Marvel Star Chris Evans Agrees With Tarantino on MCU Movies

Captain America actor Chris Evans agrees with Quentin Tarantino on Marvel movies. GQ profiled the movie star on a possible MCU return and got his comments about the directors thoughts about Marvel Studios performers. Basically, Tarantino argued that there are no more movie stars with IP-driven projects. Fans are going to see their favorite characters instead of the actors themselves, in the director’s view. For his part, Evans kind of agrees. But, he also finds that arrangement to be a little freeing in ways because the pressure is never on you in the way it would be in other configurations. Check out what the Captain America star had to say down below.

“That was the beauty of working on Marvel films. You never really had to be front and center,” Evans told the outlet. “Even in your own films sometimes. Quentin Tarantino said it recently and I was like, you know, he’s right. The character is the star. You’re there, but you don’t feel the burden of it.”

Elsewhere in the profile, Marvel Studios’ head disagrees with his friend’s assessment. Kevin Feige said, “I think it’s something [Chris] was telling himself, and I think it’s something many of the Avengers, including Robert, would tell themselves, which actually was very helpful to the process. But in certain cases, including Chris’, it’s not entirely true.”

Quentin Tarantino’s Marvel Criticisms

Last year, around the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Quentin Tarantino took aim at the “Marvel-ization” of Hollywood. Basically, the beloved director claimed that the actors who help bring these fan-favorite characters to life aren’t movie stars in the traditional sense. It’s an interesting throught that extends right past Marvel movies and takes aim at the larger IP-driven environment in entertainment right now. Of course, the MCU critiques got most of the headlines. (Its interesting how he would react to the high-profile Marvel stars in each of the big movies this year, especially Oppenheimer.) 

Tarantino argued, “Part of the Marvel-ization of Hollywood is… you have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters. But they’re not movie stars. Right? Captain America is the star. Or Thor is the star. I mean, I’m not the first person to say that. I think that’s been said a zillion times, you know, but, you know, but it’s like, you know, it’s these franchise characters that become a star,”

Quentin Tarantino Criticizes Big Franchises

This isn’t the first time that Quentin Tarantino made these arguments about Marvel Studios and other IP-driven movies. Back in 2020, the director spoke to Deadline about his “war” with Star Wars and other big franchises. While 2019 was a massive year for mainstream movies, he was happy to see some smaller projects break through and get their own success. He thinks that if they hadn’t it would have signaled a death knell for smaller scale movies on the whole.

“As far as I can see, the commercial product that is owned by the conglomerates, the projects everybody knows about and has in their DNA, whether it be the Marvel Comics, the Star Wars, Godzilla and James Bond, those films never had a better year than last year,” Tarantino pointed out. “It would have been the year that their world domination would have been complete. But it kind of wasn’t.”

He continued, “Because of what you said, a lot of original movie comment came out and demanded to be seen, and demanded to be seen at the theaters. That ended up becoming a really, really strong year. I’m really proud to be nominated with the other films that just got nominated. I think when you sum up the year, it’s cinema that doesn’t fall into that blockbuster IP proof status, made its last stand this year.”

Do you think Tarantino is right about Marvel? Let us know in the comments down below!