The Marlon Brando role Kurt Russell wanted to inherit: “He’s crazy-great to watch!”
It’s no secret that Kurt Russell thinks Marlon Brando is the greatest actor in cinema history, and he admitted that he’d love nothing more than to take his fandom to the next level by inheriting a role that was once played by his Hollywood hero.
With so many legends in their own right holding Brando on such a high pedestal, you’d think that most of them would be too daunted or overawed by the prospect of stepping into his sizeable shoes. Then again, there is a history of high-calibre thespians taking over from the method man and making their own mark.
The most notable is, of course, Robert De Niro’s Academy Award-winning outing as the younger Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s seminal The Godfather Part II, with the upstart emulating one of his biggest inspirations and making the head of the crime family the first character to be the subject of two Oscar-winning performances.
Brando also originated the part of Stanley Kowalski in the initial 1947 Broadway run of A Streetcar Named Desire and reprised it to indelible effect on the silver screen, and in the decades since, the role has been played by everyone from Alec Baldwin and John C Reilly to Ben Foster and Paul Mescal, so his shadow is hardly inescapably huge.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Russell can’t lace Brando’s boots in terms of sheer talent, range, and dramatic heft. He’s a completely different kind of actor, one who found success for trading on their natural charisma and rugged charm, rather than immersing himself into character and showcasing himself as a talent of endless versatility.
With that in mind, John Carpenter’s muse had no interest in playing Corleone, Kowalski, Terry Malloy, or Colonel Kurtz. Instead, he fancied a crack at Superman’s dad, Jor-El, with Brando’s contributions to Richard Donner’s 1978 favourite being remembered more for his antics than what he did in front of the cameras.
Despite earning millions and a percentage of the profits, for scant screen time, Brando tried everything to weasel his way out of being on set, suggesting that the Kryptonian be portrayed as either a talking briefcase or a sentient bagel. When he did finally arrive, he had to be lured out of his trailer by a young Cary Elwes, who left a trail of delicious breadcrumbs to coax the eccentric icon from his lair.
When it was suggested that Russell, who’d already worked with director James Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, would be an inspired choice to play Jor-El in the filmmaker’s Superman reboot, he was fully on board with the idea, mostly because of the connection to the actor he can’t see past as the best to ever do it.
“Yeah! Yeah, I’ll take on Marlon Brando!” he enthusiastically answered. “I mean, there was something awesome about the way he was just looking around, I don’t care that he was looking at his lines, he’s crazy-great to watch!” He might have wanted it, but the erstwhile Snake Plissken didn’t get it, with Gunn turning to another former collaborator, Bradley Cooper, instead, who got the nod as Jor-El.
