Has the Marvel Cinematic Universe held Elizabeth Olsen back? We think of landing a Marvel role as the ultimate win for most actors, but in an interview with the New York Times, Olsen bristled at the limitations of being a part of the MCU. With WandaVision, Olsen has led arguably the most critically acclaimed Marvel offering, which does offer the opportunity for her to showcase her considerable chops as an actor. So what’s driving her openly voicing frustration about her involvement? And does she need to leave for the good of her future career?
Transcript
Has the Marvel Cinematic Universe held Elizabeth Olsen back? We think of landing a Marvel role as the ultimate win for most actors, but in an interview with the New York Times, Olsen bristled at the limitations of being a part of the MCU, saying, “It took me away from the physical ability to do certain jobs that I thought were more aligned with the things I enjoyed as an audience member.” With WandaVision, Olsen has led arguably the most critically acclaimed Marvel offering, which does offer the opportunity for her to showcase her considerable chops as an actor. Meanwhile, it’s undeniable that her role as Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, has made her a household name and bona fide movie star—so what’s driving her openly voicing frustration about her involvement? And does she need to leave for the good of her future career? Here’s our take on Elizabeth Olsen, and whether for her the MCU is more blessing, or curse.
Captain America“I used to think of myself one way. But after this I am something else”
- Avengers: Civil War
CHAPTER ONE: MARVEL’S PEAK?
Olsen’s career has both coincided with, and contributed to, the peak of the Marvel Cinematic Universe thus far. The first four films she was a part of—Age of Ultron, Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame—were the defining plot drivers of phase three of the Marvel story, with Endgame being one of the highest grossing films of all time. We often see a job with Marvel as a big prize for actors and directors, given the boost in profile–and huge paycheck–they get from it. But the Phase 3 era also showed us what a mutually beneficial relationship that is. Talented actors like Olsen—as well as other stars like Tom Holland, Benedict Cumberbatch, and the late Chadwick Boseman and directors like Taika Waititi, Ryan Coogler and Jon Watts–were all integral to the franchise’s success
Olsen has defended MCU movies from the criticism of the likes of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola; still, her defense doesn’t point to the merits of the acting, storytelling or cinematic value, but rather the technical achievements of the crew. Quote:
“From an actor’s point of view, whatever, I get it; I totally understand that there’s a different kind of performance that’s happening. But I do think throwing Marvel under the bus takes away from the hundreds of very talented crew people.”
These words only praising the crew can sound a little like faint praise–but in fact, Olsen has been a big part of elevating the quality of Marvel’s offerings and centering acting in the MCU.
WandaVision – the very first installment in the MCU phase four –represented the franchise trying to break new critical and artistic ground. Olsen’s roles in the MCU up to that point allowed her to showcase some of her talents, but WandaVision played to her strengths, crafting a unique and inventive narrative that required the full range of emotions—from the worst throes of grief, to screwball comedy. It’s not that Wanda Maximoff isn’t already an interesting character in the films she appears in (or that the other actors aren’t doing a great job there), but as Olsen said herself, some of those action-packed ensemble films involve a different kind of performance, one that has less time to show the nuance she’s able to convey in the deeper, more layered, episodic world of WandaVision. And such was the success of the show that it attracted exuberant critical praise and attention, and helped bring in 8 million subscribers to Disney+ in two months, relatively early on in the streaming platform’s growth.
Perhaps the biggest way Olsen and WandaVision are shaping the current MCU franchise is through the theme of grief, which is so present in the show, and has now been revisited in subsequent Marvel offerings. In Spider-Man in particular, Peter Parker’s grief at losing both his mentor Tony Stark and his Aunt May is poignantly dealt with when he is helped by the other two Spider-Men who enter his universe and in Dr Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, the narrative around Wanda picks up where WandaVision left off, with Amelia Emberwing arguing her rage in the film isn’t a betrayal of her arc in the TV show, but rather a “well earned inevitability.” The growing emphasis on such a messy and difficult emotion as grief makes it feel as if Marvel recognized that their work needs that greater emotional depth on a regular basis.
So Olsen’s influence has helped push the MCU to greater heights of quality and emotional truth. At this point, how much higher can it go?
CHAPTER TWO: KNOWING WHEN TO LEAVE
Elizabeth Olsen isn’t the only actor to express frustration with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Jon Hamm has reportedly turned down roles in superhero films over the years–he’s been rumored to have been considered for Superman and Stephen Strange. Hamm described the kinds of deals that superhero films lock you into as “draconian,” saying, “It’s a lot of work at one thing which is not necessarily the reason I got into the business.” Andrew Garfield too has been publicly cool on his experience playing Spider-Man, questioning the artistic experience of playing the role and the pressure that comes alongside it. Olsen’s recent ambivalent comments have coincided with rumors that we may see more Wanda Maximoff in another standalone film or series, and she hasn’t ruled that out, saying she’s “down for anything as—long as there’s a good idea attached to it.” Still, this phrasing suggests that contractually she isn’t obligated, and her future is kind of up in the air right now.
Andrew Garfield: “There’s something about being that young in that kind of machinery that I think is really dangerous.” // “It’s really a corporate enterprise mostly.”
- Actor on Actor
One commonality across the actors who’ve had more negative things to say about their involvement with Marvel is that they’re character actors, more associated with independent and arthouse cinema. Idris Elba described part of his time on Thor as “torture”. Mickey Rourke, who appeared in Iron Man 2, called the acting in the MCU “crap”, and Gwyneth Paltrow has frequently seemed uninterested in her role as Pepper Potts, and even seemed to forget which movies she’d been in on Jon Favreau’s The Chef Show in 2019.
Olsen’s frustration is rooted in how the MCU has taken her away from the indie movies that originally defined her career. She told the New York Times:
“I was losing these pieces that I felt were more part of my being. And the further I got away from that, the less I became considered for it.”
In her Marvel downtime, she has sought out lower budget, prestige drama that showcases her range as an actor—whether that be as the fish-out-of-water FBI agent in crime thriller Wind River, a sun-kissed influencer in Ingrid Goes West, a grieving widow in Sorry for Your Loss, or a churchgoing Texan who’s involved in a bloody killing in the upcoming 2022 miniseries Love and Death. At every opportunity Olsen has chosen work a world away from the MCU both in budget and in tone, staying true to the kind of art that moves her, and also, maybe, keeping her hat in the ring for a future post-Wanda.
CHAPTER THREE: THE RELUCTANT OLSEN?
Elizabeth Olsen may be from an acting family, but she’s deliberately taken the scenic route to movie stardom. While her sisters Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen were huge child stars of Full House fame, Olsen avoided that life, and nearly quit pursuing acting altogether after she saw what the paparazzi put her sisters through while Mary-Kate was battling an eating disorder.
She told Nylon “the media was what I found to be abusive to my sisters, and I thought I really didn’t want to be in the industry.” When she did make her debut, it wasn’t in a particularly high-profile production: 2011’s low budget thriller and festival darling Martha Marcy May Marlene, where she played the traumatized victim of an abusive cult who’s readjusting to her new reality. In the following several years before her first Marvel cameo in 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, she shined in indie roles in movies like Liberal Arts, Spike Lee’s Oldboy and Kill Your Darlings.
All this backstory frames Olsen as a more reluctant kind of star, someone motivated by the joy of the work rather than fame. Indeed, that’s what pushed her into Marvel in the first place; she told Collider she was a fan of the films, and a fan of the kinds of female characters director Joss Whedon had worked on in the past. It’s also telling to note that in between Age of Ultron and Civil War, she openly dismissed any idea of a Scarlet Witch focused film, saying: “I just don’t know how that would fit in the whole Marvel universe or if it would even be necessary…The pressure of a tentpole movie on my shoulders doesn’t feel comfortable.”
Maybe ironically, being a part of a behemoth such as Marvel has pushed her into being an actress she never thought she would be—someone who could lead a big franchise movie or huge TV show, or high profile mini-series like Sorry For Your Loss and Love and Death, and perhaps more importantly, someone who wants to.
OUTRO
Criticism of the MCU has typically focused on the quality of the movies but more recently there’s been wider critique on its impact on cinema more generally–and whether their giant success has pushed out more mid-budget, sophisticated adult drama. Olsen’s comments around how the films have led to her losing roles can be seen through that lens. Reportedly she was earmarked for a role in The Lobster that she had to turn down due to scheduling. And as much as she’s contributed to the MCU, we can also start to imagine what performances we’ve missed out on during that time. Still, her quality and her star have only risen since her first outing as Wanda. With her help, the bar for Marvel’s output has been raised, so now, they need to keep meeting it. To use her own mantra, they need to keep beating their last score.