Marvel star’s stunning career backflip

Just over 10 years ago, Captain America star Chris Evans made a startling vow. Then what happened?

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, one of Marvel’s high-water marks at the movies, celebrated its tenth anniversary earlier this year.

With it came the ten-year anniversary of this startling quote from star Chris Evans, from a Variety cover story around the time of the film’s release: “If I’m acting at all, it’s going to be under Marvel contract, or I’m going to be directing. I can’t see myself pursuing acting strictly outside of what I’m contractually obligated to do.”

At the time, Evans was about halfway through his Marvel run, having starred in two Cap movies and one Avengers, with one more of the former and two more of the latter to go. (Plus some cameos here and there.) He had also just completed his directorial debut, a little-seen romantic drama called Before We Go. And for a while, his words seemed to more or less hold true. For the next five years, almost every time Evans appeared on movie screens, it was playing Captain America; the exception was another smaller-scale drama, 2017’s Gifted.

Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans at a Red One promo shoot earlier this month. PictureL Shane Anthony Sinclair/Getty Images

After Endgame, however, Evans briefly seemed as if he would revert to his early-Marvel-years career, back when he could lay claim to being the best of the famed Hollywood Chrises. He took a juicy, funny supporting role in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, reminiscent of his work in ensemble movies for strong filmmakers, like Sunshine, Snowpiercer, or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. He also recalled the latter in another cameo in Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, playing a fictional movie star.

Then, however, came the straight-to-streaming deluge.

For the past few years, Evans has been in more movies than ever – because he appears to be going around from streaming service to streaming service, signing up for whatever faux-throwback action-caper movie allows him to play a shadowy operative, spy, or assassin. (The not-exactly-exception is Ghosted, wherein he plays a regular guy sucked into a world of shadowy operatives, spies, and assassins.) The new Red One (hitting theatres, but produced by Amazon) puts a Christmas spin on the formula, pairing Evans with Dwayne Johnson; the 2022 Netflix production The Gray Man was a harder-edged version, with Evans revelling in a cranked-up bad-guy performance.

Evans as Captain America/Steve Rogers. Photo: Chuck Zlotnick ©Marvel Studios 2018

That’s the thing: These aren’t just junky, time-wasting movies, which dot just about every major actor’s CV. These are movies where Evans is actively kinda bad. He doesn’t land punchlines, doesn’t give clichéd material any kind of extra spin or interiority, and generally comes across like a less intense version of Lucas Less, the self-important action star he plays in Scott Pilgrim. Sadly, the most locked-in, engaged, and all-round skilful performance Evans has given in recent years has been … back in a Marvel movie again, only this time in a fake-out: Initially appearing to be playing an alt-world Captain America in Deadpool & Wolverine, he turns out to be reprising the Human Torch, his character from a pair of Fantastic Four movies made outside the MCU, bringing a scuzzy comic timing to the role.

Evans may have a certain kinship with Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds; they’re both handsome guys who got started around the turn of the millennium and cast around for their defining superhero/comics-based role. Evans was a wiseass in those Fantastic Four movies and an adaptation of the DC Comics book The Losers before landing Captain America, a character he made into a cornerstone of the MCU. If Iron Man distilled the essence of Robert Downey Jr.’s persona into a slickly accessible action-movie package, the Evans performance arguably did something trickier and more impressive: Making ramrod-straight goodness – not exactly the defining quality of the actor’s previous roles – into something not just believable, but intensely charming. His go-to character had been the callow jock type with hidden sensitivity; Cap converted that persona into something unexpectedly rich, with Evans giving the character an outward shield of decency concealing thornier, more conflicted feelings about his role as a forever soldier.

His career has veered off the course he’d laid out a decade ago. Picture: Theo Wargo/Getty Images

Evans isn’t completely alone in having trouble returning to the civilian world after so much world-saving. Before winning his Oscar for Oppenheimer, Downey had only Dolittle and The Judge to show for in the past decade of non-Stark leading roles. Mark Ruffalo had an extended period where he simply wasn’t in that many non-Marvel movies. Chris Hemsworth has done good work but also seems to be perpetually in search of a second or third franchise, even as he remains a possible going concern at Marvel. Only Scarlett Johansson has really fulfilled her potential. The idea that superhero pictures enable the production of smaller, more personal movies is an oft-repeated fallacy – even more so now than in 2014, when Evans seemed to plan to use his Marvel obligations to buoy a directing career.

Evans may be in a healthier place now, with less angst over the acting process. A viral post recently excerpted a red-carpet interview where he talks about how worrying too much about a movie’s longevity can be unproductive: “You just go to work every day, and you do your job, and you try to make something special for the audience, and that’s it.”

He also, to be fair, has some upcoming movies to anticipate more hotly: Honey Don’t!, the next movie from Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke (Drive Away Dolls), and Materialists, a romantic comedy from Past Lives filmmaker Celine Song. These seem more in tune with the Evans who sounded restless in superhero movies; he’s also currently filming something called Sacrifice where he plays … a movie star, for at least the third time. Evans’ willingness to spoof that image so many times (even his original breakout in Not Another Teen Movie is, in essence, a star turn making fun of hearthrobby star turns) suggests that he’s aware of how hollow these images can be. It’s understandable, too, that someone with that awareness would grow disillusioned with acting. But lately, that disillusionment seems to be winning, as Evans creates new and more tired contractual obligations for himself, turning his career into a bizarre form of autoplay. A decade ago, he sounded burnt out; turns out, he could do this all day.

This article originally appeared in Decider and was reproduced with permission.