Chris Hemsworth wasn’t best pleased when he caught wind of Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese’s scathing criticisms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the always-affable Chris Evans has decided to take a different approach.
One of the two-time Academy Award-winning Pulp Fiction director’s most heated bones of contention was that the actors in the franchise aren’t really movie stars, but they’re presented as such through association with the characters they play.
While Robert Downey Jr. and many others would surely disagree with that point, Evans admitted to GQ that Tarantino was fairly spot-on in his assessment, sharing that he’s happy not to shoulder the entire burden of carrying a multi-billion dollar brand all on his lonesome.
“That was the beauty of working on Marvel films. You never really had to be front and center. Even in your own films sometimes. Quentin Tarantino said it recently, and I was like, you know, he’s right. The character is the star. You’re there, but you don’t feel the burden of it.”
Of course, Kevin Feige would disagree by offering that “I think it’s something he was telling himself, and I think it’s something many of the Avengers, including Robert, would tell themselves, which actually was very helpful to the process. But in certain cases, including Chris’, it’s not entirely true.” Regardless of where the truth really lies, the actor is at the very least self-aware enough to know that Chris Evans: The Winter Soldier or Chris Evans: Civil War maybe wouldn’t have sold as many tickets.