About a week ago, Quentin Tarantino suggested that the “Marvel-ization of Hollywood” has created a generation of actors who are exclusively famous for playing their superhero character, which means they’re “not movie stars.” The way he sees it, “Captain America is the star. Or Thor is the star,” rather than Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth being the “star” of the movie—and while his argument isn’t completely absurd, it would hold a little more water if he hadn’t chosen the two MCU actors who have enjoyed the greatest career boost since joining the Avengers. How much money did Netflix spend on The Grey Man just so they could say they have a Chris Evans movie?
Anyway, it turns out that some movie stars don’t really appreciate the idea that they don’t mean as much as the logo on their supersuit, with longtime Tarantino collaborator Samuel L. Jackson now coming to the defense of the MCU. Appearing on The View (via Entertainment Weekly), Jackson noted that “it takes an actor to be those particular characters, and the sign of movie stardom has always been, what, asses in seats? What are we talking about?” In his mind, superhero actors are absolutely movie stars, adding, “Chadwick Boseman is Black Panther. You can’t refute that, and he’s a movie star.”
That being said, Samuel L. Jackson is about as much of an MCU homer as you’re going to find outside of Kevin Feige’s office, with him saying earlier this year that he’d rather be playing Nick Fury than “doing statue-chasing movies” and his own solo series coming to Disney+ next year, so he’s not exactly unbiased on this subject. But neither is Tarantino! And neither is anyone else, because we’re talking about everyone’s subjective opinion of superhero movies! So maybe we should all just like what we like and let everyone else like what they like! It’s all okay!