The role Morgan Freeman didn’t want to reprise: “It doesn’t seem to work”
Throughout his illustrious career, Morgan Freeman has often demonstrated that he’s not opposed to the idea of a sequel.
Freeman’s first dalliance with a franchise character came when he played Detective Alex Cross in the 1997 serial killer thriller Kiss the Girls. That crusading sleuth is the host of a slew of potboiler airport novels written by James Patterson, and in 2001, Freeman returned for a second go-around in Along Came a Spider. Then, in the 2000s and beyond, he played God himself in a couple of Bruce Almighty movies, magician debunker Thaddeus Bradley in two Now You See Me blockbusters, and political climber Alan Trumbull in the Olympus Has Fallen trilogy.
Of course, it would be a massive oversight not to mention arguably Freeman’s most famous recurring character: tech wizard Lucius Fox in Christopher Nolan’s all-conquering Dark Knight Trilogy. He reportedly had to be wooed for months by Nolan to agree to play the kindly, wryly funny Fox in Batman Begins, but once he agreed to come on board, he thoroughly enjoyed playing the character.
With customary self-deprecating humour, he once revealed that he loved Fox because he was the opposite of him in many ways: “He’s a brain. He’s very decent, he’s loyal. But I think he’s extremely smart. I like that, because I’m not!”
Ultimately, Freeman played Fox three times and had a ball, but when Nolan’s trilogy ended with 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, he assumed that was all she wrote. So, imagine his surprise when he was being interviewed by USA Today in 2015, and was told that Ben Affleck had just been cast by Zack Snyder as the Caped Crusader in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Interestingly, Freeman was blissfully unaware that another version of Batman was even on the way, let alone that his old The Sum of All Fears co-star had been cast in the role. “This is the first I am hearing of it,” Freeman confirmed. “My first reactions are ‘Wow’ and ‘Good luck.’”
He then admitted that he was slightly surprised at a new incarnation of the franchise being brought to life only three years after Nolan’s trilogy wrapped up. “I thought that no one would try it again for a few years more to let this whole thing die down,” Freeman mused. “Because it’s still there. So, I don’t know, I hope Ben does well.”
Freeman’s well-wishes for Affleck, who also directed him in Gone Baby Gone, were certainly heartwarming. However, when he was asked if he thought he’d be enlisted to play Fox for a fourth time alongside the actor, he threw cold water on the idea. “If the new movie does have a Lucius Fox, I don’t think it’s going to be me,” the Se7en icon theorised. Did this mean Freeman wouldn’t want to play the role again if he was asked? That was unclear, although he didn’t sound overly enthusiastic.
If anything, Freeman’s thinking was that his version of Fox wouldn’t be reprised in a reboot of the character, because reboots usually entail entirely new casts. “It doesn’t seem to work to mix characters in the movies,” he noted. “If you are going to change the lead character, you’re probably going to change all the characters.”
To be fair to the man, he wasn’t wrong, as no cast members from The Dark Knight Trilogy were carried over to Batman v Superman. Fox also missed the cut entirely, meaning Freeman is still the only big-screen version of a character who has been a mainstay in Batman comics since 1979. In truth, he dodged a bullet because Batman v Superman was dismal, and playing the character sent Affleck’s personal and professional life into a tailspin.
However, while Freeman was right on this occasion, there is precedent for certain actors staying put as characters even while everyone else changes around them. After all, Michael Gough and Pat Hingle clung to their roles as Alfred Pennyworth and Commissioner Gordon when the original Tim Burton Batman movies gave way to Joel Schumacher’s day-glo reimagining, so it mightn’t be outside the realm of possibility for Freeman to step into Fox’s jaunty bow-tie once more in the future.
