Timothée Chalamet Shares What It Would Take to Get Him to Say Yes to a Superhero Movie

Even in its darkest hours (i.e. right now), the Marvel Cinematic Universe has shown an uncanny prowess in roping top talent into their films, with that cheer-worthy Fantastic Four announcement being the latest example.

But there remains a handful of A-listers who continue to dodge the comic book movie train at every turn. One of them is Timothée Chalamet, the star of Wonka and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films. (Part Two, of course, releases this Friday.) In other words, Chalamet doesn’t need any additional help making a splash at the box office.

Even if he did, however, Chalamet would likely still remain steadfast in this particular artistic diet. The young actor has quite famously taken the advice of his Don’t Look Up co-star Leonardo DiCaprio—namely, no hard drugs and no superhero movies—as seriously as possible up to now, and it seems to be doing wonders for him thus far.

Nevertheless, a comic book movie isn’t completely off the table in Chalamet’s future. Speaking recently to the New York Times, the actor quite plainly admitted that he would consider doing a comic book film if the script and director were both great. He also shared that it was The Dark Knight—a comic book film with a distinctly great script and director—that made him want to become an actor in the first place

“…the movie that made me want to act is a superhero movie, The Dark Knight. If the script was great, if the director was great, I’d have to consider it.”

And doesn’t that just say everything without saying much at all? We’ve gotten to a point where we expect so little creativity in superhero movies, that the very term “superhero movie” is tangential to a pejorative—a point where an actor like Chalamet, who has publicly stated that he avoids the genre, has specified that he’d consider it if the film had a great script and a great director, as though those two things and comic book movies are mutually exclusive, or at least an unlikely pairing.

Indeed, it’s been said hundreds of times before, but good movies are good, and as soon as studios prove that they understand that, maybe we can finally put the term “superhero fatigue” to rest.

(featured image: Warner Bros. Pictures)