Marvel fans are biting back at Stephen Dorff after the Blade actor said Black Widow "looks like garbage" and that he's "embarrassed" for star Scarlett Johansson. Dorff, who played vampire villain Deacon Frost opposite Wesley Snipes in the 1998 Marvel Comics adaptation Blade, made headlines when he told The Independent that Marvel Studios' latest, out July 9, "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."
In 2020, Dorff said he's "not the biggest fan of the superhero genre" because "he's not a kid anymore so if I was a kid, I'd probably love it." Despite his distaste for Marvel movies, Dorff told Entertainment Tonight he would reprise the Deacon Frost role in the next Blade, the Marvel Cinematic Universe-set reboot starring Mahershala Ali as the titular vampire hunter.
"I definitely would love to reinvent that character because that character's someone who really stands [the test of time]," Dorff said last year. "I still talk about [him] 20-something years later. I'm still signing Deacon Frost pictures out front today, so we'll see where it goes."
Dorff is the latest actor to make headlines for criticizing Marvel movies. Original The Incredible Hulk star Lou Ferrigno, who previously said he's "not very impressed" with Marvel's rebooted Hulk or actor Mark Ruffalo, shaded modern Marvel stars in recent weeks when Ferrigno tweeted he "can't think of another superhero that isn't in costume or CGI. Worked damn hard on my diet and exercise for the Hulk."
Ethan Hawke, who joins the MCU alongside Oscar Isaac in the upcoming Disney+ series Moon Knight, also received flack over comments made in 2018 when he criticized Hugh Jackman's X-Men swansong Logan and other superhero movies. "Now we have the problem that they tell us Logan is a great movie. Well, it's a great superhero movie," Hawke told The Film Stage at the time. "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."
Described by Marvel Studios as an "action-packed spy thriller," Black Widow stars Johansson in Natasha Romanoff's first solo film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Johansson, a veteran of the MCU since 2010's Iron Man 2, is joined by franchise newcomers Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff, and David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov.
Here's what Marvel fans are saying about Dorff's reaction to Black Widow, which sparked a trending topic on Twitter: