Actor Brian Cox can have strong opinions when he wants to, especially as of late. In his newest instance, the Succession star joined the chorus of filmmakers disenchanted with the state of modern filmmaking, which includes Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.
Like that old guard that came from the cinema programs and clubs of New York, Cox is worried about the state of the industry and he blames Marvel and DC content. They still rule the box office but he doesn’t see that lasting.
“What’s happened is that television is doing what cinema used to do,” Cox told an audience at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (via The Hollywood Reporter).
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“I think cinema is in a very bad way. I think it’s lost its place because of, partly, the grandiose element between Marvel, DC and all of that. And I think it’s beginning to implode, actually. You’re kind of losing the plot,” he continued.
Cox added movies like Deadpool & Wolverine are “making a lot of money that’ll make everybody happy, but in terms of the work, it becomes diluted afterwards. You’re getting the same old … I mean, I’ve done those kind of [projects].”
Cox has dabbled in IP material over the years with his most notable participation occurring in X2: X-Men United where he worked opposite Hugh Jackman as William Stryker, who had a hand in Wolverine’s pre-“X-Men Origins,” shall we say.
“Deadpool meets the guy … Wolverine, who I created, but I’ve forgotten. Actually, when those films are on, there’s always a bit of me [as Stryker] and they never pay me any money,” he quipped.
Cox acknowledges superhero movies “make a lot of money” and “You can’t knock it.” However, he says, “So it’s just become a party time for certain actors to do this stuff. When you know that Hugh Jackman can do a bit more, Ryan Reynolds … but it’s because they go down that road and it’s box office.”
On top of tastes changing with the times, he also notices the way the industry has changed for the worse for young actors. Cox decried self-tapes and the loss of “rapport” between actors and casting directors.
“Now, they want every young actor or actress to make their own self-tapes. They’ve got to make it without actually meeting anybody, and sometimes they never even get the [f–ing] result, because they get ignored. They spend three days making a self-tape, which goes nowhere,” Cox explained.
“Whereas now, young actors are in limbo and it’s disgusting, quite frankly, because it actually stops what an actor can do or who an actor is,” he continued. “It’s a terrible, terrible system. I wish it stopped. I wish we could get back to the individual relationship and that’s what art is about. It’s about relationships.”
He may be right but at theaters, it’s all about the Benjamins earned by the contentious relationship between Deadpool and Wolverine, who have beaten Joker’s record for the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.