Brian Cox thinks cinema is “in a very bad way,” with the Marvel and DC Universes partly to blame.
The legendary actor of stage and screen – who most recently garnered critical acclaim for his award-winning role in HBO’s Succession – spoke at an Edinburgh International Film Festival panel on Saturday. When asked about the recent successes of globally popular TV shows, Cox cited the latest MCU installment Deadpool & Wolverine as a great example of cinematic “party time”.
“What’s happened is that television is doing what cinema used to do,” Cox told the audience of television’s originality. “I think cinema is in a very bad way. I think it’s lost its place because of, partly, the grandiose element between Marvel, DC and all of that. And I think it’s beginning to implode, actually. You’re kind of losing the plot.”
He discussed Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman of Deadpool & Wolverine while referencing how films are “making a lot of money that’ll make everybody happy, but in terms of the work, it becomes diluted afterwards. You’re getting the same old… I mean, I’ve done those kind of [projects].”
Cox starred as William Stryker Jr. in X2: X-Men United (a military scientist who persuades Logan to become Wolverine), and admittedly said he “forgets” about the fact he “created” Wolverine. “Deadpool meets the guy… Wolverine, who I created, but I’ve forgotten. Actually,” he jokes, “When those films are on, there’s always a bit of me [as Stryker] and they never pay me any money.”
“So it’s just become a party time for certain actors to do this stuff,” Cox added. “When you know that Hugh Jackman can do a bit more, Ryan Reynolds… but it’s because they go down that road and it’s box office. They make a lot of money. You can’t knock it.”
Television is pulling ahead, he continued, with incredible shows like Jesse Armstrong’s Succession and Netflix’s Ripley, starring Andrew Scott. “There’s so many [shows] and you’ve got the honor of telling the story over a period of time.” The actor said movies of his childhood such as On the Waterfront are what made him want to “be the actor I’ve become,” but it’s partially eradicated.
I dunno, man. I don’t think you can say “cinema was better in the fifites when there weren’t all these cheap action movies and creature features and cash-grab sequels” as though On the Waterfront didn’t come out within three weeks of a movie about giant radioactive ants and the fifth remake of Robinson Crusoe. And yeah, sure, last year people were double-fisting a sprawling biopic about the man that flung the world irreversibly into the atomic age and a movie about singing plastic dolls, and finishing it off with a talking alien truck fighting a robot monkey… just like how eighty years ago Casablanca came out the same year as The Invisible Man’s Revenge and House of Frankenstein, sixty years ago people were just coming out of 2001: A Space Odyssey and turning right back around to go watch Charlton Heston punch a guy in a gorilla suit, forty years ago we got Amadeus hot on the heels of Police Academy and The Search for Spock, and nine years ago Spotlight and The Revenant were running trailers at the same time as Minions and Adam Sandler’s Pixels. This is not a new phenomenon, the past only looks better because nobody talks about the mediocre movies from that era anymore. And I’m not even gonna touch the implication that mass-appeal entertainment is somehow devoid of merit with a twenty-foot pole, that’s a whole other can of worms.
And even barring that, I really don’t think you get to say “TV is doing cinema better than cinema these days” as though for every Chernobyl or Succession there aren’t eight NCIS spinoffs, three Big Bang Theory prequels, a Celebrity Golden Bachelor, Keeping Up with the Alien Ghosts of Skinwalker Ranch, and - guess what, bucko - a show with a bunch of superheroes running around punching each other in the dicks, or whatever. The ratio of “high art” to “party time” is damn near identical, the movies just have a bigger ad budget.
So in the end, it seems all you’ve got left here is a guy starting a conversation about a new, topical thing and using that to segue into talking about a thing he made last year and how it’s so much better than new popular thing, and you should watch that instead. Thanks, Brian, super glad we had this talk.
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I guess I’m gonna feel real silly if I ever get around to watching Deadpool & Wolverine and end up agreeing with this guy.
Don’t worry, Deadpool & Wolverine is the best superhero movie for comic fans since Logan
Speaking of Amadeus, Mozart wrote a song called Lick my Ass that was covered by Jack White and ICP. we’ve always loved trash.
points silently to gidget, herbie and fckn elvis movies
Yeah, I mean, jeez, Elvis spends the entire middle of the 20th century taking beach vacations and playing cowboy on Paramount’s dime, raking in 3-4 million apiece (which was quite a lot back then) with half a script stapled to either end of an ad for his next record, and somehow that’s the golden era of Hollywood, but Hugh Jackman pretends to have an adamantium skeleton for the first time in seven years and suddenly culture’s being rotted from the inside-out by a new, omnipresent trend of performers wasting their talents goofing off for the frothing masses. Simple fact of the matter is cinema has been prioritizing screwing around with the audience over the illusion of artistic integrity since 1903 and anyone that says otherwise is probably selling something.
I love Brian Cox but this is giving old man is mad at change. The masses want to be entertained. While art house films are loved by critics and film lovers, it doesn’t draw the billions of dollars type crowds.
the masses have always been entertained by cartoons before the matinee, but now, it’s cartoon cgi all the time, every movie, very little substance, just comic exposition for the hell of it
Go watch a random 60s-70s sci-fi movie.
There were always bad, shallow and uninspiring movies, just that now they are the main thing.
I’m not catching where he’s coming off “mad” so to say. He’s saying that Cinema and TV have kind of swapped and that’s almost true here. Now I’m nowhere as near definitive in that stance that “it’s a bay way”, maybe it’s for the better for the two to swap for the time. But I think he’s got a point in that Cinema is just chasing the dollar and kind of left “art” for whatever that means behind.
I guess it just really depends on what a particular person feels that cinema’s purpose should be. If it’s just here to entertain, then it’s doing quite well at that, in fact this is likely the golden times of that. If it’s here to be an expression of art, yeah, it’s completely failed at that with the formulaic rehashing it’s slumped into.
Yep, if you actually read what he’s saying he seems to be pretty level-headed and even positive about it. More to the point, I don’t actually disagree with any of it. Cinema IS in crisis, the fact that event movies still make a ton of cash is masking that fact and prestige TV has absolutely replaced it as the place to do compelling straight-up drama.
This isn’t a rant, it’s a fairly sharp observation from a smart person in the thick of it all. I don’t presume to have a better read on the film and TV industry than Brian Cox, of all people. Turns out Hannibal Lecter/Logan Roy/William Striker knows the business he’s been working successfully for sixty years, go figure.
I can’t say I totally blame him. I’m only 31, and I’m already feeling a little irked about some of the ways this world has changed. And ya, I’m pretty tired of super hero movies anymore. However, I’m really looking forward to watching Deadpool and Wolverine on the big screen together. Just gotta find a babysitter first. 😂
You think Wolverine is the best an actor like Jackman can do? Otherwise Cox has a point.
I don’t think he is saying party time shouldn’t be a thing. But he is saying actors are only doing party time. When an actor as good as Jackman is just doing campy, easy entertainment you got to admit something is being lost.
I get what he’s saying. Quality of TV shows and televisions themselves have been going up, whereas theaters are not filling the seats like they used to. People are only going to see the blockbusters and leaving the thoughtfully paces stuff for home viewing. And obviously, studios are gonna play to the fan service
If a film is 90% faces of people talking, it belongs on a face-sized screen. If it’s mostly people doing things that are reasonably done in a living room, it belongs in my living room. Now, I’m going to have to wait and see D&W in my home too, because of family constraints. And I’m going to have to play it at a reasonable volume, with captions. But it belongs on a big screen, in a big theater, with big noise. And big popcorn. Hugh didn’t spend all that effort getting hugely jacked again for nothing, and Ryan’s antics need elbow room.
It’s down to the technological improvements in TVs and increase in the expense of going to the movies (relatively speaking).
There used to be a very wide separation of resolution between SD CRT TVs and seeing a film in a cinema. Now you can have a fairly large 4K TV and have something very close to a cinema experience at home.
And on the the other end, with technologies like digital cameras, “The Volume” and CGI in general, it’s becoming less expensive to put movie quality production values within reach for TV shows. If you can re-use the same CGI models used previously the costs go down. Sure it costs money to make a CGI Star Destroyer or a robot, or a city backdrop or whatever, but once it’s done it can be re-used over and over again.
This all adds up to people only going to theaters for event type movies where people will dress up in costumes and have a party like atmosphere. As engaging as it may be to see a story about some rich people squabble over getting a lot of inheritance, it’s not something that you need to go to a cinema to experience.
You kids need to quit having fun.
I don’t watch many (recent) movies anymore. They’re not as interesting to watch as they used to be in the 80’s-90’s. With some exceptions
Also they last for way too fucking long. I don’t have time to watch a 3 hour movie. Let alone a whole series that span over two decades (looking at you Marvel).
And I have even less time to watch TV series with one hour episodes that last for 8 fucking seasons or whatever. (Game of thrones)
And they really feel like they’re just trying to sucker us into watching these platitudes using our nostalgia as bait.
Hollywood has trained a lot of people in America to not go to the movies anymore.
It almost feels like the theaters aren’t really for people who truly love movies anymore. They center around these tentpole films like Marvel movies, that usually aren’t the bedrock of what true film lovers have a strong appetite for.
RedLetterMedia did a good video on this.
Wholeheartedly agree.
I wouldn’t call Red and Red 2: The Reddening a masterpiece.
Hes a contractor who gets paid when he says yes to work. It’s not on him to write and produce good stuff just be in it but he’s got a front seat to see the higher ups either treating movies like parties for their friends or “guaranteed” income generator for the studio and without originality.
Plus since he’s reading the scripts for 50 years he’s definitely able to recognize what feels original.
Red 2 didn’t feel good, maybe it red (😉)better then it watched. The point is everyone say this about new generations.
Bob Hoskins famously hate Super Mario Bros. The script probably sounded Ok but it was shit to him. Now it is a cult classic.
Harrison Ford hates Blade Runner but he was fine shitting out Indian Jones 19: Hunt for the landing strip.
Some are to high and mighty others, miss the beauty of the train wreak.
We need to bring back small neighborhood theaters
I saw that spooky witch horseshit you did, Brian Cox. Absolutely fucking trash but I guess you needed the paycheck.
Ah nothing like effete dilettante artists telling us bumpkins that what we like to watch isn’t really art and we should go lock ourselves in a dark room to watch a black and white film that’s mostly exposition about morality given over long zooms on broken furniture or swooning women or an old man smoking a pipe.
Sorry dude but the high tech equipment we have in theaters should mostly be used to blast our eyeballs and ears into oblivion. I’ll watch deep, moving art pieces on my home television.
Cinema is declining but citing a Deadpool movie is off. imo, a good movie is a good movie
Yeah and given his previous role as Stryker and complaints about not getting paid enough for it, and saying Deadpool and Wolverine is like a party… it comes across like he’s just bothered that he didn’t get invited to the party.
I think he’s pointing it out as it being a party of just actors throwing something out because the studio expects those stars to produce a hit.
Like the way The Rock gets constantly free reign to ruin a movie because of his name.
Its not that it isn’t fun or didn’t work to make money just that too many movies think that’s all that’s needed and it doesn’t work 80% of the time.
You’re right, he is. I just think there are many more worse examples of it than Deadpool stuff.
Oh for sure. It was a whole lot of fun and is cathasis in its truest nature because it touches on the reality behind the movies but it’s also recent so he’s being a bit lazy with using it.
Old man yells at cloud.
I agree that there is a lot of slop out there, but there always has been. There are still plenty of classics being produced.
A lot of this seems to be incoherent grumbling.
Which classics were produced recently, especially blockbuster ones?
Genuinely curious. I think he’s right and I hate the cape movie culture in terms of consumers, but I stay away from theaters and watch older movies so I kinda don’t really care much.
I really enjoyed Monkey Man, Late Night With The Devil, The Blackening, Poor Things and the Whale. That’s just off the top of my head.
I know they aren’t really blockbusters by any stretch, but it’s rare to get a blockbuster that is also a non slop movie. These are all films that showed on my local cinema though, and they were all great. I hate cape shit and avoid most slop, except the odd guilty pleasure. To be honest I thought the Dune adaptation was really good and that was rather popular. So add that to my slop wall.
I have my girlfriend to thank for dragging me out to see these films and it has made me realise that I was being rather snobbish in the past. There’s a lot of good stuff out there if you just go out and watch it. You won’t always be amazed but you’ll be surprised what you do end up liking.
Oh shut the fuck up
