Ethan Hawke Says Marvel Is "Extremely Actor-Friendly", But Not Very "Director-Friendly"

Ethan Hawke has weighed in on why the likes of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola aren't big fans of the the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Hawke, who played cult leader Arthur Harrow in the MCU's Disney+ series Moon Knight earlier this year, told IndieWire: "That group of people [at Marvel] is extremely actor-friendly. They might not be director-friendly, and that could be what Scorsese and Coppola are talking about.

"But they love actors. I think Kevin Feige had a great thing happen with Robert Downey Jr. and he understood that Downey’s passion was a large part of the success.

"When actors are excited by a part, audiences get excited about watching them. Feige understood the algorithm there, so they’re extremely respectful toward the process."

Hawke, 51, noted that both he and co-star Oscar Isaac were given plenty of freedom on Moon Knight.

Hawke  — who currently stars in the new Blumhouse horror, The Black Phone, and is the director of The Last Movie Stars, a six-part HBO Max docu-series about Paul Newman — also pointed out that MCU critics like Scorsese and Coppola are "stuck up".  

He explained: "It needs to be somebody in the community saying, ‘Hey, everybody, this is not Fanny and Alexander.

“If you keep reviewing these movies that are basically made for 14-year-olds like they’re Fanny and Alexander or Winter Light, then who the hell’s going to get to make Winter Light?

"I appreciate the elder statesmen of the community reminding people not to set the bar too low. I know it makes some people think they’re stuck up, but they’re not stuck up.”

In the now-famous 2019 interview with Empire, Scorsese likened Marvel movies to "amusement parks".

He said: "The value of a film that's like a theme park film, for example, the Marvel type pictures where the theaters become amusement parks, that's a different experience.

"As I was saying earlier, it's not cinema, it's something else. Whether you go for that or not, it is something else and we shouldn't be invaded by it.

"And so that's a big issue, and we need the theater owners to step up for that to allow theaters to show films that are narrative films."

The Black Phone opens in cinemas on Thursday (July 21). Moon Knight is now streaming on Disney+.

—  BANG SHOWBIZ

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