The one movie genre Eddie Murphy wants nothing to do with: “Man, fuck that”
Actors should be encouraged to spread their wings and try as many genres as possible, but it’s become patently clear that there are some forms of cinema Eddie Murphy needs to stay as far away from as he can.
Obviously, comedy is his bread and butter, and it made him a superstar. Within three years of his feature debut in Walter Hill’s buddy caper 48 Hrs, Murphy was a three-time Golden Globe nominee and the most bankable leading man in the business, a mind-blowing achievement for a newcomer in their early 20s.
Even his arena of choice wasn’t guaranteed to be the gift that kept giving, though, with Murphy’s output suffering from the law of critical and commercial diminishing returns. To stick it to his critics and wash away any accusations that he was in danger of petering out, he rebounded with The Nutty Professor.
History has a funny way of repeating itself, and Murphy’s penchant for playing multiple roles and spending too much time wallowing in the saccharine mire of family-friendly capers saw him racking up Razzies like it’s nobody’s business, which reached a head when he removed himself from Hollywood entirely after being reduced to a figure of widespread mockery.
He wasn’t close to being bulletproof in the genre that made his name, but adding fantastical elements always yielded the worst possible outcome. Think of Murphy’s most forgettable or wretched pictures, and the chances are high there’s something heightened about them: The Adventures of Pluto Nash, The Haunted Mansion, Meet Dave, Imagine That, and A Thousand Words speak for themselves.
That said, the biggest and most lucrative genre in the business is about as fantastical as it gets, with the number of household names who’ve yet to appear in a blockbuster comic book adaptation growing smaller by the year. When IndieWire gauged his interest in the matter, Murphy couldn’t have been clearer.
“Man, fuck that,” he declared. “I can’t be standing around in a movie with a stick and shit, pointing and telling people, ‘Oh, you should do this or that’. I’m just not down with the whole superhero movie thing.” Then again, his arm could be twisted if he “could play a villain or some shit like that.”
Of the A-listers in Murphy’s age range who ruled the box office throughout the 1980s and 1990s, few haven’t taken the superhero plunge. Denzel Washington is one of them, but he’s confirmed that a role is being written for him in Marvel’s third Black Panther flick. Beyond that, there are Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise, but not many others.
For an actor who’s been open in admitting they played so many roles because the money was too good to turn down, it would be interesting to see if Murphy would live up to his word and resist the advances of a superhero franchise if it came calling with a lucrative offer.
