Marvel Studios often tries with all the might of a Norse thunder god to keep their secrets away from fans, so that when the big reveal makes its way onto the screen, they get the level of satisfaction that they'd always hoped to capture in seeing legendary heroes and villains from the House of Ideas making their surprise appearance. Unfortunately, in the case of Harrison Ford's take on Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross in Captain America: Brave New World, the secret was just too big to keep quiet about.
In an interview with Empire, director Julius Onah acknowledged and accepted that the marketing of Sam Wilson's (Anthony Mackie) first cinematic outing as Captain America would inevitably come with a heavy red tint. In the comics, Red Hulk made his smashing debut in 2008, and it wasn't until 2010 that Ross was revealed to be the human who had been given a monstrous jolt. With that as common knowledge, Ford's addition to the project made the secret difficult to keep.
“When you’re making a movie like this, an announcement goes out that Harrison Ford is going to play Thaddeus Ross, and you have a fandom as massive and as passionate as the MCU fandom is, you’re toast at that point, you know?" Onah explained. "In a perfect-case scenario, it would have been awesome [if ] that [had been] an in-theatre surprise, but I think it would have been very difficult. Somewhere along the way, a toy would have been found, or somebody would have leaked a trailer. It’s just so hard to keep anything secret in today’s day and age.”
The efforts to keep hush-hush about specific details off the grid are still proving difficult for Marvel Studios, and in some areas, they've managed to get the job done. Jaws universally dropped when it was revealed that Robert Downey Jr. was playing Doctor Doom, and it was theorized that the Thunderbolts would be the New Avengers, but that was never confirmed that early in advance. For now, the biggest shield that's being covered for an upcoming Marvel movie is Avengers: Doomsday, for which we still don't know the final cast list, given that Kevin Feige has confirmed we've only got half the heroes involved. If you need to know everything else about the upcoming MCU movie and anything else on the Marvel Studios calendar, head here (but don't say we didn't warn you).
