‘He should have been James Bond, he should have been Batman’: Cinema’s most underrated action icon ‘deserves to be a mainstream star’

Everyone knows cinema’s biggest and most badass action heroes of the modern age; Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Keanu Reeves, Tom Cruise, Jackie Chan, and the rest, but when it comes to naming the most underrated it’s hard to look beyond Scott Adkins.

The martial artist and actor has been working solidly for decades now, but he’s yet to become a household name despite roles in several major franchises. To be fair, he was a henchman in The Expendables 2, a faceless goon in Doctor Strange, and Ryan Reynolds’ body double in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so it’s not as if he’s even had the chance to anchor a large-scale Hollywood title.

Even his scene-stealing supporting part in John Wick: Chapter 4 saw him buried under mountains of prosthetics and a fat suit, with regular collaborator Isaac Florentine espousing to The Hollywood Reporter that he should be treated as a much bigger deal than he is.

“Scott should have been James Bond, he should have been Batman. Because people will see someone who not only can act, but can move like nobody else, with no stunt guys and no doubles. He deserves to be a mainstream star.”

Adkins did audition for to play Bruce Wayne in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but he doesn’t seem too keen on repeating the trick for The Brave and the Bold. If James Gunn wanted to go for a lesser-known star that can act, handle action, and boasts a jawline that can cut glass, though, he could certainly do a lot worse.