“Just give me the chance”: when Jason Statham pitched himself for the one genre he can’t stand
Few actors have as diverse a filmography as Jason Statham.
Who could forget the hard-hitting political thriller, The Transporter, or the hilarious romantic comedy, Meg 2: The Trench, or how about the Lynchian-style exploration of our subconscious, Crank 2: High Voltage?, but, in all honesty, Statham has been peddling the same offering of dumb action for pretty much his entire career.
This sounds like I’m slagging him off, but I’m really not; the man has a niche and an incredibly successful one at that, so all the power to him, I say.
One genre that it’s actually quite shocking that ‘The Stath’ has managed to avoid is the superhero movie. Despite a number of his films being as stupid and outlandish as anything from the pages of Marvel or DC, his Fast and Furious appearances come to mind, he’s never officially donned a supersuit. He’s actually spoken about his dislike of the Marvel phenomenon, but there might be one character that could change his mind.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 2008, Statham was asked about the potential of him playing Matt Murdock, AKA Daredevil, and in spite of his general apathy towards comic book movies, he gave a definitive response.
“Absolutely,” he said, “Just give me the chance, I would love to be Daredevil”. When the reporter suggested that he might make a better candidate for Bullseye, one of ‘The Man Without Fear’s’ greatest rivals, the hardman shot him down hard, asserting, “Forget Bullseye. I want to be Daredevil!”
A blind lawyer with heightened senses and enhanced combat abilities, Daredevil has been a staple of Marvel’s output since his debut in 1964. He made his first major film appearance in 2003, played by a very popular Ben Affleck, but unfortunately, this was a pre-Iron Man world. Just because the movie was a Marvel property doesn’t mean it was good. Daredevil, which also starred Jennifer Garner as Elektra and Colin Farrell as the aforementioned Bullseye, was a disaster, with everybody agreeing that it was a massive let-down and the character was effectively banished from the big screen for the better part of a decade.
After the movie rights to the character reverted back to their original owner, Daredevil finally got the adaptation he deserved in 2015, with Charlie Cox in the lead role, as a new self-titled Netflix series finally delivered on the hero’s stellar potential. Since then, he has had almost sole ownership over the role, finally making his official MCU debut in Spider-Man: No Way Home, before getting his own canon series, Daredevil: Born Again in 2025.
It’s unclear if he’ll reprise his role yet again for Avengers: Doomsday, but with how Marvel are throwing everything at that movie in an attempt to get people to watch it, don’t rule him out. It seems that, for the time being, Statham’s dream of playing Daredevil will have to wait, but hey, if Marvel ever wants to do a version of the character set in a multiverse where he’s a gruff, shaven-headed Briton, then they know who to call.
