Samuel L. Jackson can currently be seen on theater screens as the villainous Elijah Price in M. Night Shyamalan’s superhero thriller Glass, the long-awaited sequel to both Unbreakable and Split. It’s a bit of a change from Jackson’s most famous role in modern cinema – Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – but it’s still part of the same comic book-inspired genre. Not that Jackson wants fans to compare the two superhero universes, mind you.
To promote Glass, Jackson did a little video for IGN in which he reads out fun comments from the site and responds to them. Naturally, a lot of them made jokes about Jackson’s Marvel career. After one comment referenced Fury’s iconic “there was an idea” speech, the actor pulled a move that only he could and urged fans to “get past the… Marvel sh*t” as “other f**king people make movies.”
“You have to get past the Avengers and Marvel sh*t at some point, ok?” he said. “Other f**king people make movies. Ok, some of the superheroes they make aren’t as good but this is not that sh*t. This is not that.”
Obviously, Jackson’s mostly joking here, but it’s refreshing for one of the most prominent faces of the MCU to say something so off-brand. After all, it must be pretty tiring for the star of nearly 200 movie, TV show and video game appearances to have his career reduced to just one – admittedly cool and memorable – character.
What’s more, Jackson’s comments also act as good advice for those enjoying Glass. The movie has – heh – split moviegoers, with lots of complaints centering around its slow pace and lack of a major action-packed ending. These would be problems in a Marvel film, but were clearly deliberate choices that Shyamalan made for his movie, which deconstructs the tropes of the superhero genre.
