22 Iconic Marvel Moments That Actors Thought Up On The Spot

This makes us love the actors a lot more for coming up with our favorite moments in Marvel.

Liezel

• Published in Film & TV
• June 23, 2022

If you're an actor, you don't just have to memorize and recite lines. You have to put in emotion, you have to embody the character saying the lines, and you have to make people believe in the character you're playing.

More than that, you have to be able to think on the spot and be quick with your wits. That's because while everything may be on the script and there's a director to guide you every step of the way, there are moments that call for a little bit of improvisation.

This means truly embodying the character you're playing and thinking like them. Truly talented actors have this ability and they can make any scene they're in funnier, deeper, or more authentic.

And fortunately for Marvel, they have some of the best improvisers in Hollywood from longtime legends like Robert Downey Jr. to newbies like Florence Pugh. In fact, they're all so great at their job that most of their improv scenes become the most iconic scenes in their respective movies.

It just proves how good they are at their craft and how good Marvel is at actually choosing their actors. With that, here are 22 of the most iconic MCU moments that actors improvised on the spot.

Enjoy!

In Spider-Man: No Way Home, Zendaya actually improvised the part where MJ throws bread at Andrew Garfield's Peter Parker

On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Andrew Garfield revealed, "At first, Zendaya picks up a candlestick or something to like threaten me with in that first scene where I come in. But then there was this basket of bread...That was her just going, ‘Can I just throw bread at him?’ and [director] Jon [Watts] was like, ‘Yeah, throw bread at him.'”

Andrew Garfield was the one who came up with the idea for all three Peter Parkers from the different universes to recreate the iconic Spider-Man pointing meme

Andrew said, "There's this moment where Jacob [Batalon] is like, 'Hey Peter?' and we all go, 'Yeah?' But in the script, it was like, that was that...But then I was like, no, this is the moment where we get to go, ‘Do you mean me?’ Jon was like, ‘That’s it. That’s it. Done.’"

This is the amazing scene:

Andrew also improvised the part where he told the other two Spideys "I love you guys."

Andrew told Variety, "That was just me loving [Tobey and Tom]."

In the first Doctor Strange film, Benedict Wong and Benedict Cumberbatch just improvised the whole scene where Strange tells Wong, "Try me, Beyonce."

Benedict Wong said, "He just threw [those lines] at me."

Here's the hilarious scene:

In the Hawkeye series, Florence Pugh and Hailee Steinfeld improvised the scene where Yelena Belova and Kate Bishop have a little chat over dinner

Bertie (of the directing duo Bert and Bertie) said, "We did a rehearsal, but every single thing was just perfect between them, and the improvisation that they brought to it was dynamite. We could just sit back at the monitors and just enjoy every single take and their chemistry."

It was also Florence's idea for Yelena to pour hot sauce all over the mac and cheese after discovering that while she loved hot sauce, Hailee hated it

"There was obviously a script and it was planned, and we knew we wanted Kate to kind of turn and throw something at Yelena. At first, we were just looking around the set and there was one of those lucky cats from Chinatown. So, it was going to be that at one point, but then there was this hot sauce bottle, and we loved that," Bertie said.

She continued, "Then, Florence was like, 'Oh, well, this hot sauce now needs to go all over the mac and cheese.' Florence is hugely into hot sauce, but Hailee not so much. So, the whole thing where Yelena basically says, 'Are you done? Can I go crazy?' That was not planned."

Watch how awesome these two ladies are here:

During stunt rehearsals for Black Widow, Florence Pugh was stunned to learn that none of the superhero's iconic landing poses were safe for landing. Writer Eric Pearson overheard her telling this to Scarlett Johansson and incorporated it into the script.

Florence told MTV, "Now I've been so terrified of [Yelena's landing] being posey after I made such a joke about Natasha being posey."

Watch the hilarious conversation here:

Alexei and Melina's flirting all throughout Black Widow was improvised by David Harbour and Rachel Weisz

David told The Wrap, "I think that’s a credit to Cate Shortland, she saw the chemistry between us and she saw sort of our voracious, you know, appetite for these characters and for this world, and she just kind of let us run with it.”

Watch some of their flirting scenes here:

It was also David's idea to have the song "American Pie" as Yelena's comfort song

David said, "I felt there's gotta be something a little more profound and I said, 'Wouldn't it be interesting if back in America when she was little and was terrified having been taken from her family, the Red Guardian would put her in the car and drive around and play "American Pie"?' So from then on, she tells daddy to put in the tape." 

He continued, "So for this bedroom scene, I'm thinking, he's a failure as a father what can he do at the end of this scene? This narcissist who also has a big heart. And so he brings up the song, basically as him saying, 'I tried.'"

Watch their father and daughter scene here:

The original Eternals script didn't include the romance between Makkari and Druig but Chloe Zhao asked Barry Keoghan and Lauren Ridloff to add it in when she saw the sparks fly between them the first time they improvised together

Chloe said in a press conference with the cast, "I don't know if Lauren, you remember, it was your first time meeting Barry, the two of you started to just riff... You started to improvise. And I go, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, what's happening?' Sparks everywhere."

Here's a compilation of their cutest moments together:

In Black Panther, it was totally Winston Duke's idea to have his character lead the Jamari men in grunting at Everett Ross for speaking out of his turn

Winston also researched and based the way M'Baku speaks on Nigerian accents to differentiate his way of speaking from T'Challa's South African-influenced accent.

Watch the scene here:

At the end of Iron Man, Robert Downey improvised the "I am Iron Man" line which went against 40 years of comic history

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said, "That success inspired us to go further in the trusting ourselves to find balance of staying true to the comics and the spirit of the comics, but not being afraid to adapt and evolve and to change things."

Here's that iconic moment:

In the Avengers: Infinity War scene where Spider-Man insists that he's the backup, Robert improvised his "Adults are talking" line

Here's that scene:

For Spider-Man's turning to dust scene, Tom Holland based his "I don't wanna go" line on a technique he uses to cry on cue

Tom told GQ, "I’ll say a phrase over and over again. So, for example, if I was in a scene and I was talking to someone and the undertone of the scene was that I love them, I would say in my head, 'I love you so much, I love you so much, I love you so much, I love you so much.'"

Here's that heartbreaking scene:

Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany were just told to improvise Vision's death scene in Infinity War

Paul told MTV, "It was about 100 degrees and we were really, really sweaty, and the Russo brothers ran over to us and went ‘OK, so the entire beating heart of the movie is now on your shoulders’ and then they went off."

Here's that heartbreaking scene:

The script stopped at the line "Who is Gamora?" for this scene but Dave Bautista continued with Drax' iconic line, "I'll do you one better: Why is Gamora?"

Screenwriter Christopher Markus told Yahoo, "It’s like, ‘OK, you’re very good at your job.’”

Here's that iconic scene:

In the climax of Avengers: Endgame, Benedict Cumberbatch improvised that moment he lifts one finger telling Tony Stark that he's the only one who can reverse the snap

In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier series, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan improvised a lot of Sam Wilson and Bucky's therapy scene

Amy Aquino, who appeared alongside the two in the scene as Dr. Christina Raynor, said, "They had the framework of what had to happen...but the rest of it, it was Anthony and Sebastian, who have this huge history. And they were doing it in character...but they were creating those moments within the framework of what was on the page."

Here's the full scene:

While goofing around on the set of Thor: The Dark World, Chris Hemsworth hung Mjolnir on the coat rack as a joke but it made it into the final cut

It made the rest of the cast and crew laugh so it stayed in the film.

Here's the moment:

In Loki, the crew didn't expect Kang the Conqueror to get on the desk but he did and when the camera crew saw him start to move, the cameras just started to follow him like they're in a dance with him

Director Kate Herron told Entertainment Weekly, "That was not planned. It just blew us away because it was just so cool. That was the fun thing with him: I love the way he brought movement to the character in different ways, because I think that was really important as well." 

Watch the full scene here:

During Loki's drinking scene on the train, Tom Hiddleston ad-libbed the "Another" line in reference to Thor

Director Kate Herron told Thrillist, "That's the thing with Tom as well, is that he's the Loki encyclopaedia. If you have an actor who's played a character for a decade and is like, ‘Oh, I'm going to throw in this great line’ — it's like, ‘Yeah, please.’”

Here's that amazing scene:

During the bridge fight scene in Thor: Ragnarok, Tom Hiddleston ran out of moves so he just flipped the knives and caught them by chance and thus, Loki's knife flip was born

Tom said, "Basically, I think I finished my moves before Idris [Elba], and he was still rolling, and I didn't want to just be standing there like a lemon, not doing anything interesting." 

Here's the full battle scene:

Marvel is really filled with tons of talented actors who really know what they're doing at their job and who really embody their characters so well. This is also the reason we can't see anyone else replacing their roles.

They are their characters and nothing will change our minds about it. Which scene did you enjoy the most?

Liezel