Ethan Hawke is having a solid season, both as a big bad guy on Moon Knight and a royal martyr in The Northman. Those movies exist on pretty different spectrums of filmmaking, from popcorn superhero entertainment to more serious art, but in a recently unearthed interview, Hawke says he doesn’t really make a distinction between the two.
“I love superhero movies, I like every kind of movie. I don’t think there’s a difference between high art and low art,” he explained. “There are movies that people put their heart into, and there are movies that people try to cash in on. And the ones I like are the ones people put their heart into, and you can feel it in a superhero movie or you can feel it in a horror movie or you can feel it in an arthouse movie.”
Hawke found himself on the business end of comic book movie fandom when he lightly criticized the superhero movie takeover a few years back, but his clarifying comments (and subsequent film choices) show that the actor is less opposed to superhero media than he is a superhero monopoly.
He calls Logan, The Dark Knight and Doctor Strange his favorite superhero movies. “Those are great films, but they’re not the only thing there is,” he says. “Our country turns everything into a competition. What’s its score on Rotten Tomatoes? How much box office did it make? When I was growing up, those things didn’t exist. You could just absorb a movie for how it meant to you. There’s no game to win. That’s not what art is.”
