Samuel L. Jackson responds to Quentin Tarantino’s recent Marvel comments

Last Updated on December 1, 2022

Love ’em or hate ’em, Marvel movies have been some of the biggest movies of the past decade, which means that just about everyone has had something to say about them. Quentin Tarantino was the latest to take aim at the massive Marvel franchise by suggesting that it’s the characters themselves who are the true stars, not the A-list actors who play them. Well, Quentin Tarantino’s frequent collaborator Samuel L. Jackson had something to say about that.

Of course, Samuel L. Jackson has played Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the beginning, first appearing in Iron Man‘s post-credit scene. While chatting on Tuesday’s episode of The View, Jackson said, “It takes an actor to be those particular characters, and the sign of movie stardom has always been, what, asses in seats? What are we talking about? That’s not a big controversy for me to know that, apparently, these actors are movie stars. Chadwick Boseman is Black Panther. You can’t refute that, and he’s a movie star.“

To recap, Quentin Tarantino appeared on the 2 Bears, 1 Cave podcast and said that movie stars were losing themselves to the “Marvel-ization” of Hollywood. “Part of the Marvel-ization of Hollywood is…you have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters,” Tarantino said. “But they’re not movie stars. Right? Captain America is the star. Or Thor is the star. I mean, I’m not the first person to say that. I think that’s been said a zillion times…but it’s like, you know, it’s these franchise characters that become a star.” To be fair, Tarantino doesn’t dislike the Marvel movies; he just feels that they’re “the only things that seem to generate any kind of excitement amongst a fan base or even for the studio making them. That’s what they’re excited about. And so it’s just the fact that they are the entire representation of this era of movies right now. There’s not really much room for anything else. That’s my problem.“