Following the release of
Justice League in theaters, there seems to be a bit of confusion over the acting credit attributed to Ares in the recently released team-up film.
As previously explained following the release of some behind-the-scenes photos from
Justice League, in the standalone
Wonder Woman film actor David Thewlis' face was superimposed over the stand-in who played Ares, whose name was unknown at the time of the writing. Thewlis has also been credited for the part of Ares in
Justice League. Well now, the original actor for Ares has been named.
Actor/stuntman
Nick McKinless posted a picture on
his Instagram. Along with the photo, McKinless detailed the "cool" experience he had while working on
Justice League, which he used to learn about body composition training. Additionally, it would seem that to set the record straight, the acting credit for the part of Ares in
Justice League should go to him.
"There seems to be some debate about who should get the credit since I trained for 4 months for this role, although on the film Mr. Thewlis is credited,“ McKinless told ComicBookMovie. In his post, McKinless detailed that with his training he
"ended up at 6% and 100kg/220lbs... with 'veins like worms and paper thin skin' as per [Zack Snyder's] requirements."
According to the actor, former
Justice League director Zack Snyder - who stepped away from the film towards the end due to a family emergency and was replaced by Joss Whedon - had personally approved Nick McKinless for the role of Ares. Not only that, but apparently the actor's contract also says "Ares."
"I did this role under the understanding I would be credited as Ares. Unfortunately, that did not occur," the actor continued.
"That said, I had a brilliant time. Zack is an incredible director and it was a real honor to be a part of the DCEU.”
McKinless, who was previously a Hollywood stuntman and is now a stunt coordinator/action director for many big budget films over the last 20 years, went on to explain that this is apparently not the first time he's been uncredited on a major motion film.
"It's not unusual," he said.
“I’d have thought the least they could do would be to credit both Mr. Thewlis and myself for our work as Ares." Perhaps it would have been more fair to credit David Thewlis as Sir Patrick and Nick McKinless as Ares. In some of the pictures around social media you can clearly see it is not Thewlis in the Ares mask.
As of this writing, Thewlis - not McKinless - is credited for the part of Ares in both
Wonder Woman and
Justice League. We'll continue to monitor the story, but for now we must ask ourselves where is the
Justice in this?