"You’re Here For The Wrong Reasons": Russell Crowe Slams Dakota Johnson’s Remarks On Superhero Films

Russell Crowe handed down some pearls of wisdom to Dakota Johnson after she complained about making superhero movies with jaw-dropping budgets.

The Oscar winner, 60, was recently asked about the 34-year-old actress saying she struggled to film Madame Web, which tells the story of a paramedic who discovers she can see into the future.

She’s “here for the wrong reasons” if she is expecting something “life-changing” from making big-studio superhero movies, the Gladiator actor told British GQ in an interview published on June 13.

“I don’t want to make any comments to what anybody else might have said or what their experience is, but… you’re bringing out the impish quality of my humor,” he laughed and said. “You’re telling me you signed up for a Marvel movie, and some f---ing universe for cartoon characters... and you didn’t get enough pathos? Not quite sure how I can make this better for you. It’s a gigantic machine, and they make movies at a certain size.”

Making CGI-heavy superhero films is well-known territory for the New Zealand-born actor, who starred in DC’s Man of Steel, Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder, and Sony’s forthcoming supervillain flick Kraven the Hunter.

“These are jobs. You know: here’s your role, play the role. If you’re expecting this to be some kind of life-changing event, I just think you’re here for the wrong reasons,” he said.

The seasoned actor nevertheless did acknowledge that making movies featuring cape-wearing characters can come with its own challenges.

“It can be challenging, working in a blue-screen world, when you have to convince yourself of a lot more than just the internal machinations of your character,” he went on to say. “But for anything to be... and you can’t make this a direct comment on her because I don’t know her and I don’t know what she went through, and the fact that you can have a shit experience on a film… Yeah, you can. But is that the Marvel process? I’m not sure you can say that. I haven’t had a bad experience. I mean [on Thor], OK, it’s a Marvel movie, but it’s Taika Waititi’s world, and it was just a gas every day, being silly.”

Back in March, the 50 Shades of Grey star reflected on the “nasty reviews” she received for her film Madame Web.

“Unfortunately, I’m not surprised that this has gone down the way it has,” she said before going on to say that she may never work in a movie like that again.

“It’s so hard to get movies made, and in these big movies that get made — and it’s even starting to happen with the little ones, which is what’s really freaking me out — decisions are being made by committees, and art does not do well when it’s made by committee,” she told Bustle. “Films are made by a filmmaker and a team of artists around them. You cannot make art based on numbers and algorithms. My feeling has been for a long time that audiences are extremely smart, and executives have started to believe that they’re not. Audiences will always be able to sniff out bullsh*t. Even if films start to be made with AI, humans aren’t going to f---ing want to see those.”

The daughter of Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson said it was “definitely an experience” to work on such a movie and said she had “never done anything like it before.”

“I probably will never do anything like it again because I don’t make sense in that world. And I know that now,” she went on to say. “But sometimes in this industry, you sign on to something, and it’s one thing and then as you’re making it, it becomes a completely different thing, and you’re like, 'Wait, what?' But it was a real learning experience, and of course it’s not nice to be a part of something that’s ripped to shreds, but I can’t say that I don’t understand."