Actor Aaron Eckhart, who played Two-Face in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy of films, recently shared his thoughts on how to improve superhero films.
Actor Aaron Eckhart on the Battle: Los Angeles panel at the 2010 San Diego Comic Con in San Diego, California. Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Speaking with ScreenRant about his recently released film The Bricklayer, Eckhart was seemingly asked what he would do to reenergize superhero films after a dismal year at the box office from both Marvel and DC.
Eckhart said, “It’s not what I would tell them. It’s what’s on film. It’s what Chris did. If you take what your question right there and break it up and analyze it, and you say, ‘The Dark Knight,’ which is Chris Nolan, ‘brought [superheroes] back,’ from where? Where did he bring them back from? He brought it and put it right in reality.”
The Bircklayer poster
Eckhart elaborated, “He put it in truth, in reality and made it concrete and real and tangible. It was in fantasy land. And I haven’t seen a lot of those movies lately, but I think it’s gone back into fantasy land.”
“Look at Heath’s performance. Look at his makeup. His makeup looked like he did it at home, right? And that’s what we want. We want a superhero that’s grounded in reality, and we want villains that are grounded in reality. And Chris did that perfectly,” he explained.
Eckhart concluded, “I think it set a benchmark for that, so I would say just get back to truth. Truth is where it’s at.”
Aaron Eckhart as Two-Face in The Dark Knight (2008), Warner Bros. Pictures
While Eckhart muddies the water between films that are grounded in reality and ones that get back to the truth, he does seemingly understand that many of the superhero films being made now no longer provide a glimpse of truth.
And this is likely why many of the superhero films have not only lost money at the box office, but viewers have found them to be mediocre or in many cases just plain awful.
Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers in Marvel Studios’ THE MARVELS. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. © 2023 MARVEL.
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The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien discussed the idea that fairy stories and fantasy require truth in his essay On Fairy Stories.
He explains, “Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: ‘inner consistency of reality,’ it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality.”
“The peculiar quality of the ‘joy’ in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth,” Tolkien elaborated. “It is not only a ‘consolation’ for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): ‘If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.’ That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world.”
J.R.R. Tolkien via Sidh Aniron YouTube
It’s safe to say that Eckhart is indeed right that superhero films need to get back to the truth. They need to start telling stories that promote the truth rather than what they have been doing over the past few years by injecting ideologies such as feminism that are antithetical to the truth.
The blueprint is not hard to find. Tolkien writes about it in his essay, and one can see it in Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy as well as in the Phase 1 films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The films clearly show their heroes learning and growing from their mistakes and sins. Both Iron Man and Thor have to learn self-discipline and overcome their own egos and pride in order to become the heroes and leaders they become by the end of their films.
In the case of Captain America, he gives us an example of staying courageous in the face of evil. He shows us to stay true to good and proper virtues and fight against those who would violate them. It doesn’t matter how much abuse you take, you should do what is right. Obviously, Captain America was informed by what is right by his Christian faith.
Chris Evans as Steve Rogers in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Marvel Entertainment
What do you make of Eckhart’s comments?
