Does Chris Evans Need A New Manager? What’s Happening With His Career?
Chris Evans has been in Hollywood for 25 years. His films have grossed a total of $13.8 billion at the box office. He’s one of the most important actors in my life, primarily for his role as Captain America, one of my favorite movie characters of all time. But it’s safe to say that Evans’ career hasn’t been great. He’s made a lot of missteps in his career. It all raises the question. Does he need a new manager? What’s happening? Let’s talk about it!
My Thoughts
This is a thought that I’ve been having for a while but came up again during the press junket for Materialists. This is a new rom-com with him, Dakota Johnson, and Pedro Pascal. During the press junket the three of them were playing would you rather. One of the questions was “would you want to have your co-stars pick your future films.” Even made a joking remark that was “if I did that, I’d ruin both your careers.” It has a bit of self awareness element to Evans about his career.
Evans has had an interesting career, his career goes back to 2001 with Not Another Teen Movie. In that film he’s playing the cocky football jock that’s smooth with the ladies but a jerk. Him being this cocky yet likable jerk sort of defined his career for years. His first big movie that made some money was Tim Story’s Fantastic Four movies. In those films he’s playing Johnny Storm, a character known for being kind of jerky but has this likable side to him. He’s very much a hot head (pun intended). All of the films he did pre-MCU were not received well. His highest reviewed film was Scott Pilgrim vs The World that has an 83%. That was when he was 10 years into his career and his best review is 83% and it’s his only freshly reviewed film. That’s not a good sign and he was considered a failed actor.
Kevin Feige and the people at Marvel took a chance on him as Captain America and it turned out fantastic. It made Captain America a far more popular character, he quickly became one of the MCU’s best characters. The Captain America sequels, The Winter Soldier and Civil War are widely regarded as some of the MCU’s best films. You move into Infinity War and Endgame and in both films he’s given some of the best moments. His calvary moment in Infinity War is fantastic and my audience was cheering when that happened. His interactions with Groot in the finale is his funniest moment. Obviously the portal sequence in Endgame isn’t a Captain America moment per say, but he’s sort of the star and face of it. That sequence is my favorite movie sequence of all time. Of course him picking up Mijnoir brought out so much joy and cheers in the theater. When he was in the MCU, he was having tremendous amounts of success. Lots of people had to do with him working a lot with The Russo Brothers. It seemed like Evans’ career was revived because the MCU was so fresh and exciting.
His tenure in the MCU ended in 2019 and since then he’s done several films but very few of them became hits. His only hit film post-Endgame was Knives Out. Knives Out is a fantastic film that was a critical darling. It made almost $400 million, it was Oscar nominated. If you’ve seen me talk about that film you know that it’s one of my all time favorites. Even with that, it's an ensemble film. He’s a very prominent and important part in the ensemble but he’s not the star. He doesn’t become a major character until 45 minutes into the film. Even his hit film post-Endgame isn’t one where you immediately think about him. You think of the humor, Daniel Craig, or Ana de Armas. Other movies that he’s done could have been big hits but in the end weren’t. In 2022 he did Lightyear and The Gray Man. Those ended up being some of the biggest disappointments of 2022. Evans is a weird choice to voice Buzz Lightyear because whenever you think of Buzz you think of Tim Allen not Evans. Allen has made some comments about his disappointment with not being asked to do Lightyear. The Gray Man was him reteaming with The Russo Brothers. It’s a Netflix original and like so many Netflix originals it’s a totally generic and forgettable film. Once again, he’s not the star of it, Ryan Gosling is. That’s the key thing in pretty much all of his post-Endgame movies. He’s in these big movies but he’s in these big movies with other big names where they’re the top billed or he’s doing totally generic and forgettable streaming films. He does have Materialists that came out this past week, it’s getting great reviews it seems like people are enjoying. It’s from Celine Song who was Oscar nominated for Past Lives a couple years back. He has a film with The Coen Brothers later this year, obviously some of the most celebrated directors of the last 25 years. He seems to be working with more top tier directors lately so maybe he’s acknowledging that his career outside of the MCU isn’t great. He’s now 44 years old so maybe he’s wanting to pivot away from these big blockbusters and do more smaller dramas. This could be a good thing that he’s doing this and build up a resume of great films with top tier directors.
Does He Need A New Manager?
I think my answer to the question is what I just said. I feel now he’s doing a good job of self-reflecting on his career and realizing that he needs more hits. He’s signing on to do different types of films with great directors. Before he made these comments about his career I figured he liked doing “bad” films or maybe he saw something in the scripts that didn’t translate to the big screen super well. But if he’s acknowledging that he needs a better career with better films then I don’t think he needs a new manager. I’m curious to see what other films he signs onto and what director he’s deciding to work with.
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