Brian Cox isn’t known for mincing his words. The Succession star has a bit of a reputation for being a curmudgeon, and now he’s turned his ire towards the Marvel giant that has cast a shadow over the entire entertainment industry.
While speaking at an Edinburgh International Film Festival panel, Cox was asked about the immense success of the recently released Deadpool & Wolverine, which has quickly become one of the highest-grossing superhero flicks of all time. Despite middling reviews, the film has already earned over a billion dollars at the box office and spawned rumors that some of those shocking cameos could result in the spinoffs Marvel die-hards have been waiting for. The classically trained Scottish actor bemoaned the way that the money flooding into the industry via superhero films had drained films of originality (as per THR):
“What’s happened is that television is doing what cinema used to do. I think cinema is in a very bad way. I think it’s lost its place because of, partly, the grandiose element between Marvel, DC and all of that. And I think it’s beginning to implode, actually. You’re kind of losing the plot.”
Cox wasn’t only miserly in his opinion, though, discussing how films are “making a lot of money that’ll make everybody happy…” However, the compliment was a backhanded one, as it was followed by him stating that “…in terms of the work, it becomes diluted afterwards.” He was gracious enough to admit that he’d “done those kind of [projects],” but still didn’t hold back in his criticism. Eagle-eyed Marvel fans won’t soon forget that Cox appeared in X2: X-Men United back in 2003 in the role of William Stryker.
The Scot then compared the demise of film to television, which in recent years appears to have hit a golden period. Shows like Cox’s Succession are redefining the genre in a way that previously The Wire and The Sopranos did. He also discussed the recent adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley and gushed about how giving the story time to breathe made it a better version of the art form. Additionally, he spoke openly about his time as a young actor in Dundee and how he felt it was easier to build a rapport with casting directors when he’d been younger:
“Now, they want every young actor or actress to make their own self-tapes. They’ve got to make it without actually meeting anybody, and sometimes they never even get the fucking result, because they get ignored. They spend three days making a self-tape, which goes nowhere…It’s a terrible, terrible system. I wish it stopped. I wish we could get back to the individual relationship and that’s what art is about. It’s about relationships.”
By Cox’s standards, it’s not looking good for the industry. Let us hope that someone can come along to save it…just not a superhero.
Published: Aug 19, 2024 04:24 pm