At this point, Chris Evans’ star power is under serious threat of burning out for good. Since his alleged retirement from playing Captain America in the MCU, Evans has wasted his prime years on stuff like Red One and Ghosted and Pain Hustlers. All the films misunderstand what he’s good at and leave him adrift in a sea of bland slop, forcing him to rely on his own charisma (which, unfortunately, tends to not be enough to sustain a movie). Worse yet, he’s proven that he can have taste and can choose good projects that serve him well, so there’s an added element of wasted potential to make matters even more frustrating. If he wants to add some luster back to his stardom, then he needs to look to his left and learn from his Marvel co-star Sebastian Stan, who has been putting on a masterclass of extending his career.

Image via Apple TV+

Things initially seemed like they were going in the right direction for Evans, given that his two biggest film choices outside the MCU were Snowpiercer and Knives Out. Both were genre-savvy mashups directed by respected auteurs who smartly used his Captain America credentials against the audience. Snowpiercer pushed the limits of what a “good guy” protagonist could morally get away with, while Knives Out built him up as a charming a-hole capable of calling out his family’s privileged behavior, only to reveal that he was actually the biggest a-hole of them all (but wrapped up in a muscle-hugging sweater). They played into his best strength as an actor: a self-assuredness that never tips over into arrogance or cockiness and gives the impression that he could always take care of himself.

But things veered off the rails once he tried splitting the difference between playing cartoonishly smarmy a-holes for laughs (like in The Gray Man or Deadpool & Wolverine) or everyday schmoes stuck in slop like Ghosted. Either way, he leaned hard into a shtick that never suited him and only worked when under the direction of someone who knew how to properly toy with his image. Either that, or he tried to present himself as a “normal” guy with average problems despite… being Chris Evans. He never figured out how to carve a newly defined avenue that actually fit him, unlike Sebastian Stan.
Sebastian Stan Is Uncompromisingly Honest With His Choices

Image via A24

On paper, Stan did something similar to Evans, in that he prioritized playing bad or “complicated” men as a way to distance himself from the baggage of being everybody’s favorite reformed bad boy, Bucky Barnes. The key distinction is that Stan commits fully to truly heinous men that make the audience feel uncomfortably confronted, while Evans’ bad boys feel like glorified party tricks where he’s constantly elbowing you in the ribs over how crazy it is to see him like this. There’s not an ounce of self-awareness to Stan’s performances in films like I, Tonya, The Apprentice, or A Different Man, and he is not winking at us that he’s not actually this messed up in real life.

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Stan is comfortable embracing the discomfort and loves to dig into the messiness of his characters, making distinct “choices” with his characterizations that push him into new directions. Even in just his role selections alone, he’s gone from cannibal to drug-addicted rocker, to a con artist and a hedge-fund yuppie, proving he is clearly not content playing one type of person for too long (okay, Bucky is an exception here). It stands in sharp contrast to how many of Chris Evans’ roles feel like a Xerox of a Xerox, coasting on his stagnating charisma and expecting audiences to find him appealing for doing the bare minimum. This isn’t to say that Evans can’t do these kinds of challenging roles, but rather, he doesn’t seem to want to break out of his comfort zone.
Chris Evans Doesn’t Seem Interested in Taking Risks — but He Desperately Needs To

Sebastian Stan has made it clear in interviews that he knows that he’s choosing to engage in risky material that could alienate fans. He knows that playing Donald Trump is a gamble, that it would be crushingly vulnerable to play around with identity and ego in A Different Man, and that nobody could see him as Tommy Lee until he actually did it. But he sees it as important enough to continue to pursue such endeavors, which he’s keeping going with his upcoming films being directed by the likes of Christian Tafdrup and Cristian Mungiu, two noted European auteurs with harsh views of the world. Things could turn around for Chris Evans, as he’s set to do films directed by people like Ethan Coen and Celine Song, and he’s proven to have taste before, with him doing films like Sunshine.
However, it’s hard not to remain skeptical. It can’t be ignored that he’s expected to slink back to the MCU for Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars, no matter how much he denies those rumors. Seeing as the last thing he did was Red One, where he had nothing to do except do a C-grade Ryan Reynolds impression and make Dwayne Johnson look comparatively more likable, it paints a troubling picture of someone consumed by his Hollywood image and too content to cash in on what has previously worked. Over a decade ago, Evans had one of his best roles in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, where he played action star Lucas Lee, a shallow hot shot with a huge ego and who exclusively plays up his macho image for big bucks. While he, of course, is not Lucas Lee as a human being, it feels like Lucas Lee has become the personification of his recent career, and he can do way better than that.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Release Date

August 12, 2010

Runtime

113 minutes

Director

Edgar Wright

Writers

Edgar Wright, Michael Bacall