Michael Shannon’s latest comments have caused a disturbance in the Force.
While the classically trained actor starred in the 2013 “Superman” reboot “Man of Steel” and reprised his role of General Zod in “The Flash,” Shannon told Empire magazine he turned down the “Star Wars” franchise in 2016 because he doesn’t find “giant movies … stimulating.”
“I don’t ever want to get stuck in a franchise,” he told the outlet in a piece for the July issue. “I don’t find them interesting and I don’t want to perpetuate them. If I’m making something, I want there to be some kind of purpose to it — I don’t want to make mindless entertainment.”
“The world doesn’t need more mindless entertainment. We’re inundated with it,” he added.
Shannon didn’t name the “Star Wars” movie in question, but the timeline suggests he may have been offered a part in “The Last Jedi.” While appearing in it might have made him a target of online backlash, his comments to Empire last week have arguably done just the same.
“He cashed that check for The Flash tho. I tell you that much right now,” tweeted one person about Shannon’s “mindless entertainment” barometer, while another tweeted: “Says the guy who just starred in the most mindless movie of all time.”
“The Flash” bombed at the box office last week, with pundits arguing that Ezra Miller’s off-screen behavior or “superhero fatigue” were to blame. Shannon had his reasons for returning as Zod, however, and said “Man of Steel” was “actually a very relevant story.”
“It’s basically looking at a civilization that destroyed their own planet and think the solution is to go off and destroy another,” Shannon told Empire magazine. “When you hear that hypothetically, if we destroy Earth, we might go live on Mars — it’s the same thing.”
Shannon said a huge motivator to join “Man of Steel” was “it was a one-and-done” job and didn’t lock him into a multiyear franchise. While he claimed to “like the story that ‘The Flash’ is telling,” he notably also explained he “wasn’t there for a long amount of time.”
“I was just there a couple of weeks — so it didn’t break my back to do it,” he told Empire.
While Shannon’s explanation for starring in one comic book movie and briefly reprising that role appears to make personal sense, him joining the DC Extended Universe — and clowning a galaxy far, far away — has many fans on social media turning to the dark side.