Ross Marquand took the mantle of voicing Red Skull in the Marvel Cinematic Universe from the British actor Hugo Weaving. With this change, the X-Men ‘97 voice actor, who also voices Charles Xavier, admitted that it wasn’t easy to dial in a new voice, starting in Avengers: Infinity War and continuing in Avengers: Endgame. But when he finally figured it out, he totally nailed it and now, he revealed how Star Wars’ Yoda inspired the new voice of HYDRA’s former head.
In an interview with ComicBook, Marquand revealed that he wanted to mimic Weaving’s voice when he played Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger. However, the Avengers directors Anthony and Joe Russo asked him to give his own take when voicing the MCU supervillain by leaning into the ancient, troubled, cosmic being that Red Skull had become. So, to do that, Joe advised him to infuse Yoda’s ancient and doomed feelings with Captain America’s longtime nemesis.
I think it was Joe Russo, he said, 'I want you to infuse a bit of Yoda into this character, not voice-wise, but a creature that had been around for over a thousand years,' and I thought, 'Ah, okay.' And that's what brought the high-clipped, nasally German tone down into something of this creature that had been alive and seen everything and just cursed with all this pain and knowledge but could do nothing with it.
Marquand thanked the Russo brothers for giving him the best direction to perfectly play the role of Red Skull in the two Avengers movies. Compared to Weaving’s “very pitched” take on the big bad, his version sounded like a broken character about 80 years older and cursed with infinite knowledge.
“Now he can fly, and he's got all these other powers, kind of like a phantom,” he continued. “Like Atlas holding up the Earth, he wants the [Infinity] Stones so badly but he can't attain them now.”
Why Hugo Weaving didn’t return as Red Skull in the Avengers sequels?
Weaving was considered a perfect cast for Red Skull in The First Avenger. As the character didn’t die in the 2011 movie, he triumphantly returned as the guide to the Soul Stone in Infinity War and Endgame. However, the Avengers sequels already featured a different actor, Marquand.
In an interview with Time Out in 2020, Weaving revealed why he didn’t return as Red Skull in the sequels. Though he admitted to love playing as Johann Schmidt and would love to return, he had an issue with his contract with Marvel Studios, resulting in his ultimate exit.
“They’d pushed back on the contracts that we agreed on and so the money they offered me for The Avengers was much less than I got for the very first one, and this was for two films,” he explained. “And the promise when we first signed the contracts was that the money would grow each time.”
Weaving claimed he was told he was only doing a “voice job, " which wasn’t a big deal for them. However, as the negotiation ran through his agent, he found dealing with them “impossible” and decided to leave the project.
“I didn’t really wanna do it that much,” he continued. “But I would have done it.”
Sure, Weaving’s voice made Red Skull more interesting with his dangerous and frightening tone. However, it can’t be denied that Marquand has perfectly succeeded in making the character more menacing.
