Ethan Hawke is coming off a career-best performance in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, and has his latest directorial effort Blaze just arriving in theaters. He remains an indie stalwart who will forever be linked to films like the Before Sunrise trilogy and Boyhood, but Hawke hasn’t been against starring in the occasional mainstream studio film. So it’s clear he has at least some respect for the studio system, but if you think that extends to an appreciation of superhero movies, you’d be very wrong.
Speaking with The Film Stage, Hawke brings up the age-old discussion of business vs. creativity, saying that blockbuster films are pushing out the artistic works of some of our best filmmakers. And of course, he can’t help taking a shot at comic book films in the process…
“So many things get lost in the cracks and if those big names are getting lost, where are the ‘Gattacas’ of right now? It might be like other art forms where it might take 50 years to curate what’s happening right now. That’s why film festivals have become so important because you guys at film festivals are like curators of, like, what does the world need to be paying attention to. What should be seen? If we didn’t have these festivals, big business would crush all these smaller movies.”
“Now we have the problem that they tell us ‘Logan’ is a great movie. Well, it’s a great superhero movie. It still involves people in tights with metal coming out of their hands. It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman. But they talk about it like it is. I went to see Logan cause everyone was like, ‘This is a great movie’ and I was like, ‘Really? No, this is a fine superhero movie.’ There’s a difference but big business doesn’t think there’s a difference. Big business wants you to think that this is a great film because they wanna make money off of it.”
He comes off like a super snob, and a little bit of a hypocrite. If he’s really so offended by the fantastical nature of a film like Logan, then what’s that mean for a vampire movie like Daybreakers, which Hawke happily starred in? What’s the difference? Or Valerian? Or Gattaca? To me it’s all different forms of science-fiction. Plus, as the guy who gave us the wretched Getaway he has some nerve commenting on the quality of anybody else’s movie.
