Brian Cox believes that part of the reason why movies are “in a very bad way” is because of the Marvel and DC Worlds. The renowned stage and film actor, who lately received praise from critics for his brilliant performance in HBO’s Succession, appeared on Saturday at a discussion at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. In response to a question concerning the recent critical acclaim of internationally popular TV series, Cox highlighted Deadpool & Wolverine, the most recent MCU film, as a prime illustration of cinematic “party time.”
Cox spoke to the audience about television’s uniqueness, saying, “What’s happened is that television is doing what cinema used to do. 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 talked about Deadpool & Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, saying movies 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].” In X2: X-Men United, Cox played William Stryker Jr., a military scientist who convinced Logan to become Wolverine. Cox has acknowledged that he “forgets” that he “created” Wolverine. “Deadpool meets the guy … Wolverine, who I created, but I’ve forgotten. Actually,” he jested, “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 remarked. “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.” He went on, with amazing shows like Jesse Armstrong’s Succession and Netflix’s Ripley, featuring Andrew Scott, television is advancing. “There’s so many [shows] and you’ve got the honor of telling the story over a period of time..” Though it’s mostly erased, the actor claimed that childhood films like On the Waterfront are what inspired him to “be the actor I’ve become.”
Cox gave a brief talk about her childhood in Dundee, Scotland, a city known for its twenty-one theatres. “From the ages of 6 to 8, I visited all of them.” He made a comparison between the difficulties of contemporary actor casting procedures and the filmmaking of his era. “Now, they want every young actor or actress to make their own self-tapes. They’ve got to make it without actually meeting anybody, and sometimes they never even get the fucking result, because they get ignored. They spend three days making a self-tape, which goes nowhere.”
Actors and casting directors once “had a rapport,” according to Cox, so aspiring pros in the field knew where things were headed. “Whereas now, young actors are in limbo and it’s disgusting, quite frankly, because it actually stops what an actor can do or who an actor is. It’s a terrible, terrible system. I wish it stopped. I wish we could get back to the individual relationship and that’s what art is about. It’s about relationships.”