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Pitch Black Official Trailer #1 - Vin Diesel Movie (2000) HD
A secret flicker of decency also defines Richard B. Riddick, the apprehended mercenary Diesel plays for the first time in Pitch Black. In terms of temperament and vocabulary, he’s a much different animal than Varick: a stony Western archetype unleashed onto the final frontier, like Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name airdropped into an Alien knockoff. Writer-director David Twohy builds Riddick up, establishing his fearsome bona fides by keeping him chained, shrouded in darkness, and silent for the first act, when the ship carting this dangerous fugitive crash-lands on a planet with three suns and some deadly nocturnal wildlife. Beyond the opening voice-over, Diesel doesn’t utter a word for the first 30 minutes of the movie.
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Boiler Room Prospecting Scene - Vin Diesel Closing
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Boiler Room and Pitch Black are both available to rent or purchase from the major digital services. For more of A.A. Dowd’s writing, visit his Authory page.

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