Ethan Hawke: Supermovie movies aren’t real films
By Dan Selcke
There was a time, in the long long ago, when moviegoers had a choice between at most one or two quality superhero movies to see in theaters in any given year. Those days are long gone. Now, you could conceivably marathon Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2 and Ant-Man and the Wasp in one day, with Aquaman on the horizon as something to look forward to. Superhero flicks are the most lucrative thing Hollywood has going for it right now; of the top 10 highest grossing movies of all time, four are superhero movies*, and two came of those out this year. No wonder Hollywood loves these things so much.
Or at least, the executives behind the camera do. Others, like Training Day star Ethan Hawke, are less enthused. While at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland to promote his new movie Blaze, Hawke called out Hollywood for its superhero obsession. “So many things get lost in the cracks and if those big names are getting lost, where are the Gattacas of right now?” he asked, referring to the cerebral 1997 science fiction film he headlined. “It might be like other art forms where it might take 50 years to curate what’s happening right now. That’s why film festivals have become so important because you guys at film festivals are like curators of, like, what does the world need to be paying attention to. What should be seen? If we didn’t have these festivals, big business would crush all these smaller movies.”
"Now we have the problem that they tell us Logan is a great movie. Well, it’s a great superhero movie. It still involves people in tights with metal coming out of their hands. It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman."
He’s got a point there. No one in an Ingmar Bergman movie ever did anything remotely like this:
According to Syfy Wire, Hawke was blunt in his opinion that “superhero movies” aren’t real films. “There’s a difference but big business doesn’t think there’s a difference,” he said. “Big business wants you to think that this is a great film because they wanna make money off of it.”
On the one hand, I kinda see where Hawke is coming from. Hollywood is putting the bottom line first when it comes to superhero films, and I fully expect it to drag every last dollar it can out of moviegoers for as long as the craze lasts. But on the other hand, Hollywood has always gone where the money is, which hasn’t stopped people from innovating within the constraints of whatever’s popular at the moment and producing good work. And even if Hollywood isn’t investing as much in smaller films as it used to, there’s still a market for them. For example, Blaze, about the life of little-known Texan singer-songwriter Blaze Foley, looks pretty good:
And on the sarcastic hand, was Hawke passed over to play Iron Man or something? Feel free to share your thoughts.
Next. Judge: Unless you’re San Diego Comic-Con, you can’t call yourself a “Comic Con”. dark
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*If you just look at U.S. spending, five of the 10 top-grossing films are superhero movies.