Captain America’s Falcon impressed by Taika Waititi’s Thor
Actor Anthony Mackie believes Marvel movies are great for the future of arthouse films. He tells James Croot why.
Another of Marvel’s Avengers has a message for Taika Waititi – he’d love the Kiwi to direct a standalone movie based around his character. Anthony Mackie, who plays Sam Wilson aka Falcon in the blockbusting franchise, says he was blown away by the Waititihelmed Thor: Ragnarok. ‘‘I have to say it is one of my favourite movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,’’ the 39-year-old AfricanAmerican actor says, talking on the phone from Sydney, where he’s promoting his new film Detroit.
‘‘ [Chris] Hemsworth gives a performance that is nothing short of amazing and those two characters [Thor and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk] are like nothing you’ve seen before within the entire Marvel franchise. The way they’ve turned this character and story around and really just made it a sibling love story between these two brothers – it’s really amazing.’’
As for a Falcon spinoff movie, Mackie says there would be no question, ‘‘if he [Taika] directs it, I’m in tomorrow’’.
It’s an attitude he also has towards Kathryn Bigelow. So when his former The Hurt Locker director asked him to be a part of her new film based on the until recently little-known Algiers Motel Incident during the 1967 12th Street Riots in Detroit, he signed on without hesitation.
‘‘She and [writer] Mark Boal have an ability to give an actor the ability to do the best work they can. She casts people that she trusts and what’s really cool is she gets out of the way and lets you go as far as you can go and then wrangles you back in. If you want to be dirty and ugly, she’ll let you be dirty and ugly. Also, a story like this, you don’t really come across too often, especially with a director of Kathryn’s magnitude, so I thought it was a no-brainer to be a part of it.’’
In Detroit, Mackie plays Robert Greene, a Vietnam war veteran caught up in a police enquiry into reports of shots being fired from the hotel.
He says that while he knew about what happened in the city in 1967, he know nothing about the incident.
‘‘We also weren’t able to find Robert Greene, so we based his character around what was in court documents and testimonials about what happened and his involvement. I love doing research, I love learning about different things. I think the great thing about being an actor is we get to explore different times in history without any consequence.’’
Mackie admits one of the toughest challenges though was the emotional aspects of the role.
‘‘A black man in 2017 has a very different way of thinking than a black man in 1967. There are certain freedoms and liberties we have today that they didn’t have back then and we have to let go of those in order to play these kinds of roles accurately.
‘‘It was a great experience and a humbling one to see how I would have been treated 50 years ago, as opposed to how I’m being treated today.’’
He adds that he has mixed feelings about how the film has been received since it debuted in the US in July.
‘‘I’ve been very surprised and dismayed by the reaction from some people to Kathryn being a white woman directing this movie, but i’ve also been very happy and optimistic about the conversations that have been had since people have seen the movie.’’
The latter is a subject he’s keen to elaborate on.
‘‘The art of conversation has been lost,’’ he believes.
‘‘We’re in a generation of Pez [candy] dispensers – everybody can tweet, but they can’t look you eye-to-eye. I think with this movie what’s so great is it gives us the opportunity to listen. I think if you look at a police officer like Krauss (played by British actor Will Poulter), you can call him a racist, or scumbag, or whatever you want but, to me, what’s more interesting is listening to him say he thinks he did what was the necessary and right thing. Don’t just yell at him because what he did was the wrong thing. As a parent with kids [Mackie has three children with wife Sheletta Chapital], I’ve realised we aren’t born a..holes, we’re made a..holes. So until we, as parents, break the cycle of kids being the a..holes that we are, we’ll find ourselves in the same situation over and over again.’’
Mackie is more positive about the current state of American cinema.
‘‘I think if you look at the upcoming young crop of stars, they’re producing now, they’re making movies and creating stories that they want the world to see. There are voices that they want to be heard and that’s not always someone in Spandex, or flying across the room.
‘‘I think Hollywood is in a very good place right now.
‘‘With the likes of John [Mackie’s Detroit co-star Boyega] being in Star Wars and me being in the Captain America-Avengers franchise, all those chips that we build up with people knowing us from those two movies we can put into a movie like Detroit to get it made. One hand feeds the other – I’m just very excited to have both hands full.’’
❚ Detroit (R16) is now screening in select cinemas.