Black Widow’s Villain Is The MCU’s Weirdest Casting Choice

Caution: spoilers ahead for Black Widow

Black Widow contains familial drama, 007 homages... and one of the MCU's strangest ever castings in the form of Ray Winstone's Dreykov. Over a decade old and stronger than ever, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has done plenty right, and one of the franchise's premier strengths undoubtedly lies in its casting. From Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther, Tom Hiddleston as Loki, all the way down to less prominent characters such as Kathryn Hahn's Agatha Harkness and Randall Park's Jimmy Woo, Kevin Feige has rarely fluffed a casting.

That impressive record might've just taken a hit thanks to Black Widow's arch-antagonist, Dreykov. Revealed as the Russian general behind the abhorrent Red Room, Dreykov is the architect of Natasha Romanoff's misery. Like so many girls before and after, Natasha was abducted, sterilized, and turned into a weapon against her will, and since Dreykov was calling the shots, he immediately becomes a pivotal character in the MCU. For this all-important part, Black Widow cast English actor Ray Winstone, known for Ripley's Game, Beowulf, The Departed, and much more besides. Despite being predominantly known for his London tough-guy roles, Winstone's career is more varied than many give him credit for, and the actor's good standing with audiences and critics is fully deserved.

But even the best actors can be miscast, and that's arguably the case with Dreykov in Black Widow. Speaking generally, Black Widow is not a film linguistic aficionados should enter lightly due to a mostly western cast attempting the Russian dialect with varying degrees of success. Florence Pugh and David Harbour make a good fist of it, Rachel Weisz gets by, and viewers can be somewhat forgiving toward these characters knowing they each spent years undercover in the United States - a canon explanation for any accent inconsistency. If there's one Black Widow character who needed a more convincing mother tongue, however, it was the hammer-and-sickle-forged Red Room commander, Dreykov. Sadly, Winstone's attempt is the worst of the bunch.

Known for his strong East London tones, a flawless Russian vocal was always a tall order for Ray Winstone, but in some scenes it's hard to tell where the cockney ends and the communist begins. Had the MCU not already made Dreykov's country of birth clear, the accent would've made it impossible for audiences to determine his origins. Nowhere is this problem clearest than whenever the actor delivers a line you might expect to hear in Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, such as "I've got a problem and you need to sort it" and "you should've thought of that before you blew her [bloody] face off."

A cartoon-ish accent is not the only issue with Ray Winstone's Dreykov. The de-aged, tracksuit-clad villain makes a less-than-intimidating first impression in Black Widow's opening flashback, coming across more as a Don Corleone wannabe than the commander of a cutting-edge military cell. Moving into the present day, Dreykov is neither fearsome nor (deliberately) humorous, leaving Winstone to muddle halfheartedly through some third act exposition before running away.

Given Dreykov's notable absence in Black Widow's marketing (and minimal presence in the film itself), it's possible someone at Disney realized mistakes had been made and post-filming damage limitation was carried out. Strangest of all is how many better casting options Marvel could've chosen for the Dreykov role. Aleksei Serebryakov (Nobody's lead villain) comes to mind as the perfect blend of genius authoritarian and unhinged mobster, or there's Vladimir Mashkov (Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol), who seems a natural fit for Natasha Romanoff's nemesis. And if Disney insists on fake accents, Viggo Mortensen showed great talent for the vernacular in Eastern Promises. Quite how Black Widow started at "Russian baddie" and ended up at "Ray Winstone" remains an MCU mystery.

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