Wyatt Russell: Thunderbolts will "go deep into everybody’s psyche"

Chatting exclusively to RadioTimes.com alongside his father, actor Kurt Russell, Wyatt has revealed that the movie is about to ask some very deep questions.

"All good sci-fi theorises really good philosophical questions. One of the things in Endgame that I really loved, like Thanos [was] this idea that there's a lot of people on planet Earth, [so] if the 405 in LA all of a sudden just became half the amount of people, they were like, 'That's kind of great.' So there's a fun theory behind it," he explained.

"And I really love how they've theorised the philosophy of this particular movie. I think that it goes deep into everybody’s psyche in a way where we all deal with things that these characters have to deal with.

"Obviously, they're put on a bigger scale, but I think that's going to be really, really fun to work out, because it requires again a little bit more than fighting just a bad guy.

"There's reasons deep within you that you're fighting the bad guy, and really, are you fighting yourself while you're fighting the bad guy? I think that they've done a good job and will continue to do a good job of peppering that."

Of course, Kurt is also no stranger to the MCU, having voiced Ego in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 - and he couldn't resist weighing in after seeing his son take on a character like John Walker.

"I don’t know the Marvel world all that well, and didn't learn much when I was doing it because, like with Godzilla, it's not something I'm up on," he admitted.

"But I think the Marvel universe is something that I'm learning a little bit more about because of watching The [Falcon and the] Winter Soldier. And I'll tell you, it was really fun to watch Wyatt.

"We were learning about this as we were watching that show - and to us, we're actors, so he's doing great - like, this guy’s not supposed to be Captain America!

"But to other people, those three episodes, they were going out of their minds. Like, 'This can’t be! This is horrible!' Again, a slow burn. Like, hang on guys, it’s not over yet!"

"They were in love with me immediately," Wyatt joked, as Kurt insisted, "I'm here to verify!"

Kurt and Wyatt most recently starred together in Apple TV+'s Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, the new show in the MonsterVerse that focuses on the human story in a world overrun by Titans. The duo play younger and older versions of the same character.

Chatting about the challenge of that, Kurt explained: "Because it was a casting idea, the character was not written this way. There were templates, generalisations, where they wanted to go, but the character himself was not integral to the piece itself.

"Once we were interested in doing it, we started attacking that with vigour, and that was probably the most important thing for us to do - to be able to find, through those conversations, what we're going to actually put on paper and what we were going to do, giving us the self-direction that we needed to definitely not fall into the father/son trap, but fall into the same person.

"And Wyatt was going to lay him down first. So you have to know ahead what you're going to do. I was going to be following up whatever he laid down, so we needed to be in cahoots. And that's that was our challenge."

Thunderbolts is set for release in 2025. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is airing now on Apple TV+.

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