The movie James Marsden wishes he hadn’t turned down: “I didn’t know if I trusted myself”
There has been much frothing anticipation in internet land the past couple of weeks over the trailers that are beginning to emerge for what may well turn out to be the highest-grossing movie in history: Avengers: Doomsday. And it has been a lesson in just how deep people’s appreciation of superheroes runs – are people really excited about the return of ‘Cyclops’, played by James Marsden?
Apparently, they are indeed showing that it isn’t just Captain America and Thor that comic book fans will get all worked up over, with Marsden reprising the role he last played in X-Men: Days of Future Past all the way back in 2014. It was the fourth time he’d strapped the goggles on after appearing in the first X-Men in the year 2000, and helped him establish an early career as a guy you’d repeatedly see as a supporting character in films and think, “Wait, where do I know him from?”
2007 was when he got his first big breakthrough roles, firstly using his made-for-Disney dimples in Enchanted opposite Amy Adams playing the dim-witted Prince Edward in a live action movie that proved a big success, pulling in some $340m at the box office. He followed it up the next year with the inexplicably popular romantic comedy 27 Dresses, a film that features one of the most cringeworthy ‘everyone in a bar singing’ scenes in cinematic history and yet somehow earned five times its budget at cinemas.
Then, in 2011 and 2012, Marsden made two very interesting decisions. The first was that it would be a good idea to star in a film about Easter called Hop, in which a drumming CGI bunny was played by Russell Brand. And the second was to turn down a Steven Soderbergh movie that ended up being an enormous global franchise, spawning three films and a worldwide musical tour.
Magic Mike was the film, and it starred Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey, a movie that shone a light on the oily world of male stripping and was a huge hit at cinemas, bringing in $167m against a budget of just $7m.
But Marsden felt the movie wasn’t right for him and revealed why to GQ, saying, “Soderbergh is one of my favourites. But I didn’t know if I trusted myself to be good enough in this to not have my two dozen lines end up on the editing-room floor. I’d look like a naked extra in this movie.
Adding, “It’s perfect the way it worked out, but that’s one of the only ones I’m like, ‘Hmm.’ I didn’t know it was gonna be the massive success that it was.”
Instead of getting his gear off for thousands of grabby women on hen-dos, Marsden instead appeared in a string of films that, putting it favourably, didn’t do that well, X-Men aside, until in 2020 he landed the lead adult human role in the rebooted Sonic the Hedgehog films with Jim Carrey, which were far better than they had any right to be, especially the third installment which was released in 2024.
Marsden has also neatly pivoted to doing some stellar work in major TV series, not least in HBO’s sci-fi hit Westworld and Hulu’s post-apocalyptic thriller Paradise.
