It is no secret that the tide has been slowly turning against the MCU. Critically, Marvel is in a slump, receiving its three lowest-ever Rotten Tomatoes scores in the last three years. Its working practices, too, have come into question, with what feels like the entire VFX industry lining up to give it a kicking.
But, no matter how bad things get, at least Marvel could console itself with the knowledge that one group of people would never dare to badmouth it. That’s right, its actors: a group of people who live in such mortal fear of the Marvel brass that they joke about literally being murdered by a sniper whenever an interviewer asks them anything even remotely spoilery. And yet, here we are. Three Marvel stars have recently broken rank to reveal that their movies sort of suck.
Most recently, Chris Hemsworth has used a GQ profile to tacitly apologise for the mess that was Thor: Love and Thunder, partly on the basis that his son’s friends all told him that it was crap. “I think we just had too much fun,” Hemsworth said of the film’s wonky tone and consequence-free stupidity. “It just became too silly.” And he has a point. After all, there is only one reason why people pay money to watch movies about hunky space gods fighting each other with hammers, and that’s oppressively unyielding solemnity.
Nor is Hemsworth alone. Anthony Hopkins, who played Hemsworth’s dad in the Thor movies, has also laid into Marvel in a new New Yorker profile about Marvel’s cultural dominance. Of his role as Odin, Hopkins sniffed: “They put me in armour; they shoved a beard on me. Sit on the throne, shout a bit. If you’re sitting in front of a green screen, it’s pointless acting it.”
Of course, it’s easy for Hemsworth and Hopkins to badmouth Marvel. Hemsworth’s MCU contract is finally up, and there are no plans for him to star in any more instalments, while Hopkins only briefly appeared in the films, and then died, and then won an Oscar for something else. Their time with Marvel is at an end. They have nothing to lose by being honest about their experiences.
But then there’s Elizabeth Olsen, who – despite basically ending the last Doctor Strange film being crushed to death by an entire mountain – still apparently has a future with Marvel. Nevertheless, on a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Olsen revealed that her advice to any young actors considering a role in a Marvel film would be “just give them one”, which is code for “don’t sign up for multiple movies like I did, because I am clearly having the worst time imaginable wasting my best years on this cack”.
Now, there could be many reasons why all these actors have decided to publicly bite the hand that feeds them. Perhaps they were treated poorly, and this is their revenge. Perhaps they can sense that Marvel’s period of cultural dominance is coming to an end, and they no longer fear unemployment for speaking their minds. Perhaps they want to distance themselves from their most popular work for fear of being typecast. Who knows. But whatever the reason, it isn’t good for Marvel.
For years and years, the stars of the MCU have all had to play along with the conceit that they’re all best friends, singing the Brady Bunch theme tune together on Jimmy Fallon and making out that they simply couldn’t believe they got to work with such amazing people. But the seeds of discord were always there. Remember when Robert Downey Jr filmed his final scene as Iron Man, and then almost immediately unfollowed all the other Avengers on Instagram? And now that Marvel has a few duds under its belt, it appears to be open season.
If that’s the case, the next few months could be very interesting. The release of The Marvels in November might cause a recurrence of Brie Larson’s fondness for sulking about how unpopular she is. And next year sees the release of Deadpool 3 starring Ryan Reynolds, a man who has carved an entire side-career out of slagging off movies of his that he didn’t like. If he so much as sniffs that Deadpool 3 will be a flop, we’ll all being hearing about it from him for the next 20 years.
But perhaps this is all just a blip. The MCU is 15 years old now, and nothing can run perfectly for that long. Maybe this will be the moment where everything tightens up and everyone starts having a lovely time again. In which case, we can all sit back and enjoy another decade and a half of identical superhero movies that are churned out as carelessly as hotdogs. Lucky us.
