Did Marvel really kill the movie star? Tell that to Harrison Ford | film

Did Marvel really kill off the old-fashioned movie star? And should someone hoping to become the new James Dean avoid performing as Captain America, such as an evening with Proxima Midnight?

This ongoing debate first entered the cultural world when Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola loudly proclaimed in 2019 that all superhero films are essentially descended from the corporate whore Hollywood Babylon. The supposed problem was then intellectually crystallized by one Quentin Tarantino in 2022, who pointed out that most Marvel stars would be virtually unknown if they hadn’t gotten the superhero gig.

“Part of the Marvelization of Hollywood is… there are all these actors who have become famous playing these characters,” he told the “2 Bears, 1 Cave” podcast while promoting “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” . “But they’re not movie stars. Right? Captain America is the star. Or Thor is the star… It’s these franchise characters that become the star.”

More recently, there have been rumors that Glen Powell, Hollywood’s current great hope for a return to the era in which swaggering, chiseled American (and sometimes European) hunks could open a film with little more than their pheromones, is refusing to accept This is exactly why we participate in Marvel films. Yes, he could look great as the new Johnny Storm/Human Torch – don’t get excited folks, they’ve already cast Joseph Quinn – but could that also take away his power to open mediocre romantic comedies with little more than one alongside Sydney Sweeney ? Smile that feels like it could sell a luxury watch?

Who better to ask than Harrison Ford, an actor with so much movie star charisma that he could roll out of bed and glower at his toaster while still seeming cooler than anything else in a Fast & Furious movie? And yes, we should probably offer here that Ford has to express his interest – he was just cast for the role of General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (who becomes the Red Hulk in the comics and a recent trailer) in the new Marvel film “Captain.” “ cast America: Brave New World. But still…

“I understand the appeal of different types of films than the ones we made in the ’80s and ’90s,” Ford told GQ. “We are stupid if we sit around regretting the change and not participating. I’m getting involved in a new part of the business that, at least for me, I think is really creating some good experiences for an audience. I find that fun.”

Ford then called the theory that Marvel has killed the traditional movie star “garbage,” adding, “I don’t think the question is whether or not there are movie stars at all.” There are wonderful actors coming on the scene every day […] Whether they become movie stars or not isn’t really the point. When films need stars, they will find them.”

He continued: “I never fucking understood being a movie star. I am an actor. I tell stories. I belong to a group of people who work together and tell stories together. I am an assistant storyteller. This is who I am.”

It must be said that we live in a strange world indeed, where Powell can apparently achieve more movie stardom by starring in a hyper-cheesy modern Shakespearean knock-off than in some of the most successful and widely-watched films of the modern era. But after struggling in Hollywood for decades before his big break in Top Gun: Maverick, the Texas actor clearly isn’t going to mess with the secret sauce. Does this also explain why we never got to see Tom Cruise, Powell’s co-star and rumored mentor, as the alternate reality Iron Man?

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The problem with this theory is that it relies on a rather conservative sense of cultural terror: first, that Marvel films will dominate the landscape, and second, that anyone who enters this CGI-heavy fantasy multiverse will never be seen again.” can only be an actor.

As Ford points out, this is actually at least partly nonsense. Scarlett Johansson was iconic as Black Widow, but she was far more of a star as the unfathomably beautiful Midge Campbell in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. Chris Evans showed his post-Marvel range as the narcissistic scion of a family of wealthy eccentrics in the excellent Rian Johnson crime thriller “Knives Out,” while Robert Downey Jr. recently received praise for his role as Lewis Strauss in the Oscar-winning “Oppenheimer.” harvested.

On the other hand, Chris Hemsworth has never really gotten out of Thor’s straitjacket as a space Viking, while Brie Larson has rarely reached the heights of her Oscar-winning role in 2015’s Room since signing on as Captain Marvel. So maybe it has something to do with the fact that Marvel films involve their cast members in a kind of comic-book chatter that makes it hard for audiences to remember who they are when they’re not involved in an interstellar family feud involving glowing space stones are.

Perhaps the real question here is whether audiences really want or need stars like Powell and Cruise anymore, although the huge success of “Top Gun: Maverick” makes it seem like they’re pretty sure that’s the case. Then again, if your movie star charisma can’t handle being clad in spandex and being asked to jump around the multiverse in search of giant space hammers while debating intergalactic ethics with a talking raccoon, maybe it wasn’t quite the case lots of swaggering charm about it Start with.