Hemsworth and Elizabeth Olsen are among the MCU stars – a group of people who once lived in mortal fear of Marvel executives – who are breaking ranks and criticizing their latest films
It’s no secret that the tide is turning against the MCU. Crucially, Marvel is in the midst of a crisis and has had its three worst Rotten Tomatoes scores of all time over the past three years. His working practices have also been questioned and it seems like the entire VFX industry is lining up to give him a kick.
But no matter how bad things get, Marvel could at least take comfort in the knowledge that a group of people would never dare speak ill of it. That’s right, the actors: a group of people who live in such fear of the Marvel people that they joke about being literally murdered by a sniper if an interviewer asks them anything remotely fatal. And yet here we are. Three Marvel stars recently broke ranks and revealed their movies kinda suck.
Most recently, in a GQ profile, Chris Hemsworth silently apologized for the Thor: Love and Thunder mess, partly citing that all of his son’s friends told him it was crap. “I think we just had too much fun,” Hemsworth said of the film’s lopsided tone and inconsequential stupidity. “It just got too silly.” And he’s right. After all, there’s only one reason people pay money to watch movies that feature handsome space gods battling each other with hammers, and that’s oppressively unyielding celebration.
Hemsworth has quietly apologized for Thor: Love and Thunder, in part because his son’s friends told him it was crap
Hemsworth is not alone either. Anthony Hopkins, who played Hemsworth’s father in the Thor films, also weighed in on Marvel’s cultural dominance in a new New Yorker profile. Of his role as Odin, Hopkins sniffed, “They put me in armor; You forced me to have a beard. Sit on the throne and scream a little. When you’re in front of a green screen, there’s no point in playing like that.”
Of course, Hemsworth and Hopkins find it easy to badmouth Marvel. Hemsworth’s MCU contract has finally ended and there are no plans for him to appear in more episodes, while Hopkins only appeared in the films briefly, then died and then won an Oscar for something else. Your time with Marvel is over. You have nothing to lose by being honest about your experience.
But then there’s Elizabeth Olsen, who apparently still has a future at Marvel despite basically ending the last Doctor Strange movie by being crushed to death by a whole mountain. Still, during a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Olsen revealed that her advice to any young actor considering a role in a Marvel movie would be, “Just give them one,” which means so much like “Don’t sign up for multiple movies like me because I’m clearly having the worst time I can imagine wasting my prime with this guy.”
“Just give ’em one”…Elizabeth Olsen in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Photo: Disney/Allstar
Now, there could be many reasons why all these actors have decided to publicly bite the hand that feeds them. Maybe they were mistreated and this is their revenge. Perhaps they sense that Marvel’s period of cultural dominance is coming to an end and that they no longer fear unemployment for speaking their minds. They may want to distance themselves from their most popular work for fear of being pigeonholed. Who knows. But whatever the reason, it’s not good for Marvel.
For years, the stars of the MCU had to contend with the illusion that they were all best friends, singing the Brady Bunch theme song together on Jimmy Fallon and pretending they just couldn’t believe they were working with such amazing people. But the seed of discord was always there. Remember when Robert Downey Jr. shot 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, the season seems to be on.
If that’s the case, the next few months could be very interesting. The November release of The Marvels could have Brie Larson pouting her fondness again for how unpopular she is. And next year comes Deadpool 3, starring Ryan Reynolds, a man who has made a whole side career out of directing films he didn’t like. If he even catches the suspicion that Deadpool 3 is going to be a flop, we’ll all be hearing from him for the next 20 years.
But maybe this is all just an incident. The MCU is now 15 years old and nothing can run perfectly for that long. Maybe this is the moment when everything relaxes and everyone has a good time again. If so, we can all sit back and enjoy another decade and a half of identical superhero movies, produced as carelessly as hot dogs. We happy.
{{#Ticker}}
{{top left}}
{{bottom left}}
{{top right}}
{{bottom right}}
{{#goalExceededMarkerPercentage}}{{/goalExceededMarkerPercentage}}{{/ticker}}
{{Headline}}
{{#paragraphs}}
{{.}}
{{/paragraphs}}{{highlightedText}}
{{#choiceCards}}{{/choiceCards}}We will contact you to remind you to contribute. Look out for a message in your inbox. If you have any questions about contributing, please contact us.