Jonathan Majors is gearing up to have one hell of a villainous year on the big screen. He’s joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe this February in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” where his character, Kang the Conquerer, will become the franchise’s new Thanos figure. Then in March, Majors will get into the ring with Michael B. Jordan as the antagonist in “Creed III.” It’s all a full circle moment for Majors, considering watching Heath Ledger’s villainous turn as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” was a big motivator in him becoming an actor in the first place.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Majors shared his priceless reaction to seeing Ledger on screen as the Joker: “Okay, first of all, he’s gorgeous. He’s got that fucking jawline, and he didn’t give a fuck. He threw his body around. He was so full. And I went, ‘I’m coming for that. I’m inspired.’ It takes a lot, you feel me? To be inspired.”
Majors loves “The Dark Knight” so much that he wrote a personal essay about Nolan’s comic book masterpiece for Variety to celebrate the film making our list of the 100 greatest movies of all time. The actor was 18 years old when he first saw “The Dark Knight” and was blown away, calling it “one of those rare films that entertains at the highest cinematic rung while simultaneously challenging its audience with each frame to reach higher in their own self and social knowledge.”
“The film asks what it is to be human, what it is to be alive and to participate fully in one’s own living,” Majors wrote. “‘The Dark Knight’ etches so vividly the agnostic morality of survival and the discipline of goodness. Nolan’s second installment of the ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy holds in its run time an impregnable truth: Life and people are beautifully complicated and evolving. It is this fact that has allowed ‘The Dark Knight’ to stand up and stand out all these many years later.”
Majors’ MCU debut as Kang in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” hits theaters Feb. 17 from Disney. “Creed III” launches March 3 in theaters from MGM.