Michael Shannon passed up a Star Wars role to avoid getting roped into a franchise

While some actors dream of becoming a part of a lucrative film franchise, others avoid the commitment at all costs. Michael Shannon, who reprises his role as the Kryptonian villain Zod in DC’s The Flash, says he turned down a Star Wars role to avoid becoming a part of the Hollywood franchise machine. While he won’t reveal the nature of the Star Wars role, Shannon, in a new interview with Empire magazine, cops to being “a bit wary about those giant movies” because they “take a lot of time and I don’t find them very stimulating to work on.”

“I don’t ever want to get stuck in a franchise,” Shannon explains. “I don’t find them interesting and I don’t want to perpetuate them. If I’m making something, I want there to be some kind of purpose to it — I don’t want to make mindless entertainment. The world doesn’t need more mindless entertainment. We’re inundated with it.”

Hold up. Shannon plays Zod in the DCEU, beginning with Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. That’s a cog in the franchise machine if I ever saw one. Is Shannon the pot that’s calling the kettle black? According to Shannon, his reasons for playing Zod reflect Superman’s legacy and Snyder’s work to bring the character back to the mainstream. Shannon says he agreed to play Zod because the script was “actually a very relevant story.”

“It’s basically looking at a civilization that destroyed their own planet and think the solution is to go off and destroy another,” Shannon said. “When you hear that hypothetically, if we destroy the Earth, we might go live on Mars — it’s the same thing. I didn’t look at Zod as a villain. I just saw him as a guy whose job is to protect his people.”

Shannon plays Zod again in DC’s latest superhero spectacle, The Flash. However, Shannon says he enjoyed the experience less. “I’m not going to lie — it wasn’t quite satisfying for me, as an actor,” Shannon told Collider. Shannon explains that multiverse movies are their own brand of superhero cinema, saying they’re little more than a character-driven slugfest with little substance.

What do you think about Shannon’s position on superhero films? Is he right? Does his role as Zod make this all sound hypocritical? Feel free to let us know what you think in the comments section.