“This is a superhero performance, at least for film critics who have been praising their talent for years,” said Rotten Tomatoes film and TV critic Amy Nicholson. “It seems like whoever put these two together is taking a chance on making a comic book movie with some truly phenomenal performances. For the sake of the actors, I wish them all the best.”
In fact, Nicholson argues that perhaps we’re all a little too used to seeing only blockbuster celebrities play such roles.
“Hollywood is too dependent on stars,” Nicholson continues. “These days, nothing worth more than a million dollars, let alone a superhero franchise, gets the green light without a celebrity.”
Nicholson explains that these casting requirements hinder the development of new movie stars, just as Superman launched Christopher Reeve’s career. In an ideal world, she says, more producers would go in the same direction with her next film, Fantastic Four.
Additionally, Ben Saunders, professor of comics and manga studies and pop culture at the University of Oregon and founder of the school’s comics studies program, said: A-lister, then who are you?
Saunders suggests that a British-leaning cast line-up is not out of the realm of possibility to revive the struggling series.
“This is probably not the first time that British talent has helped reinvigorate and reimagine great parts of American culture,” Saunders says. “In the mid-1980s, many of Britain’s greatest comics creators went to work for American publishers, and some of the most influential comics of the second half of the 20th century came from that era.”
Look no further than Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, the two British creators behind Watchmen for US-based DC Comics. Thanks to the talents of British-born Moore and Gibbons, Watchmen became one of his best-selling and most acclaimed graphic novels of the past 50 years (it was later adapted into a film and TV series). ) says Sanders.