Why are all these actors only coming out now to slam their own work in superhero movies? Is it because they’ve already cashed their paychecks? Is it also the fact that superhero movies are no longer in vogue?
Michael Shannon is the latest star to criticize his own superhero work. He played Zod in the DCEU’s ‘Man of Steel’ and appears in “The Flash.”
In a new interview with Collider, Shannon admitted a sense of dissatisfaction in playing Zod, he’s basically saying that superhero movies are for children:
I’m not going to lie – it wasn’t quite satisfying for me, as an actor. These multiverse movies are like somebody playing with action figures. It’s like, ‘Here’s this person. Here’s that person. And they’re fighting!’ It’s not quite the in-depth character study situation that I honestly felt Man of Steel was.
It’s not just Shannon. Just these past few months, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Hopkins, Christian Bale and Idris Elba have all come out criticizing their own superhero experience.
I mean, do you blame them? These are actors that love to act and want to challenge themselves with well-written characters. Superhero movies won’t ever satisfy that itch.
Comic books are, at their core, juvenile fantasies. It’s a bunch of guys in spandex fighting other guys in spandex, so these actors knew what they were getting into. Did they even read the scripts? Add in the green screen acting and you have a perfect storm of artistic moral deflation.
Superhero movies have become so whored out and saturated that many have started to tune out. This actor backlash is just a symptom of it.
Netflix and Skydance Animation have also called it quits. The two sides announced Monday that they're ending the animated film deal struck back in 2023, framing it as a mutual decision.