From The Expendables to the Fast & Furious franchise, Jason Statham has starred in some of the biggest and baddest action movies ever made. And while some actors let a double do their dangerous on-set stunts, Statham has been doing most of his own ever since the start of his career.
As such, he’s earned the rep required to criticize other action films, which he has. In a resurfaced interview which has been making the rounds lately, Statham can be found giving his two cents on the uninspired, lacklustre and above all inauthentic action found in modern day blockbusters, particularly those produced by Marvel.
“A lot of the modern action movies I see—Marvel Comics sort of things,” the actor says, “I think it’s just a little, any guy can do it.” In what proved to be a particularly painful blow, he went on to say that “even his grandma” could perform the stunts that MCU fans were seeing on screen. “Anybody can do it,” he remarked.
In the interview, Statham went on to say that the action doesn’t feel “authentic” to him, and experts would probably agree. In one of his videos, film editor Tony Zhou points out how most American action movies shoot their fight scenes in the cheapest and easiest ways possible, all at the expense of the choreography.
On his YouTube channel, Every Frame A Painting, he compares a fight scene from the MCU to one made by Hong Kong-based martial artist legend Jackie Chan. Where Chan, he explains, actually gets hit on set, and the camera films it, American productions won’t show the hit and cut away the millisecond it’s supposed to take place.
By putting the action and reaction in different shots, the blows feel like they don’t land. This very well may be what Jason Statham is getting at when he says these scenes don’t feel “authentic.” Then again, considering how this interview is a couple years old already, the actor may have changed his mind since.