Russell Crowe chuckles at actors looking for "pathos" in their superhero movies

In a new profile for GQ, Russell Crowe makes clear he doesn’t want to directly comment on Dakota Johnson or “what anybody else might have said or what their experience is” with the superhero industrial complex. However, when told that Johnson said big-studio superhero movies can feel like art “made by committee” (not an entirely accurate reflection of Johnson’s actual quote), Crowe admits it brings “out the impish quality of my humor.” He laughs, “You’re telling me you signed up for a Marvel movie, and some fucking universe for cartoon characters… and you didn’t get enough pathos? Not quite sure how I can make this better for you.”

Yes, superhero movies are “a gigantic machine,” and yes, “It can be challenging, working in a blue-screen world, when you have to convince yourself of a lot more than just the internal machinations of your character,” Crowe acknowledges. However, he stresses, “These are jobs. You know: here’s your role, play the role. If you’re expecting this to be some kind of life-changing event, I just think you’re here for the wrong reasons.”

Crowe himself hasn’t “had a bad experience” on a superhero film (He’s worked with most of the major cape-and-cowl studios, including DC’s Man Of Steel, Disney/Marvel’s Thor: Love And Thunder, and Sony/Marvel’s upcoming Kraven The Hunter). For him, it seems to boil down to the director. “I mean [on Thor], OK, it’s a Marvel movie, but it’s Taika Waititi’s world, and it was just a gas every day, being silly,” he says. “And then, with JC Chandor on Kraven, I’m just bringing a little weight to the circumstances, so the young actors have got an actor they can bounce off. Going to work with JC was fun.”

The superhero conversation has been going on for years, and everyone has an opinion about it. In complete fairness to Johnson, whose name got pulled into this particular conversation, she said that the Madame Web that got made was not the Madame Web she signed up for, suggesting major changes occurred in the script. The full quote that’s being somewhat misrepresented here is as follows:

“It’s so hard to get movies made, and in these big movies that get made—and it’s even starting to happen with the little ones, which is what’s really freaking me out—decisions are being made by committees, and art does not do well when it’s made by committee. Films are made by a filmmaker and a team of artists around them. You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms. My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not. Audiences will always be able to sniff out bullsh*t. Even if films start to be made with AI, humans aren’t going to f*cking want to see those.”

In a separate interview with The Associated Press, Johnson praised Madame Web director S.J. Clarkson for having “everything under control.” While filming, she “didn’t worry for a second that it wasn’t going to be great. Ultimately, like in the edit or even on set, it’s just, she’s so detail oriented and she operates on such a high level … I just felt really held and I really, you know, trusted her.”

From those remarks, it would certainly seem that Johnson blames the studio, not Clarkson, for whatever Madame Web’s failures were, and in fact, that the studio should’ve gotten out of Clarkson’s way and let her do her work. In this, it seems Johnson and Crowe would probably agree. Because even for those big ol’ superhero movies, “so many of these directors have a certain skill level—freaking genius people. Think about what’s required, right? It’s everything: the composition, the framing, the colour, the music, what’s left outside the camera,” Crowe says. “Whether it’s [Proof director] Jocelyn Moorhouse or it’s Ridley Scott, you’re talking about hanging out with geniuses.”