Chiwetel Ejiofor is about to be a Marvel movie veteran in more ways than one. The actor starred in Doctor Strange as Baron Mordo, and fans saw his path from hero-in-training to potentially dangerous villain. This month he’s set to make the jump from the MCU to Sony’s universe of Marvel characters, taking on the role of General Strickland in Venom: The Last Dance.
While both characters are integral to Marvel movies, they couldn’t be more different. Mordo is a sorcerer, a master of dark and ancient arts. Strickland is much more grounded, rooted in what we know of as reality, making him an interesting fit for a film about symbiotic alien goo that can take over other life forms.
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Ahead of Venom: The Last Dance‘s arrival in theaters this weekend, ComicBook.com spoke with Ejiofor about the differences between his two major Marvel characters.
“It’s just such a different character, and that’s the main thing,” Ejiofor told us. “For General Strickland, just how organized everything is, and the responsibility. How Earthy it is. It’s all just kind of built on reality and on these really high stakes for him, this attempt to keep in line the military part of this incredibly secret facility. His life, in many ways, is being complicated by the scientific wing of that, headed by Doctor Payne. So they end up in this kind of conflict about what’s best, and the best ways to proceed with these alien life forms. And all of that, all of those dynamics, were really interesting to play. And fun to play, with Juno [Temple].”
Mordo and Strickland are such different characters that it would be hard to find some common ground that could connect them in-universe. Before knowing who Ejiofor was playing, though, many Marvel fans thought his role could somehow be related to Mordo, or even an alt-universe version of the character in disguise.
Those theories almost all stem from the “crossover” between Venom and the MCU in the post-credits for Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Spider-Man: No Way Home. The former saw Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock and his Symbiote end up in the same universe as Tom Holland’s Spider-Man, while the latter saw those characters shipped back to their universe, although they left a little piece of Symbiote behind.
This gave both Marvel franchises a way to connect with one another if need be, but there hasn’t been any real connective tissue between Hardy and Holland’s characters on-screen.
Given this lack of connection, it seems as though the door is still open for Ejiofor to reprise his Mordo role in the MCU, should a future opportunity arise.