This will get me roasted alive at home, where I have a twelve-year-old son who loves superhero movies. If anyone ever bothered to read this blog, I’d probably get roasted alive in the wider world, too. But no one does – right? – so a simple domestic spat will be the extent of any collateral damage here.
Okay. I’m tired of something, and it’s this: actors coming along who show great promise, who give stand-out performances in powerful, usually independent movies (for which they often receive Academy Award nominations, and even, occasionally, actual Oscars), but who subsequently get swallowed up by the black hole of the Hollywood Blockbuster System and end up having to wear silly costumes and spout occasionally awkward, clunky dialogue in front of a green screen. When this happens, these actors lose a little bit (maybe even a considerable bit) of the appeal and magic that brought them to our attention in the first place. The phenomenon has probably always existed, but there’s a particularly virulent strain of it on the go at the moment. The most recent example is Brie Larson. This wonderful actress gave a nuanced, mature and Oscar-winning performance in Room. But then it was straight on to Kong: Skull Island (where, if the trailer is anything to go by, she gets to gaze a lot in mute, reaction-shot awe). This will be followed by Avengers: Infinity War, and Captain Marvel, in which she will play the title role.
Another example is Oscar Isaac, an actor with the range and charisma of a 70s-era De Niro. But after his epic run of Inside Llewyn Davis, A Most Violent Year and Ex Machina, Isaac has moved on to X-Men Apocalypse and the new Star Wars trilogy (which will likely keep him very busy until 2020). Then we have Jennifer Lawrence, whose astonishing performance in Winter’s Bone was followed by roles in two gigantic franchises, X-Men and The Hunger Games. There’s also Michael Fassbender, who followed his searing performances in Shame and Twelve Years A Slave with roles in the X-Men franchise (okay, his first outing as Magneto pre-dated these, sue me) and now this year’s Assassin’s Creed. And let’s not forget the radiant Alicia Vikander, who gave such impressive performances in Testament of Youth and Ex Machina and is currently set to be the new Lara Croft in a re-booted Tomb Raider.
Obviously, actors have to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in their careers, they have to eat now and again (and pay for their spectacular beachfront properties), so I’m not accusing anyone of that quaint 20th century notion of “selling out” (if a studio offered me a part in a superhero movie I’d jump at it . . . though gingerly, because – cough – I have a bad back), but the problem is that the sheer scale and reach of these movies is so overpowering, so all-encompassing, that the actors who star in them are diminished . . . as actors. They are stamped with an indelible corporate identity and their star power is re-coded. All of a sudden it’s easier not to take them so seriously.
And it’s not that these actors aren’t good in blockbuster movies. Usually, they are. And sometimes they’re even great. Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron in the new Star Wars trilogy, for example, is a terrific character and could potentially fill the gaping void left in the series by the death of Han Solo. And Jennifer Lawrence gives a brilliant performance as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. Also, it’s not as if these actors don’t do other stuff, they do – Lawrence wins Oscars in David O. Russell movies, Michael Fassbender does Shakespeare, Alica Vikander does everything.
It’s just a little depressing, that’s all. Every time I read that a cool-seeming actor has been enticed into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or into some other bloated franchise, it feels like a defeat for what I’m going to call real movies. This isn’t snobbery (though it probably sounds like it) and it’s not meant as a nod to that great line in My Favorite Year, when Peter O’Toole intones, ‘I’m not an actor, I’m a movie star.’ But it is an admission that superhero movies are more or less in the process of eating cinema alive. The original, game-changing “blockbuster” of the modern era is generally agreed to be Steven Spielberg’s Jaws in 1975, and that’s a great movie, but we’ve come a long way since then. Today’s marquee movies are global investment funds that live or die by their opening weekend numbers, with the actors who star in them increasingly coming to resemble participants in a vast corporate pension scheme. And the thing is, once an actor is admitted into this financial mile-high club, some essential quality is lost.
The deep impression Oscar Isaac made in those three pre-Poe movies can never be recreated. Jessica Chastain (just signed up for a new video game adaptation) will never again have that ethereal quality she had in The Tree of Life or The Debt. And once you see Michael Fassbender dressed up in Magneto’s costume and mask, you can’t ever unsee it. Probably, it could be argued that superhero star power helps get more small movies made, as opposed to just suffocating our memories of the ones that already have been . . .
But the real problem, I’m afraid, is with the superhero movies themselves. It’s having to watch great actors play out scenarios that have no genuine dramatic conflict in them, scenarios where nothing of any consequence is at stake (except, say, the fate of the universe). These movies dial up to eleven early on and have nowhere to go from there. This grinds you down after a while. Certainly as a viewer. And until I get the call from Marvel, I won’t be able to tell you what it’s like as an actor.