Hollywood has an MCU problem. It has for years. But the real problem isn’t what you think it is. The MCU’s biggest crime is how it’s cannibalizing our movie stars.
As the world gears up the newest installment in the Avengers Franchise, the highly anticipated and highly maligned Avengers: Doomsday, one key component has irked me more than the rest.
It wasn’t the CGI sludge or embarrassing dialogue that make up the trailer to offend me most (although they offend me plenty). It was the fact that Chris Evans is back yet again.
Steve and Tony
Surely there will be some flimsy explanation for the return of Steve Rogers in this movie and MCU movies going forward despite the character’s Infinity Saga arc wrapping up neatly and satisfyingly in Avengers: Endgame. But trapping Chris Evans in this role for perpetuity is so unbelievably cruel to Evans and fans alike.
The conclusion of Endgame meant it was time for Evans to move on, and he took the opportunity to make some fairly cool movies and work with some pretty cool directors. The films vary in level of quality, and his performances range from juicy to stale, but Knives Out, The Materialists, and Honey Don’t were all welcomed gambles for his craft and his career.
I was excited to see what kind of roles he’d take on next; hoping his development as an actor would grow and expand in the coming years. That hope is now lost. He’s unfortunately doomed to be Steve Rogers until the day he dies. A deal with the devil of sorts; cursed to an eternity of playing an uninteresting role in uninteresting movies.
Perhaps even more discouraging is the role of Robert Downey Jr. in all of this. For decades he’s been regarded as one of the most talented figures in Hollywood. Even at his lowest points, before he fully revived his career by portraying Tony Stark in 2008’s Iron Man, his raw acting ability wowed industry insiders and general audiences alike.
Like Evans’ Rogers, Downey’s Stark character got a perfect ending in Endgame. His post MCU career saw him snag a long overdue Academy Award win for his performance as Lewis Strauss in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. It was a new dawn for one of America’s great artists.
We were poised for the great RDJ renaissance. He secured his bag with Marvel and secured his Oscar with Nolan. The cinematic world was fully his for the taking. Instead of using this clout to produce passion projects or work with more of the best directors in the game right now, he cynically crawled back to Disney to play…Victor von Doom for some reason.
Phase 5 and Beyond
The issue stretches far beyond Evans and Downey, unfortunately. Marvel has trapped far too many of our greatest working actors in their cinematic universe purgatory.
Florence Pugh, who made her Marvel debut in 2020’s Black Widow, has seen her super stardom trajectory stalled a bit. After a breakout role in Fighting with My Family, she fully burst onto the scene with great performances in Midsommar and Little Women in 2019.
Since then, we’ve seen her in strong, but very minor supporting roles in both Oppenheimer and Dune: Part 2. She’s led a few flicks, but nothing that’s highlighted the true depth of her acting genius.
I fear her near future will be defined by adopting that strange Russian accent to pop up in whatever Shang-Chi or Black Panther or Ant-Man sequel her contract with the studio requires of her. So much for the ascending path we saw her on post Little Women Oscars nom.
The most heinous example, however, is what happened with Mahershala Ali. After making the earthshattering announcement seven years ago at Comi-Con that he would be playing the iconic Blade character in the MCU, there have been a series of delays with the movie’s development that has essentially ended in a stalemate between the actor and the studio.
In the meantime, we’ve barely seen Ali as much as we should. And now, we won’t even have a Marvel movie featuring him in an iconic role. The whole situation has produced a double whammy of negative outcomes.
Now with actors like Adam Driver and Ryan Gosling joining the MCU ranks, film fans have seen their concerns kicked into overdrive. Driver in particular had managed to position himself post Star Wars career as someone willing to be the artistic muse for some of Hollywood’s greatest elder statesmen – Michael Mann, Ridley Scott, and Francis Ford Coppola chief among them.
There remains hope that Driver will just dip his toes into the Marvel world then turn back around to make more exciting weirdo movies with Jim Jarmusch and the like.
Solving the Problem
As long as these actors are under contract with Marvel, it appears unlikely they’ll be able to do much outside of that work. They’ll always be on call for some cameo appearance here or countless reshoots there that will continue to take them away from other projects.
Scheduling conflicts will make the ability to work on films outside of Marvel Studios increasingly difficult for these actors. Who knows how many non-MCU movies we’ve missed out seeing Pugh, Hemsworth, Cumberbatch or others star in because of prior commitments to the studio. Who knows what Tom Holland’s true acting ceiling could be if he wasn’t boxed in to playing Spider-Man for the entirety of his career.
The transgression is against these stars more than anyone else. Whether up and coming talents or established names, these folks got the chance to work within the biggest film franchise of modern moviemaking because they’re incredibly talented, dynamic, and magnetic performers. But they become limited in the work they’re able to do as artists because of it.
Up and down the list, these super (hero) stars deserve the opportunities to spread their wings and flex their acting muscles. And we, as audience members, deserve to see the full breadth of what they’re able to accomplish on screen.
This fear would have felt overblown if not for the Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. developments. Having actors locked into a franchise for a set period is less than ideal, but totally understandable. Having the foundational paycheck from a series of massive blockbuster films offers actors more flexibility in the types of roles they can take on.
However, if we can’t even trust that they’ll one day break free of this specific franchise and its constraints, we’ll just grow to despise our biggest stars, as they bore us with refried comic book slop in sequel after sequel after sequel…after sequel.
Conclusion
It’s the most insidious truth of the modern MCU. It spreads and infects the rest of the movie making industry. Kevin Feige and Marvel Studios have changed a lot about cinema during its run at the top – some for better, and much for worse.
Like the big-bad Thanos, Marvel is inevitable. But that doesn’t mean we have to accept all of its destruction (also like Thanos). So, here’s to hoping that Evans, RDJ, and everyone else can defeat this real-life villain, break free of the MCU shackles, and get to work on saving Hollywood.
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