Captain America: New World Order star Anthony Mackie reveals his surprising pick for funniest MCU moment. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has undoubtedly delivered the drama throughout its decade-plus run on the big screen. But the MCU is also known for serving up a healthy dose of humor alongside all its epic superhero action.
The MCU formula for leavening action with humor was indeed set early on, thanks to Robert Downey Jr.’s quippy performance in 2008’s Iron Man. And quips continued to co-exist alongside drama in future MCU movies, even the incredibly serious ones like Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. The MCU’s ratio of humor-to-action has even at times skewed much more toward the funny side of things, as in James Gunn’s dryly witty Guardians of the Galaxy movies and Taika Waititi’s pair of madcap Thor films.
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Funny MCU moments were indeed the topic raised to Falcon actor Mackie during a recent interview with IMDb. But when asked to pick the MCU scene that still cracks him up the most, the actor went way off the beaten path and chose a moment that may have gone right by even the most ardent of fans. Read Mackie’s response and see the clip in question in the space below:
I would say the one that cracks me up the most would probably be, we were doing the car chase up on the bridge and… [Winter Soldier actor Sebastian Stan] sticks his hand through the glass and rips the steering wheel off. If you freeze frame it, the face I made was so ridiculous. It was so ridiculous. It was so unassumingly childish. Like the excitement on my face. That was probably the one that cracks me up the most.
The scene described by Mackie of course happens in one of Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s major set pieces, when Stan’s Bucky Barnes attacks a motorcade on a bridge and at one point drives his super-soldier hand through a car windshield and literally rips the steering wheel away from Mackie’s Sam Wilson. Freeze-framing the moment indeed reveals the shocked look on Mackie’s face as his character reacts to the unexpected wheel-snatching. But at least in Mackie’s mind, this particular moment is more about comedy than drama, thanks to the child-like expression he briefly makes.
It’s indeed surprising to hear Mackie choose this moment as the funniest, given all the humor sprinkled throughout the MCU and its 29 movies (not to mention TV shows like the Mackie-led The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). Fans picking their own funniest MCU moment might focus in on some quip by Spider-Man or Iron Man or Star-Lord. Or a hilariously oblivious statement by a comic relief character like Drax. Or even a weird screaming goat joke in a Waititi Thor movie. Captain America: New World Order star Mackie however has a special fondness for a moment that fans won’t even appreciate without freeze-framing. Which goes to show, sometimes the funniest moments aren’t the intentionally broad gags or wittily-written quips, but the unintentionally perfect ones that go by mostly unnoticed.