Chris Evans and the Captain America hangover: Why Hollywood stars can’t beat image trap of franchise hits

With Chris Evans in The Gray Man, the old jinx reared its head all over again in Hollywood. If your fame primarily rests on being a franchise star it is next to impossible to shrug off image trap of the particular role, not unless you are Sean Connery. It’s an old adage. Hollywood actors scaling stardom through franchise roles have eternally struggled to shed the image that the particular performance brings in its wake, quite often never managing to overcome the hex.

To millions of fans, Evans was, is and will always be Captain America of the Avengers films. It is a role he flamboyantly essayed for over a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) since he picked up the Vibranium shield in the 2011 global blockbuster, Captain America: The First Avenger, right up to Avengers: Endgame seven years later. Playing the psychopathic ex-CIA agent Lloyd Hansen in The Gray Man was among recent attempts on Evans’ part to carve space as an actor beyond Captain America/Steve Rogers. Yet, for all the pre-release hype, Evans’ outing as Lloyd Hansen has managed precious little beyond what his other post-Avengers acts — The Red Sea Diving Resort and Knives Out — did to kickstart a new phase as an actor.

The problem also persists for all of Evans’ fellow Avengers, who carved global superstardom with their respective roles in the MCU films. Robert Downey Jr, who became the world’s costliest actor back in the day when he signed up as Iron Man, ended up a toast at the Razzies with Dolittle, the actor’s only release post his glorious Avengers run. He will now look at Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, for successful reinvention. Christ Hemsworth tried courting variety with Extraction, Spiderhead, Men in Black: International and Bad Times At The El Royale, but stardom continues to rest on his avatar as Thor. Every other MCU biggie including Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Paul Rudd (Ant-Man), Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Stephen Strange), Elizabeth Olsen (Wanda Maximoff) and Tom Hiddleston (Loki) has worked hard at shrugging off the box-office burden of their uber-popular franchise characters. Tom Holland insistently made a public announcement at the end of his term as Spider-Man a while back, to underline he was out to get over the franchise tag for good.

It is not just actors of superhero film franchises. Think Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig — actors who crafted international fame playing James Bond. Each of them has hardly had a notable body of work beyond the espionage franchise. Or Vin Diesel in the Fast And Furious films and Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky and Rambo films. All these stars have very little to show beyond their respective franchises that highlight their careers. They could never overcome the massive legacy of their franchise roles.

There have been two exceptions to the rule, though. First, there are the likes of Tom Cruise (the Mission Impossible films), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow in the MCU films) and Christian Bale (Batman of The Dark Knight series), who did manage to evade the franchise trap. The point worth note here is these actors were already popular names before signing up for their respective franchise roles. For Cruise, Johansson or Bale, stardom wasn’t built around their respective franchise roles, which perhaps let them evade the image trap, allowing them to maintain the same success rate post franchise sojourn.

The second exception is Sean Connery. Among all franchise-driven stardom that Hollywood has ever seen, Connery’s run as James Bond was one of the earliest, also one of the most spectacular. From his 1962 bow as Agent 007 in Dr No via From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967) and right up to Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Connery crafted a franchise superstardom so immense and unprecedented that he was good enough to be brought back as Bond in the ‘non-franchise’ 007 adventure Never Say Never Again at the age of 53 in 1983.

The exceptional aspect about Connery’s stardom, however, lies in his post-James Bond phase. Far from struggling to create space in Hollywood after a rocking franchise stint like most others, Connery reinvented himself with a grand new career by balancing starring roles in solo as well as multistarrer projects with character roles with younger stars. He would go on to do several memorable roles in the post-Bond phase that continue to retain a fan base and are as important in defining his oeuvre as his 007 blockbusters. Over nearly two decades from the mid-eighties to the early 2000s, these include The Name Of The Rose, The Untouchables, The Hunt For Red October, The Russia House, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, Medicine Man, Rising Sun, The Rock, Entrapment, Finding Forester and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. There were interesting roles in the Indiana Jones and the Highlander films, too, which define Connery’s reinvention in distinct ways.

Connery’s ability to survive beyond the Bond legacy perhaps owes itself to two reasons. He worked and thrived at a time when screen success, devoid of publicity excesses and oversaturated marketing blitz, was more organic and hence less complicated. More importantly, even at the height of his Bond phase, Connery was already mixing his debonair superspy roles with non-James Bond assignments. Roles in films such as The Longest Day (1962), Marnie (1964), The Hill (1965), Shalako (1968), Ransom (1974), Murder On The Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and A Bridge Too Far (1977) had established beyond doubt that Connery was good enough to rake in the numbers beyond 007 even before he had gotten out of Bond franchise mode.

Hollywood has moved far away from the days of Connery, of course. In an era when films often keel over under the pressure of fan expectations created by social media hype and unnecessary PR extremes, it isn’t easy for actors to sustain and survive beyond the image that catapult them to the heights, especially if the image is born out of a role in a film franchise. The malady of hype over style and substance has after all consumed  showbiz over the past three decades or so.

A few like Sylvester Stallone have tried tackling the issue through reinvention of screen image, in a way it lets them move from older franchise to newer ones without distorting image basics. Even as the appeal of his Rambo films was diminishing in the 2000s, the action star was already trying to add a decade or two to his career with The Expendables and the Escape Plan films. These films weren’t far from the Rambo prototype, yet crafted to suit new-age taste. At 76, Stallone is set to return with a familiar ensemble cast in The Expendables 4 soon.

In recent times, most actors who have courted fame primarily by being a part of franchises sooner or later end up as producers or executive producers of such films. The motto is simple: If you can’t beat image trap, make big moolah while it lasts.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and film journalist based in Delhi-NCR.

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