Ethan Hawke says franchises like Harry Potter and Star Wars leave you disappointed with wish fulfillment, whereas Richard Linklater movies remind audiences what it is to be human

Last Updated on October 1, 2024

Ethan Hawke is no stranger to taking the air out of some mainstream franchises. Years ago, Hawke would criticize those who praised Logan by putting it in his perspective, “Well, it’s a great superhero movie. It still involves people in tights with metal coming out of their hands. It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman. But they talk about it like it is.” In an ironic twist of fate, Hawke would then go on to star with Oscar Issac in the dark superhero series Moon Knight for Marvel Studios, which streamed on Disney+. Since partaking in that project, he’s somewhat walked back on his criticisms about the superhero genre as a whole. However, Hawke continues to present that there is a clear distinction between cinema’s big fantasy films and smaller human stories.

Hawke appeared at the Venice Film Festival in a master class, and it was here that he illustrated how franchises like Harry Potter and Star Wars don’t necessarily leave you with a fulfilled feeling. According to Entertainment Weekly, Hawke would explain during the master class, “If you go see Harry Potter or Star Wars or something, which I’ve seen a million times, and I love them, but when they are over, I feel slightly disappointed that I’m not a wizard or not a Jedi. And I walk through my life thinking, ‘I wish I were a Jedi.’ And when you see a Richard Linklater film, you walk out feeling, ‘Well, I’ve done that. I’ve met a person, I’ve connected with another human being, and that was important, and that was magic.’”

He continued, “It’s kind of like that old Zen quote: ‘You don’t have to walk on water, you get to walk on Earth’. Isn’t that amazing? I feel that’s what Richard Linklater’s movies do, is remind you that it’s a miracle that we walk on Earth and that we breathe at all, and that there’s whales and giraffes and life is unbelievable if you don’t hyperbolize it.”

The actor would work with Richard Linklater in a trilogy of films that were un-franchise-like with Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight. He would also star in Linklater’s Boyhood, which famously featured Ellar Coltrane, an actor who grew up in real-time over the course of the film. Hawke and Linklater had collaborated in “9 or 10 films together, depending on how you count,” Hawke said. He would also credit Linklater for him forming his mature take on movies. “That was the beginning of my adult relationship to movies, making Before Sunrise, and the friendship [with Linklater] that came after that,” Hawke expounded.