Do bad superhero movies kill Hollywood careers? It’s an interesting question given that George Clooney is still hovering elegantly in the A-list sphere almost three decades after Batman & Robin turned the Caped Crusader into a neon-lit fashion faux pas. Clooney, who once apologised for the film as if it were an embarrassing yearbook photo, went on to redefine himself as a Hollywood powerhouse, proving that even the worst bat-nippled blunders can’t keep a true star down. Halle Berry, who headlined the worst Catwoman movie in history, still turns up every now and again on Netflix. Ryan Reynolds has made light of insipid early turns in 2011’s Green Lantern (and indeed as a mostly mute Deadpool in the rubbish 2009 ensemble effort X-Men Origins: Wolverine) with three well-received solo turns as the merc with a mouth. And this week, Jason Momoa has signed on to star as blue-skinned cigar-chomping alien Lobo in the forthcoming DC entry Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, despite appearing in one of the most poorly received superhero flicks of all time, the execrable Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, in 2023.
All of which should perhaps make us feel even sorrier for one Jesse Eisenberg, who recently told the Armchair Expert podcast that he has come to terms with the fact that his role as Lex Luthor in the disastrous 2016 DC entry Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice significantly derailed his career. “I was in this Batman movie and the Batman movie was so poorly received, and I was so poorly received,” Eisenberg said. “I’ve never said this before, and it’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I genuinely think it actually hurt my career in a real way, because I was poorly received in something so public.”
He added: “In the industry, if you’re in a huge, huge movie and not seen as good, the people who are choosing who to put next in their movie are just not gonna select you.”
The Oscar-nominated actor said the negative blowback from starring in Zack Snyder’s film came as a complete surprise because he was used to being in “poorly received things that just don’t see the light of day, and for the most part, no one knows”. He added: “But this was so public, and I don’t read notices or reviews or movie press or anything, so I was unaware of how poorly it was received.”
It would have been easy, at this point in the interview, for Eisenberg to blame Snyder, or the DC regime at the time, for his subsequent travails. After all, pretty much everybody else has. But in keeping with his self-effacing, neurotically charming persona, the actor revealed he only holds himself accountable. “I’m not like they did me wrong. No. I’m like, ‘Oh, I guess I did something wrong there.’ And so it did feel like I had to climb out again. It was depressing, but I’m depressed all the time in some ways. Just like, ‘Oh, yeah, of course, I had this great opportunity. Of course, it didn’t go well.’ Just pessimism.”
Strangely enough, this Eeyore-like approach to life’s cataclysms – less bitter about the fallout from a path poorly chosen than resigned to a universe that hands out career breaks with the random whimsy of a claw machine in a rundown arcade – reflects exactly the kind of awkwardly endearing everyman persona that drew audiences to Eisenberg in the first place. Prior to his turn as Luthor, and as Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg in the well-received The Social Network, Eisenberg had been plying a decent trade as a loquacious, neurotic Woody Allen type in movies such as Adventureland and Zombieland, carving out a niche as the guy who always seems one existential crisis away from narrating his own life story in voiceover.
And then came Luthor, a portrayal that in a completely different movie, or in the hands of a more skilled director, might have been groundbreaking, but ultimately ended up just as jarring as everything else in the film. Eisenberg obviously took one look at the script and decided that anyone who decides to go to huge lengths to take down the superhero equivalent of Jesus for no reason other than what appears to be basic raw jealousy must be a very strange creature indeed, and duly delivered one. Unfortunately, audiences already stuck with the preposterous titular set up, which always appeared to have been cooked up purely for marketing purposes by a focus group of interns hopped up on Red Bull and 80s nostalgia, were not prepared to have to deal at the same time with a main villain who felt less like a criminal mastermind and more like the guy in your office who keeps insisting he invented bitcoin.
So why is Eisenberg wearing Hollywood’s and DC’s naughty hat, while Momoa gets a second life under the new DC regime of James Gunn? Perhaps the former is right and this is something to do with failing under the harsh spotlight of an extreme public glare. After all, everyone expected Aquaman 2 to be useless, as it had been rewritten and reshot umpteen times by a team who knew from the start that the previous DC universe was living on borrowed time. We forget that when Dawn of Justice first came out, fans were excited about Eisenberg’s casting and the prospect of seeing the Caped Crusader and the last son of Krypton facing off on the big screen for the first time, a la Frank Miller’s seminal graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns. It all seemed like such a good idea, until it wasn’t.
Of course, Eisenberg isn’t entirely alone. It’s arguable that Alicia Silverstone’s career never recovered from starring as Batgirl in Batman & Robin, while Brandon Routh isn’t exactly a household name the best part of two decades after debuting in the insipid Superman Returns. But the experience is rare. Eisenberg is too fine an actor to stay in Hollywood purgatory forever, especially when Snyder has found a new lease of life cheerfully making multiple-cut Star Wars knock-offs for an audience that treats him like the Michelangelo of slow-motion explosions.
Nevertheless, Eisenberg’s experiences should probably serve as a warning to his fellow thesps. If the superhero movie you’re about to be woefully miscast in feels like it was plotted during a late-night brainstorm session involving action figures, pizza grease and a vague hope of launching 12 sequels, then congratulations – you’ve just signed up for exactly that.
Source: theguardian.com
