The movie that swore Tom Hardy off an entire genre for life: “I didn’t understand”
If rumours are to be believed, then Tom Hardy might be stepping away from acting for a while, which is a shame because he’s become one of those stars that almost guarantees a decent watch on screens both big and small, and has done for the past 15 years.
As soon as he’d played notorious prisoner Charles Bronson in the 2008 movie of the same name as his first major role, it was clear he was a talent of some proportions, and that was borne out immediately when he made Christopher Nolan’s Inception and the brutal but brilliant martial arts drama Warrior in quick succession two years later.
By then, he had been in the business for a decade, carving out a career as an adaptable actor who could jump from genre to genre, but was undeniably more effective when portraying troubled, violent souls with depth. Warrior was such a big hit, however, that Hollywood immediately came calling to make him into something he wasn’t, a comedy star, and that’s how, just a year later, he was signing on to do one of the worst movies of his life.
2012’s This Means War did at least have some fighting in it, but in truth, the most vicious aspect of it was how poor the script was, leaving Hardy adrift in a rom-com that just didn’t suit him at all. Co-starring Chris Pine, it told the story of two CIA agents who fall for the same woman in Reese Witherspoon and would stop at nothing to get one over on the other. Somehow, despite some very poor reviews and it not being a good film in any way at all, it managed to make a healthy profit at the box office, although Hardy does not have fond memories to say the least.
Recalling his experience making This Means War, Hardy told USA Today, “I love to do things I hadn’t done before. I didn’t understand how you could do something which is so much fun and be so miserable doing it. I probably won’t do a romantic comedy again, do you know what I mean?”
Thankfully, he stayed true to his word, but what he did do was spend the next decade at least being absolutely ace in all manner of movies, from another two Nolan films in The Dark Knight Rises and Dunkirk, to some superb TV in the likes of Taboo and Peaky Blinders.
He got the most amount of critical acclaim for his performance in the Alejandro González Iñárritu epic The Revenant in 2015 opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, earning his sole Oscar nomination, and three years later, he made his first appearance as Eddie Brock in Marvel’s Venom.
Despite not always getting the best reviews, the monster mash-up trilogy has been a big success for the studio and for Hardy, earning a combined $1.5billion at the box office and crossing over with the Spider-Men movies starring Tom Holland. No word yet, though, as to whether or not Hardy will make an appearance in the fourth film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which hits cinemas at the end of July this year.
Meanwhile, he’s finished filming on another helping of Guy Ritchie’s MobLand with Pierce Brosnan, so we won’t be left without a fill of Hardy just yet, but at the moment, he doesn’t have any confirmed new movies on the horizon.
