The huge movie franchise Michael Shannon refused to star in: “I don’t find them very stimulating”
Michael Shannon has played all sorts of unusual roles, and he’s rarely repeated himself. Even if there are many actors who spend their careers pining for a role in a major blockbuster franchise, Shannon has avoided those parts because he’s simply not interested.
He’s been popping up in films since 8 Mile and Vanilla Sky, but Shannon has slowly become one of the most eclectic and exciting actors of today. Whether he’s a ruthless law enforcement officer in Nocturnal Animals or a quirky drug dealer in The Night Of, Shannon can’t be accused of phoning it in; even if he’s been involved with some generic direct-to-VOD genre films, he’s generally the best part of them.
Shannon doesn’t seem necessarily opposed to appearing in projects that an average moviegoer might enjoy, but he hasn’t made it a priority to make himself commercially viable like damn-near every actor aiming for the top. Even if he landed a key role in Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, few would have predicted that the surprisingly graphic monster romance film would end up being the first fantasy film to sweep the Oscars.
Even if he’s shown up in a few superhero films, Shannon has also expressed some remorse about doing work that he finds “unsatisfying”. To be fair, Shannon’s performance as General Zod was one of the few aspects of Zack Snyder’s DC film Man of Steel that people couldn’t stop gushing about, as hardcore comic book nerds were put off by the violent, cynical depiction of Superman. Even if Shannon managed to escape the clutches of the DC Extended Universe with his dignity intact, he was not nearly as enthused about having to play Zod again in The Flash, which merged DC characters from different universes into a crossover adventure.
Despite years of anticipation regarding a film about the world’s fastest superhero, The Flash was a massive disappointment, marred by distracting CGI cameos and the off-screen drama of its star, Ezra Miller. That may be why Shannon turned down the chance to appear in a Star Wars film, which would seemingly be a dream for any other kid who grew up in the 1980s.
“I’m always a bit wary about those giant movies because they take a lot of time and I don’t find them very stimulating to work on,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I don’t ever want to get stuck in a franchise. I don’t find them interesting and I don’t want to perpetuate them.”
Shannon may not have seen much harm in Man of Steel, a film in which he has his neck graphically snapped, but it’s safe to say he didn’t expect his character to be brought back as a floating corpse in its sequel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Meaning, not money, is what he’s looking for, which may explain why being a new Star Wars character gave him trepidation.
“If I’m making something, I want there to be some kind of purpose to it — I don’t want to make mindless entertainment,” he said. “The world doesn’t need more mindless entertainment. We’re inundated with it.”
It may have been seen as goddamn unthinkable to describe George Lucas’ science fiction saga as “mindless entertainment” a decade ago, but Star Wars has gone through a tough period of backlash recently. Given that Shannon turned down a role in a film that would’ve started production in late 2016, maybe he was talking about Solo: A Star Wars Story, the first box office stinker in the galaxy far, far away. Although the project had some creative hurdles after original directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were fired and replaced by Ron Howard, audiences weren’t particularly interested in a Han Solo flick that didn’t star the man himself: Harrison Ford.
Shannon appears in many films each year, including many that don’t ever break into wide release. You don’t work at that type of rate if you don’t love the craft of acting, so it’s important that Shannon is proud of what he does. In all likelihood, being in Star Wars would have forced him to turn down a good number of interesting parts.
