You know; I’m a big fan of villains, they’re often the most well-thought through characters, have motivations for their actions and convey their ambitions in a believable manner. There are exceptions, of course, and Mickey Rourke thinks Marvel made him one.

In a recent interview with Crave Online, while doing some press for Immortals, the actor – whose face bears marks of extensive reconstruction after his boxing career – decided to bad-mouth Marvel for the way they treated his character in Iron Man 2:

Well, I always try to bring that to a character. It’s like when I did Ivan Vanko in Iron Man, I fought… You know, I explained to Justin Theroux, to the writer, and to [Jon] Favreau that I wanted to bring some other layers and colors, not just make this Russian a complete murderous revenging bad guy. And they allowed me to do that. Unfortunately, the [people] at Marvel just wanted a one-dimensional bad guy, so most of the performance ended up the floor.

Well, you know, it is fucking too bad, but it’s their loss. If they want to make mindless comic book movies, then I don’t want to be a part of that. I don’t want to have to care so much and work so hard, and then fight them for intelligent reasoning, and just because they’re calling the shots they… You know, I didn’t work for three months on the accent and all the adjustments and go to Russia just so I could end up on the [cutting room] floor.

Meanwhile, it’s not just Marvel Studios that have come under criticism from the actor. In another interview, he calls the director of Seven Psychopaths, Martin McDonagh, a “jerkoff. He wanted a whole lot for nothing”. This sounds exactly like the guy that walked off the set of Luck of the Draw when the producers refused to let him include his pet chihuahua in the movie.