Which Actor is the greatest coup in a superhero film

[Powerboy]

I think we are 'attacking this' from two different trains of thought. In my mind, in the industry, Brando's attitude to the film and it's "worth" very much mattered. It continued the narrative 'take the paycheck, but this is garbage and not worthy trying in, it's beneath real actors' which wouldn't have helped encourage other actors who are serious and respect (and therefore add 'legitimacy' to the superhero genre).

I do see your point of view, mind you. I was not aware that Brando was bashing the movie in interviews. He definitely seemed to be phoning in his performance for the most part, that's certain. It's one thing to bash a movie if it isn't turning out to be what you were led to believe it would be. It's quite another to just do it for the money and then bash it.

On the other hand, Nicholson embraced the character and the movie and did his best. I believe he even did some research and read some comics that were recommended to him. Plus he was playing the main character regardless of the title.

Robert Redford is somewhere between. He certainly put effort into his performance. But, when asked what he thought of the MCU, he said he respected the fact that Marvel had a vision of doing something never done before, an interconnected world setting in a series of movies and he respected that but he evaded directly saying what he thought of them beyond that. Too professional to say anything negative but not wanting to say things he didn't believe either.

I can certainly see an argument that Nicholson was the more sought after star at the time he was asked though I guess part of it for me is that it seemed to blend in with the sorts of roles he was already noted for. I can remember older people at the time of Superman going "Brando? Brando????" It was as if his being in it made people who might not normally have been interested in something like that interested. Although I had a Humanities prof at the time who hated the first part of the movie and felt that Gene Hackman saved the movie. Her attitude was, "For crying out loud. It's Superman. It's supposed to be fun, not morbidly serious".

But I think it is an interesting question: Who really did the most when it came to drawing people to the theater that would not have seen the movie whether they were in it or not but saw it mostly because they were in it?

[GOLGO 13]

BRANDO is hard to beat as greatest coup.

But I also like that other guy that played Thor's father. Won an academy award a couple of years ago, nominated 5x for Best Actor. What was his name?

[Cyke]

BRANDO is hard to beat as greatest coup.

But I also like that other guy that played Thor's father. Won an academy award a couple of years ago, nominated 5x for Best Actor. What was his name?

Sam Neill!

[Powerboy]

BRANDO is hard to beat as greatest coup.

But I also like that other guy that played Thor's father. Won an academy award a couple of years ago, nominated 5x for Best Actor. What was his name?

LOL. Yeah but what's his name is just about the King of "I'll make an appearance in any movie they want to pay me for".

[Kieran_Frost]

I also like that other guy that played Thor's father. Won an academy award a couple of years ago, nominated 5x for Best Actor. What was his name?

Sir Antony Hopkins is the answer, and he won Best Actor in 1992.

Sam Neill!

I don't know if this was sarcasm, but regardless my sad Oscar trivia mind has to add the FUN FACT - he's never been nominated.

I do see your point of view, mind you. I was not aware that Brando was bashing the movie in interviews. He definitely seemed to be phoning in his performance for the most part, that's certain. It's one thing to bash a movie if it isn't turning out to be what you were led to believe it would be. It's quite another to just do it for the money and then bash it.

To my knowledge he wasn't bashing the movie publicly (I could be wrong?). But not bothering to learn your lines (when the b*tch didn't have that many) for a two-time Oscar winner, who was being paid SO MUCH to be there -- tells other actors and people in the industry EXACTLY what he thought of the role. It's like when actors say they didn't prepare anything when they went into a role. It's code, you know? The same way people have to drop out of projects due to "scheduling conflicts." Pffff.

On the other hand, Nicholson embraced the character and the movie and did his best. I believe he even did some research and read some comics that were recommended to him. Plus he was playing the main character regardless of the title.

Nicholson did Batman in 1989. He won he second Oscar in 1984 and was also nominated for Best Actor in 1986 and 1988. He was doing a superhero role at the height of his star power. Brando was definitely doing it on the downward slope.

Robert Redford is somewhere between. He certainly put effort into his performance. But, when asked what he thought of the MCU, he said he respected the fact that Marvel had a vision of doing something never done before, an interconnected world setting in a series of movies and he respected that but he evaded directly saying what he thought of them beyond that. Too professional to say anything negative but not wanting to say things he didn't believe either.

But I think it is an interesting question: Who really did the most when it came to drawing people to the theater that would not have seen the movie whether they were in it or not but saw it mostly because they were in it?

See, drawing people to see the film we could count Brando. Drawing other actors to want to be in a superhero movie as a respectable career move, I don't think we can cont Brando. Nicholson probably did a lot to help that. And has anyone mentioned Al Pacino for Dick Tracy (1990)? He got an Oscar nom for it. Remember Patrick Stewart, when asking his theatre friends should he do Star Trek, was told "NO!" Because it wasn't respectable. And that was in 1988. I think the combo of Nicholson, Pacino and Stewart between 1989-1990 doing more sci-fi stuff definitely added weight to the roles for actors to do.

[Powerboy]

To my knowledge he wasn't bashing the movie publicly (I could be wrong?). But not bothering to learn your lines (when the b*tch didn't have that many) for a two-time Oscar winner, who was being paid SO MUCH to be there -- tells other actors and people in the industry EXACTLY what he thought of the role. It's like when actors say they didn't prepare anything when they went into a role. It's code, you know? The same way people have to drop out of projects due to "scheduling conflicts." Pffff.

That thing of not memorizing his lines had nothing to do with Superman. He did that in the Godfather. He started doing it as soon as he got established.

His reasoning was that the way people speak in movies is totally unrealistic. In real life, people stumble over their words. They start to say something one way, backtrack and say it differently. They pause to think about what they are going to say. They interrupt each other. But in movies, television and on-stage, people speak as if they were reading something that was memorized from the written word because they are. They almost never stumble or reword. He was always pushing for more realism and this was a technique to do it.

On the other hand, there are those who say he just didn't want to memorize a bunch of dialogue and that you could fake those real speech patterns. Richard Donner said the two things he learned about Brando is that he was lazy and he liked money, two seemingly mutually exclusive goals but you have to applaud a guy who figures out how to achieve both, according to Donner.

[JamesonAnders]

Robert Redford is somewhere between. He certainly put effort into his performance. But, when asked what he thought of the MCU, he said he respected the fact that Marvel had a vision of doing something never done before, an interconnected world setting in a series of movies and he respected that but he evaded directly saying what he thought of them beyond that. Too professional to say anything negative but not wanting to say things he didn't believe either.

There's always the possibility he was saying things he really believed....

And has anyone mentioned Al Pacino for Dick Tracy (1990)? He got an Oscar nom for it. Remember Patrick Stewart, when asking his theatre friends should he do Star Trek, was told "NO!" Because it wasn't respectable. And that was in 1988. I think the combo of Nicholson, Pacino and Stewart between 1989-1990 doing more sci-fi stuff definitely added weight to the roles for actors to do.

Bringing Pacino in Dick Tracy into the conversation is kind of like bringing Hoffman in Hook in. It wasn't a superhero movie. And Star Trek was neither superhero nor a movie.

[Cyke]

How quickly you all forget the classic scene that ensured that Thor: Ragnarok would be different than the first two Thor movies:

[AnakinFlair]

It wasn't terribly long ago that a superhero film role was the death knell of an actor. Today, not so much.

To me, it's Robert Redford. No other single actor lends more legitimacy to the superhero genre than Redford.

Who's your choice?

If by "coup" you mean an actor that adds legitimacy to the genre then I'd say it was Jack Nicholson as the Joker. Since then comic book films were seen as more acceptable.

I think it all depends on what you mean by a 'coup'. If you mean getting a serious actor for a role you'd never think they'd play, then these two would be my top picks. Probably Jack would be the number one, and Redford coming in at a close second.

For me, it's Robert Downey Jr.

For a long time, Robert Downey Jr. was considered one of the best actors working in the business. Then he got into trouble. With Iron Man, he turned around not only his life's trajectory, but he was on the forefront of a paradigm shift in Hollywood.

I think the cast of Batman 89 is a pretty good example. But it’s hard to beat the cast of the X-Men or Nolan Batman films.

What comic film was Redford in?

Hugh Jackman is the greatest coup. No other actor in recent memory is going to be as beloved or as legitimate to the superhero genre than Jackman.

All time Veteran coup greats would be Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart not Redford.

Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix and Ryan Reynolds, I will give great coup recognition. They have made signature roles from playing comic book characters with a single film.

Robert Downey Jr rounds things up. There was something about Downey as Iron man that never felt final. I would have loved to have seen Downey as Iron Man without the MCU.

And see, I don't consider any of those coups. For Downey and even Ledger, I remember some serious vocal dissent about them being cast. And in Downey's case, his battles with his personal demons had left his career in tatters. It was more of a coup for himself getting the role than the other way around.

As for the X-Men films- I don't think, at the time, that any of those actors were really anybody BIG. Anna Paquin had an Oscar, but that was years before. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan were established, respectable actors, but Stewart's biggest claim to fame was Star Trek: The Next Generation (or maybe Lifeforce, and the only movie I remember seeing McKellan in before X-Men was Apt Pupil. Halle Berry wasn't a big name yet, and Hugh Jackman was an unknown. And pretty much everyone else were just working actors who weren't well known. And again, it was a coup for all of them to be cast in the movie for themselves, rather than the movie, as it helped launch almost all of them into superstardom.

For Nolan's movies, I think the biggest coup there was Michael Kane as Alfred. Pretty much all of the other actors (with the exception of Ledger, who did have a lot of mainstream buzz around him, and Liam Neeson, who is Liam f'ing Neeson) were actors known more for their small indie films than any major stars. And again, these movies helped to truly launch them into superstardom.

Ryan Reynolds is a tricky one. The biggest coup for him is that he was finally able to pressure Fox into green-lighting a Deadpool movie, which hit big. Before that, he was a TV actor that had some hits in rom-coms, and had a few forays into the super-hero genre that failed (and that he has since mocked mercilessly. That may be one of his best qualities- his ability to laugh at himself).

I'll give you Joaquin Phoenix. Definately a coup.

[Master Planner]

I'll give you Joaquin Phoenix. Definately a coup.

Phoenix;s choice wasn't a coup in a sense that Brando, Hackman or Nicholson were(A-List actors and mega stars playing comic book characters),but he had an impact because comic book blockbusters are the norm and he choose a more low budget film, when most of people wouldn't say no to MCU, even for a fast paycheck. Remember that Phoenix was a choice for Dr Strange but he said no. He proved that a solid performance, a good structured scenario and a director with a clear vision could make a comic book film that would shake the trend of "CGI and formulaic plot".

[DrNewGod]

Also, someone saying getting Hugh Jackman to play Wolverine was a great coup is like saying getting Chris Reeve to play Superman was a great coup.

"They got big movie stars like Jackman and Reeve".

That's actually, almost exactly the opposite of what I said.

"Um, those were the roles that made their careers. They were unknowns to most people".

^That^ is a bit closer to what I said.

...Jackman in X-Men demonstrated that a superhero role can actually elevate a career...Like Jackman, Reeves was a little-known actor when cast in Superman, and he made some other films outside the franchise. However, Hollywood does seem to have pigeon-holed him, and he was never able to move on to as successful a career as Jackman has enjoyed.

[JamesonAnders]

I'll give you Joaquin Phoenix. Definately a coup.

Joker wasn't a superhero movie

[AnakinFlair]

LOL. Yeah but what's his name is just about the King of "I'll make an appearance in any movie they want to pay me for".

Samuel L. Jackson!

[Powerboy]

I think it all depends on what you mean by a 'coup'. If you mean getting a serious actor for a role you'd never think they'd play, then these two would be my top picks. Probably Jack would be the number one, and Redford coming in at a close second.

And see, I don't consider any of those coups. For Downey and even Ledger, I remember some serious vocal dissent about them being cast. And in Downey's case, his battles with his personal demons had left his career in tatters. It was more of a coup for himself getting the role than the other way around.

As for the X-Men films- I don't think, at the time, that any of those actors were really anybody BIG. Anna Paquin had an Oscar, but that was years before. Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan were established, respectable actors, but Stewart's biggest claim to fame was Star Trek: The Next Generation (or maybe Lifeforce, and the only movie I remember seeing McKellan in before X-Men was Apt Pupil. Halle Berry wasn't a big name yet, and Hugh Jackman was an unknown. And pretty much everyone else were just working actors who weren't well known. And again, it was a coup for all of them to be cast in the movie for themselves, rather than the movie, as it helped launch almost all of them into superstardom.

For Nolan's movies, I think the biggest coup there was Michael Kane as Alfred. Pretty much all of the other actors (with the exception of Ledger, who did have a lot of mainstream buzz around him, and Liam Neeson, who is Liam f'ing Neeson) were actors known more for their small indie films than any major stars. And again, these movies helped to truly launch them into superstardom.

Ryan Reynolds is a tricky one. The biggest coup for him is that he was finally able to pressure Fox into green-lighting a Deadpool movie, which hit big. Before that, he was a TV actor that had some hits in rom-coms, and had a few forays into the super-hero genre that failed (and that he has since mocked mercilessly. That may be one of his best qualities- his ability to laugh at himself).

I'll give you Joaquin Phoenix. Definately a coup.

Most of these, I'd agree with though I don't entirely get people wanting to leave out Brando and Hackman unless it's just a little too far back for some.

Phoenix I would say no. He's more the result of all the coups. It's now okay career-wise to do a comic book movie.

Just as there was a time before Star Wars when an actor taking a sci fi role was an admission that his career was over and he couldn't get anything else (the reason Lloyd Bridges gave for turning down Captain Kirk), there was a time when doing a comic book role was the same until movies like Superman and Batman changed all that.

By the time we get to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, most actors are more like, "If it was good enough for Brando, Hackman and Nicholson, and we see the career Chris Reeve got out of it, it's good enough for me".

By the time we get to the X-Men and the MCU, the stigma just isn't there anymore the way it once was, as long as they know there will be good production values.

[DanMad1977]

I was wondering about Stallones role in GotG. He never did stuff like that, only one Sci-fi movie and that wasn't even Space sci-fi. He is certainly not about to make that list, but is unusual for him to do a movie like that.