Robert Downey Jr’s brutal Marvel dig at the Baftas wasn’t ungrateful – he’s earned it

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Talk about biting the hand that feeds. On stage at the Baftas ceremony on Sunday, Robert Downey Jr selected the second he received Best Supporting Actor to puckishly sink his tooth into the palm of his former employer. The 58-year-old actor was accepting the award for his efficiency as nefarious politician Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer however, over the previous decade, he’s change into greatest identified for enjoying cocky playboy-turned-superhero Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). In remarks that have been presumably pre-planned, he took purpose at his Marvel previous whereas giving the viewers “the entirety of my life in 30 seconds”. “I played a guy named Tony in the MCU for about 12 years,” he stated, matter-of-factly. “Recently, [Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan] suggested I attempt an understated approach as a last-ditch effort to perhaps resurrect my dwindling credibility.” Was it a jibe? Either approach, it’s arduous to dispute the sentiment. Once an actor celebrated for his prodigious and innate expertise, Downey Jr has been haemorrhaging inventive legitimacy since first placing on the red-and-yellow steel armour in 2008.

Before his profession was cratered by the MCU, Downey was one among the trade’s most enjoyable skills. He got here near an Oscar for the 1993 biopic Chaplin and was nominated once more for the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder. He thrived on the fizzy repartee of neo-noir Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and introduced off-beat levity to David Fincher’s darkish serial killer drama Zodiac. In latest years, although, this model of Downey Jr appeared to vanish – till Nolan picked up the cellphone. But with that stated… it’s not so simple as Marvel dangerous, Oppenheimer good.

Several issues may be true at as soon as. Like the proven fact that Marvel movies may be formulaic and undeserving of significant crucial legitimacy and that Downey Jr’s efficiency as Stark – charismatic, amusing and (for many of his 10 appearances) genuinely tuned in – has been culturally seismic. It’s true that the franchise suffocated his profession, permitting no room for extra advanced or difficult aspect tasks. (Between 2012 and November 2022, the solely non-MCU movies he appeared in have been the insipid authorized drama The Judge, Jon Favreau’s culinary indie Chef, and dismal youngsters’s reboot Dolittle.) But it’s additionally true that Downey Jr made huge quantities of cash from the function (practically half a billion {dollars}, if stories are to be believed), and that there was no gun to his head forcing him to persevere with it. You might argue that Marvel had a proper to count on extra fealty from its talisman. The Bafta speech wasn’t even the first time that Downey Jr has slighted the MCU: in an interview final 12 months, he speculated about his performing muscle groups having “atrophied” after so lengthy in the Marvel machine. He was, nonetheless, solely saying what all people in the room was pondering. If Downey Jr needs to take photographs at his former franchise, it may be a tad rude – however he’s utterly inside his rights to do it.

When Downey Jr was first solid as Iron Man, it was a chance on the studio’s half: only some years beforehand, the actor had been a Hollywood cautionary story, beset by authorized issues and a devastating drug habit that had rendered him all however uninsurable. After getting clear and rebuilding his popularity, Downey Jr was nonetheless a dangerous alternative for a mainstream, child-friendly blockbuster like Iron Man. It was a chance that paid off, in fact, for all concerned. But it’s not like there wasn’t a value – to Downey’s personal inventive integrity. The youngster of radical avant-garde filmmaker Robert Downey Sr (Putney Swope), Downey got here from a background of actual inventive authenticity; that he would go on to change into the face of the industrial mainstream is one among cinema’s nice ironies. Of course he’s conscious of his diminishing crucial popularity. The solely shock is that it took him so lengthy to decide to a challenge like Oppenheimer.

To some extent, Downey Jr’s feedback additionally testify to the precarious place the previously monolithic superhero franchise now finds itself in. Just a number of years in the past, throwing shade at Marvel Studios was a serious no-no: when Martin Scorsese infamously likened superhero movies to rollercoaster rides, as an illustration, Marvel followers reacted like the Goodfellas filmmaker had personally spat at Stan Lee’s grandmother. Now, although – inspired, maybe, by the declining field workplace numbers and worsening evaluations for latest MCU entries – Downey and others have began taking photographs at Marvel with relative abandon.

What’s extra, Downey is much from the first critical actor to criticise his personal forays into the mainstream. Sir Alec Guinness, for instance, was publicly disparaging of his work on Star Wars, describing the iconic sci-fi movie as “simple stuff for all ages”, and George Lucas’s dialogue as “pretty ropey”. Robert Pattinson stated he would have “mindlessly hated” the Twilight franchise had he not been in it himself.

To their credit score, Downey Jr and Guinness at least delivered the items on display, regardless of any inventive reservations – this isn’t all the time the case. Madame Web star Dakota Johnson has been the discuss of social media in latest weeks, because of her palpable, sarcastic indifference to the movie she’s selling and the superhero style at giant. In one among the extra damning digs, Johnson referred to the movie as being “like if AI had made your boyfriend’s favourite movie” throughout a internet hosting gig on Saturday Night Live. It’s simple to see why Johnson may assume she’s higher than the movie – the evaluations of Madame Web have been completely eviscerating. But whereas Johnson’s nearly laughably disengaged efficiency could have preserved her personal cultural cool, it didn’t assist the movie. Downey Jr, on the different hand, solely ever elevated the Marvel movies, no matter the shoddiness of the challenge. (Iron Man 2 might be the franchise’s nadir, by no fault of his.) And this, in the end, is what he needs to be judged upon – the work itself.

No matter what number of awards are lavished on Oppenheimer, or how loudly Downey Jr disparages his Marvel previous, it will all the time be Iron Man that defines his profession. And he’s proper – there is scant credibility on this. But it’s higher he acknowledges this truth than attempt to faux these movies are one thing they’re not. It’s an announcement of intent: Downey Jr has already had one miraculous profession comeback. Now, it appears, he’s able to do it once more.