Gary Oldman is an Oscar-winning Hollywood veteran who has starred in several major franchises. He played Sirius Black in the Harry Potter franchise, James Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, and also was in Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. In fact, he thanked franchises for letting him spend more time with his family. Why?
Oldman said, “If one can do the smallest amount of work for the most possible money, that seems smart.” As such, it looks like the star would be the last person to judge franchises. After all, he has starred in plenty of them. But it looks like he wasn’t too fond of the film that kickstarted one of the biggest film franchises in the world.
Gary Oldman Compared RoboCop Remake To Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Films
Gary Oldman starred in the 2014 RoboCop remake with Joel Kinnaman leading it. It had the potential to kickstart another franchise for him, but the movie failed to garner much attention at the global box office. As per The Numbers, it grossed $242 million on a budget between $100 to $130 million. However, Oldman compared it to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight films. He said in an interview with Esquire:
“What the director (Jose Padilha) wanted to do was take the ideas from the first movie and expand on them. To do that, he had to smash it to pieces. It’s what Nolan did with Batman. He just wiped the slate clean, went way back to the original source material, and then gave you the world. He reinvented it.”
It looks like Oldman probably considered the movie to be on a similar level to Nolan’s Batman films, but audiences clearly didn’t think the same. Also, one would have expected the Leon star to be more compassionate towards tentpole films and franchises since he has starred in multiple ones. But he was quite condescending towards the first Iron Man film that launched the MCU.
Gary Oldman Compared RoboCop To Iron Man And Insulted The Latter
RoboCop and Iron Man can be seen as distant cousins of each other because there are some thematic similarities between the two films. The major one is the connection between man and machine. But Gary Oldman wasn’t too charitable towards the Robert Downey Jr.-led film. He said it was stupid that Tony Stark could fly long distances. Oldman said:
“It’s a genre movie, but why does it have to be f***ing stupid? Like, Iron Man flies from Malibu to Afghanistan; that’s stupid,”
However, the actor years later said that he wouldn’t mind starring in a Marvel Studios film and that they should call him up for a role. With the MCU now becoming a well-established juggernaut in Hollywood, everyone seemingly wants a piece of the golden pie, no matter what their views were on the films. But will Kevin Feige give Oldman a call? Remains to be seen.
RoboCop (2014) is available on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: Esquire
