Two points Ethan Hawke is trying to make about superhero movies
Are you allowed to hold Robert Bresson high above superheroes when you’ve starred in a comics adaptation by Luc Besson?
That kind of question sat at the center of viral squabbling over the weekend after Ethan Hawke, in an interview with the Film Stage, was quoted as saying that superhero movies like James Mangold’s “Logan” are overpraised.
The interview was from the Locarno Film Festival, and if anything good comes out of having an isolated, decontextualized quote become somewhat incendiary, let it be that people are driven toward reading the entire Hawke interview, because — as with the actor’s excellent Reddit AMA in 2015 — there are rich through-lines of sharp, hardwon insight based on his three decades in show business.
And by taking in the full interview, readers can especially appreciate two main points that Hawke is making.
The first is that when the actor cites “Logan,” what he is really talking about is the business of marketing and branding a film like “Logan” — the art of Hollywood salesmanship and the reality of industry economics. Those are always larger issues worth taking up.
Throughout the interview, Hawke mentions his frequent director and creative collaborator, Richard Linklater. I’ve sat with Linklater twice for interviews within the past decade, and both times, Linklater has spotlighted the economic challenges for the modern auteur and the indie filmmaker. Namely, that huge and tiny movies have certain ways to secure a budget, but whither the picture with the midrange (think $30 million to $40 million) budget? What does it take these days to get a studio to back a middleweight in the land of small festival darlings and dominant franchise titans?
Part of the answer is that many auteurs have spent this century flocking to cable and premium TV, and this decade turning to streaming services — realms that don’t have to cater to younger demographics as ravenously as many film studios and most of broadcast TV.
Were a John Cassavetes or Ingmar Bergman working today — two legends cited by Hawke — who’s to say they wouldn’t be tempted to take their visionary sensibilities to Netflix? What might have once sounded blasphemous to the cinephile can now be a matter of going where the money and appreciative audience are.
Hawke, who talks of being influenced early on by Joe Dante, appreciates the niche that Jason Blum at Blumhouse has been able to carve out, “Trojan horsing” incisive social satires like “Get Out” onto thousands of movie screens through the genre of horror and establishing a brilliant business model in the process.
What Hawke — a screenwriter and filmmaker himself — clearly wants to see is room in theaters, and space in the cultural conversation, for personal storytelling. And when staring at a spring or summer marquee, it’s easy to think that every fifth movie out of Hollywood is either a superhero movie or an animated film — or both.
More than 700 films were released in U.S. theaters in 2016. And this year, nearly 150 films are receiving a wide release. The interesting trend is that for 2018, non-major studios are delivering more films (57) in wide release than they ever have in the past two decades, according to TheNumbers.com. Meanwhile, for the seventh straight year, the six major studios (Universal, Warner Bros., Sony, Fox, Paramount and Disney) collectively will have fewer than 100 films in wide release — a benchmark surpassed during every year of the previous decade. And every major studio except Universal has scaled back or stayed flat on wide releases since the turn of the century.
This is what Hawke means when he refers to the shifting “big business” of Hollywood’s blockbuster-driven major studios. Last year, for instance, Disney delivered just eight movies into wide release; of those, seven were huge franchise films (including two superhero titles), animated movies or a big liveaction adaptation of an animated film. And six of those films grossed more than $750 million worldwide — all significantly more than Fox’s “Logan” ($610 million).
Hawke isn’t even overly dismissive of “Logan” as a “fine superhero movie” — one that landed a screenplay Oscar nomination for Mangold. He mostly sees it as emblematic of how “big business” has a vested interest in selling you the validating idea that some high-commerce projects are worthy of being considered “high art.” (Mangold, it’s worth noting, has also directed such actresses as Reese Witherspoon and Angelina Jolie to Oscar gold.)
Superheroes might not be Hawke’s thing, but that doesn’t mean he is “above” appearing in massive comic-series adaptations, like last year’s “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.” The Besson sci-fi film had a $177 million production budget but grossed only $41 million in North America — or less than one-fifth of its total take.
Which leads to another vital point that Hawke makes in the interview. The actor talks about the Oscars derby that Linklater’s “Boyhood” was caught up in and weighs what sort of worth the statue really bestows. The best picture winner that year was “Birdman,” which skewered the business of superhero cinema within the larger facades and delusions of show business at large.
When Film Stage asks Hawke about whether he was disappointed that “Boyhood” didn’t win the big prize (Patricia Arquette won an acting honor), he cautions against getting “caught up in seeing other people’s definitions,” noting how that shouldn’t affect the film’s creation.
That’s wise advice. That’s because, for instance, Mangold and his “Logan” team weren’t even attempting to make a film to rival Bresson or Bergman — or even exist in that corner of cinematic canon.
When I interviewed “Logan” cinematographer John Mathieson last year, the two-time Oscar nominee spoke of the classic Westerns that inspired the film’s look and visual allusions, including George Stevens’ “Shane” and Sergio Leone’s epic Man With No Name trilogy. This dusty, weathered aesthetic as applied to a mutant form of declining gunfighter — he slings blades instead of the metal of pistols — is essentially a superpowered spin on the Hollywood western. The good guy’s ideals even center on protecting his adopted family.
So Hawke is essentially reminding you that you’re free to reject his definition of what’s good. He shares the names of some legends who inhabit his personal pantheon.
You’re free to define your own favorite filmmakers — perhaps even ones such as Robert Redford, who built an entire festival around championing indie film, yet who is still willing to play the villain in a Marvel megahit.
“There’s good movies and bad movies,” says Hawke, quoting Cassavetes. “The definition is: Did the people who made it put their best love and ideas (in it) — did they work hard to complete what that thing is trying to be.”
“Maus” author Art Spiegelman, in becoming the first comic-art creator to receive the esteemed MacDowell Medal this month, reminded me that there are illusory pitfalls in trying to segregate high and low art — distinctions that he, as a cartoonist, loves to tweak.
Now Hawke reminds us, through the Cassavetes quote, that there “is no such thing as high and low art.” Those are the snake-oil terms of salesmen and scholars who profit from hawking their definitions.
Take Hawke’s advice, and don’t buy it. Define what art is for yourself.