When Academy Award-winner Russell Crowe spoke to GQ, he was asked what he thought about Dakota Johnson’s comment on filming Madame Web and how these superhero movies create art that’s “made by committee.”
While he hedged at first, he jokingly said that the question brought out “the impish quality of my humor.” And then he unleashed with, “You’re telling me you signed up for a Marvel movie, and some f***ing universe for cartoon characters… and you didn’t get enough pathos? Not quite sure how I can make this better for you. It’s a gigantic machine, and they make movies at a certain size.”
He then related it to his experience, having played Superman’s father in DC’s 2013 film Man of Steel and Zeus in Marvel’s 2022 installment of Thor: Love and Thunder. He will also be next seen in the upcoming Sony-produced Marvel movie Kraven the Hunter.
Russel Crowe and superhero jobs
“These are jobs. You know: here’s your role, play the role. If you’re expecting this to be some kind of life-changing event, I just think you’re here for the wrong reasons,” Crowe continued.
However, he did home some sympathy for Johnson when he added, “You can’t make this a direct comment on her because I don’t know her and I don’t know what she went through, and the fact that you can have a s**t experience on a film… Yeah, you can. But is that the Marvel process? I’m not sure you can say that. I haven’t had a bad experience. I mean [on Thor] OK, it’s a Marvel movie, but it’s Taika Waititi’s world, and it’s just a gas every day, being silly.”
To the actor, it’s also about “bringing a little weight to the circumstances, so the young actors have got an actor they can bounce off,” referring specifically to Kraven, starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the titular role.
It’s good to know that while Crowe doesn’t necessarily agree with Johnson, he has some pathos — which may be lacking in big superhero movies due to the scale and scope — for her experience. And if you think he wasn’t sympathetic enough, maybe he’s read the reviews of the film. Currently, Madame Web has an 11% Tomatometer and its audience rating is at a kinder but still quite love 57%. On Metacritic, it’s reviewed as generally unfavorable with a 26% critic score and the audience giving it 2.8.
While Crowe’s Man of Steel isn’t exactly critically acclaimed since its Tomatometer sits at 56% and Thor: Love and Thunder is only slightly better at 63%, they were big earners for the studios at $670.145 million and $760.9 million respectively. Madame Web, on the other hand, only earned $100.3 million worldwide.
Superhero bash
Still, it’s not like Johnson is the first to bash her own superhero role. Academy Award-winner George Clooney has famously apologized for his turn as the Dark Knight in 1997’s Batman & Robin.
“Let me just say that I’d actually thought I’d destroyed the franchise until somebody else brought it back years later and changed it,” he once said.
Adjacent to Batman is Oscar winner Halle Berry’s Catwoman in 1994. While she gamely accepted the Razzie Award, she told Jimmy Kimmel that she had been “carrying the weight” of the film’s failure and felt that it was her fault. She only recently realized that it wasn’t.
Back to Marvel, Ben Affleck’s Daredevil in 2003 wasn’t spared. He told Entertainment Weekly in 2007 that he didn’t think it worked at all. But that didn’t sour him from the genre when he gave another superhero a try, playing Bruce Wayne/Batman for 2016’s Suicide Squad and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. While he wasn’t exactly bashed, it still left the audience underwhelmed.
Batman’s Alfred, Jeremy Irons, had no love for his character either. He told the Daily Mail that the movie’s less-than-stellar reviews were deserved.
“I mean, it took $800 million, so the kicking didn’t matter but it was sort of overstuffed,” he said, but he reprised the role in the next year’s Justice League.
Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, wasn’t very happy with 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, but he focused his criticism on his own performance, and said, “I was a little disappointed in what I’d done. I didn’t think I grew the character in any way.”
That’s one use for time travel
Even though he’s now more closely tied to Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds had an infamously unfortunate run-in with another Marvel superhero, the Green Lantern. So much so that he’s actually never watched the movie in its entirety. However, he did get his own back when he joked about it in the end credits of Deadpool 2 2018 where he shoots the fictional Reynolds in the head to prevent him from taking the role, saying, “You’re welcome, Canada.”
Most recently, Josh Brolin — who has had a supervillain turn as Thanos in the MCU — went on an NSFW rant regarding the 2010 DC Western superhero film Jonah Hex. Even though he first thought, “This is either a really bad decision or a brilliant decision,” it ended up being the former.
While the list runs down on mostly male actors, Jessica Alba will most likely have the most sympathy for Johnson. She reprised her role Sue Storm/Invisible Woman in 2007’s Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and made no bones about how much she really hated it.
“I remember when I was dying in Silver Surfer. The director [Tim Story] was like, ‘It looks too real. It looks too painful. Can you be prettier when you cry? Cry pretty, Jessica,'” she told Elle Magazine.
So there you have it. Just because you get to play a superhero doesn’t mean you love it. Especially if the movie ends up being memorable due to a Letterboxd review hashtag: #expositiontocats. However, pathos or not, Johnson has said that she’s down for a sequel if Sony gives her a call.
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