The movie franchise Tom Hardy compared to Starbucks
The superhero obsession may no longer be at its peak, but discussions surrounding the uneven balance between artistry and commerciality within the genre are still ongoing. Marvel and DC have indubitably altered the landscape of modern cinema, making movies feel more like products primed for box office sweeps and sequels than meaningful works of art.
Despite this, many well-respected and critically acclaimed actors have flocked to the genre. Jake Gyllenhaal turned away from indie thrillers to star opposite Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Far From Home, EGOT-nominated Viola Davis took a role in DC’s poorly rated Suicide Squad, and Tom Hardy reunited with Christopher Nolan for his Batman sequel The Dark Knight Rises.
The latter, with Nolan at the helm, operated on a different artistic level to the simplistic stories usually churned out by the comic giants. Still, Hardy struggled to fit his artistry into the genre, as he once explained in an interview with Hitflix. “These movies are huge vehicles to make a lot of money,” he began, “and make a large audience happy.”
“So now you’re at the very top level of trying to bring character in a boutique way to something that is, y’know, Starbucks,” he stated. This comparison seems to comment on the consumerist focus of the superhero genre, which Hardy was disparaging of as a whole.
He continued to explain his issues with the genre, adding, “You deal with something Dark Knight – or Mad Max, or Superman or Spider-man, whatever – it’s like going to work in an airport and going, ‘Hi I’m over here!’ and then everybody goes ‘Oh here’s that, that’s the villain of the piece.’ Then it’s a thousand people going to Duty-Free. Like, ‘I AM THE VILLAIN!’ and make a lot of noise.”
Hardy found that the limitations of the genre infringed upon his personal artistry, concluding, “There’s a formula here, you can’t muck around with it. There’s a lot of rules, you’re restrained in many ways as an artist. But then you’re also grateful because of the huge exposure and the paycheck.”
Superhero movies certainly do operate on strict formulas, those that have been tried and tested at the box office. Rather than seeing them as an artistic endeavour, it seems that most actors collect a hefty paycheck which allows the to return to more passion-driven projects.
Hardy later apologised for his comments in Variety, stating, “I’m really sorry if anyone misunderstood what I said about comparing working for a huge franchise to being like working for Starbucks.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” he added, “I mean, it could have been British Airways, it could have been Virgin, it could have been Nike, it could have been any huge company.” Rather than comparing the experience of working on superhero movie sets to working at Starbucks, it seems, Hardy’s words were more directed at the consumerist basis of the genre.
It’s certainly a well-founded complaint to make and one that has been brought further into the spotlight by Martin Scorsese. The impact of the superhero genre, far beyond The Dark Knight series, on modern filmmaking has been detrimental to the preservation of real artistry and meaning in the medium.
