As the highest-grossing film series of all-time with box office takings well in excess of $22 billion, it would be underselling it significantly to say that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has a lot of fans. However, one person who definitely doesn’t care for Kevin Feige’s franchise is Stephen Dorff, after the Blade star absolutely blasted the upcoming Black Widow.
Even the staunchest of MCU supporters can’t deny that the long-running string of comic book adaptations have often fallen into many of the same narrative and visual traps over the years, whether it be one-dimensional villains or the dreaded blue sky beam during the third act climax, but the formula has been changed up often enough that each new movie or TV show feels like something brand new.
For whatever reason, though, Dorff gave Scarlett Johansson’s long-awaited solo debut both barrels when discussing the sort of projects he tends to seek out, making it clear he’d never accept a role in the MCU, which is strange coming from an actor who once revealed they’d be keen on the idea of showing up in the studio’s Blade reboot.
“I still hunt out the good sh*t because I don’t want to be in Black Widow. It looks like garbage to me. It looks like a bad video game. I’m embarrassed for those people. I’m embarrassed for Scarlett! I’m sure she got paid five, seven million bucks, but I’m embarrassed for her. I don’t want to be in those movies. I really don’t. I’ll find that kid director that’s gonna be the next Kubrick and I’ll act for him instead.”
Not to make Dorff feel bad, but Johansson was actually paid an upfront salary of $15 million to headline Black Widow, plus whatever she’ll make on the back-end through bonuses and profit participation clauses. No offense intended either, but if he’s intentionally seeking out what he called “the good sh*t” to stumble upon the next Kubrick at the expense of the increased visibility and bigger paychecks that come with brands like the MCU, then why has his recent filmography been characterized by widely-panned low budget genre efforts like Leatherface, Jackals and Embattled?