Jeremy Renner’s greatest-ever movie, according to Jeremy Renner
Jeremy Renner is a truly fascinating case. As nice a guy as he seems – he got hit by that snowplough because he pushed his nephew out of the way, lest we forget – he’s probably very few people’s favourite actor.
He’s had plenty of cracking roles over the years and even bagged a couple of Oscar nods, but it’s been a while since he truly knocked it out of the park. As a supporting actor, he’s solid – no doubt about it – and he’s popped up in some properly iconic pop culture moments. Still, in an industry as jam-packed as Hollywood, you can’t help but wonder how he keeps managing to stay in the mix.
Appearing on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Renner was given the task of pitting some of his best films against each other. The host chose eight of his movies, including Arrival, The Hurt Locker, and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and made the actor choose his favourite through a single elimination tournament. The final came down to Wind River, a 2017 crime drama, and Avengers: Endgame, the box office-conquering finale to Marvel’s ‘Infinity Saga’. You might think this is an easy decision on paper… and it was.
“I have to go with Endgame, because of how culturally significant that is,” he said. “It required so many people and so many films – 22 films to make that 23rd film. The outcome of that, you know. To be able to weep and laugh, and… I mean we all know what that movie is right? It’s insane.”
For those of you who somehow don’t know, Endgame was the highest-grossing film of all time for a while, taking less than a week to reach the $1 billion mark. It’s still the second-highest-grossing film ever, having been overtaken by Avatar. It’s also the 22nd film in the franchise, not the 23rd, although we’ll forgive Renner for losing track. His character, Clint ‘Hawkeye’ Barton, plays a pivotal part in the plot’s time-travelling shenanigans. This may have been done to counteract the claims that he is the ‘most boring Avenger’, but that’s by the by.
Though he never got his own standalone film – he’d have to wait for Disney+ to come along to receive a spotlight – Hawkeye has been a part of the ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’ (MCU) pretty much from the start. The character’s first appearance was a brief cameo in Thor, before his more fleshed-out unveiling in The Avengers. He’s been credited in eight different MCU films and TV shows and hasn’t been killed off or retired like so many of his fellow ‘Infinity Saga’ colleagues. To paraphrase Wade Wilson, Renner’s probably going to be playing this part until he’s 90.
It might seem like a boring choice to pick a wildly successful blockbuster as your favourite film, but Renner is absolutely spot on in his analysis. Of all his work, Endgame is the thing that’s had the biggest impact and, in all likelihood, nothing he will do in the future will ever top it.
