Russell Crowe on Actors Complaining About Starring in Superhero Films: You’re ‘Here for the Wrong Reasons’ If You Expect It to Be ‘Life-Changing’
Russell Crowe on Actors Complaining About Starring in Superhero Films: You’re ‘Here for the Wrong Reasons’ If You Expect It to Be ‘Life-Changing’
Russell Crowe called out actors who complain about superhero films.
"You’re telling me you signed up for a Marvel movie, and some fucking universe for cartoon characters, and you didn’t get enough pathos?"
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On the one hand, yes, these movies are products being churned out for profit by a corporate machine that cares more about marketability than creativity or quality. Anyone signing up for a big studio blockbuster production (superhero movie or not) should know exactly what they are getting into.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with actors in flopped movies pointing out that they flopped in no small part because they are the product of a system that seems focused on everything but the quality of movie being made.
And it absolutely can be life changing when it works. Just look at the early MCU movies and tell me that they didn't have a huge impact on careers. Of course younger actors who take these roles are hoping they will be life-changing. You don't become a superstar by doing nothing but small independent arthouse films that kill at festivals and award shows and are never seen by the general public.
And finally, I gotta call bullshit on the assumption that you can't have artistry or depth in movies based on "some fucking universe for cartoon characters." There's no reason why a superhero movie (or any other genre film) can't be more than just a two hour trailer for itself, or a soulless vehicle for merchandise. It's not the medium that the IP came from that determines the artistic value of the movie adaptation, it's the people making the movie (and the suits controlling them) that determine whether it will be a cinematic masterpiece or further proof that AI generated movies are inevitable.
On your last paragraph I would even go as far as saying that an actor who can make a relateable character that people empathise with which happens to be some kind of badass super-hero or super-villan, has trully proven his or her acting chops.
A good example would be "Joaquin Phoenix's" performance in Joker (not saying the movie was good or bad, just that the performance was good, though personally I liked the movie).
A lot, maybe most, of the super-heros and villains as portrayed in movies are charicatural, paper-thin, stereotypical "goodies" or "badies", not actually full-depth personas. Mind you, this is a thing in Action movies in general, though IMHO super-hero movies seem to go for sterotypical main characters more often than Action movies in general.