Friday, October 31, 2014
32 Questions For Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
Detroit’s spry indie pop tag-team on their love of Boyz II Men, farting on the tour bus, and the integrity of extraterrestrials.
Josh (on the left) holding the adorable band dog Potato, and Daniel hang outside the BuzzFeed LA offices.
Macey J. Foronda / BuzzFeed
If you're not yet familiar with Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., you're in luck: allow us to introduce you to their immensely pleasurable latest single "James Dean," a wistfully melancholic synth-pop gem that extends an impressive run of catchy tunes since the band first began in 2010. Daniel Zott and Josh Epstein are the two guys behind the band (no relation to the NASCAR hero), and they stopped by BuzzFeed LA to play some music and answer some very ~important~ questions. This is what we learned.
1. How did you guys come up with the name of the band?
Josh: We were both in different bands before this, and we wanted to come up with a name that was so ridiculous that we could do anything we want, musically. This was around the time where every band's name was called Crystal something, or Neon something, and we were talking about how much of a hindrance it is to bands, like changing their sound. Because once you have a sound and you sound like something, then it kind of sticks. So then this band became the band that we were in, and now we have the dumbest name in the world.
2. Your new song "James Dean" talks about how cool he is; who else is super cool to you?
Josh: Thom Yorke is like the nerdiest, coolest guy in the world. We always talk about this: It must be hard to be Radiohead, because you are the coolest thing in the world, the band at least, and then to have a normal day, if nothing you do is cool during the day, it's like, oh. I imagine everything he does is cool.
Daniel: People would not want to buy his records if they saw him walking through McDonald's.
3. Favorite music video?
Josh: I'm really showing my age here, but "Thriller."
Daniel: Yeah, it's a pretty typical answer, but nothing really beats that.
4. First album you ever bought?
Daniel: Boyz II Men Cooleyhighharmony.
Josh: I want to say Pearl Jam Ten.
5. Last show you went to?
Daniel: Katy Perry, Prismatic Tour.
Josh: He went in Detroit, and I actually went to the one in LA. But last I went to see this band called Mosco Rosco.
6. What song would you pick to play as your entrance music?
Josh: I would go "Regulator."
7. Favorite word?
Josh: I know what Dan's favorite word is. "Asinine."
Daniel: My dad used to say it.
8. Favorite curse word?
Josh: I'm going to be controversial and say "c*nt."
Daniel: I hate that word.
Josh: I know, but it's got a special power, more than any other word. You can call someone anything and it won't really offend them, but if you call someone a c*nt, that's like a real thing.
Daniel: Shit.
9. Favorite vegetable?
Josh: Eggplant
Daniel: I was going to say eggplant.
10. What do you normally eat for breakfast?
Josh: Every morning I have the exact same thing. I cook some onions, bacon, chopped up with some curry paste, then I add peppers, eggs, and cheese. So I have a little curried bacon scramble.
Daniel: I do a lot of scrambled eggs, with my own hash browns. I keep it plain.
11. Favorite emoji?
Daniel: I don't really have a favorite, but I think the last one I sent is that dancing marimba girl.
Josh: I'm next level with emojis. I actually now have this thing where I have emojis of my own face and I'll send those to people.
Macey J. Foronda / BuzzFeed
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This Is The Ultimate Beyoncé And Jay-Z Halloween Costume
Don’t forget it, don’t forget it.
But you know the person you really want to be this ***Flawloween is Janet Jackson, who has been presented with the highest honor:
Here's a Bey/Janet mashup to get you in the mood. Happy ***Flawloween!
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North West's Halloween Costume Is The Cutest Thing Ever
She got Halloween started early.
North West dressed up as a skunk for Halloween, according to Kim Kardashian's Instagram.
And ran around her house trying to show Kanye her costume.
What a stinker.
Get it girl.
Via yesiamarebelliousflower.tumblr.com
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Maru Answers Life's Biggest Questions
It is well known that the two biggest current philosophical questions are (1) whether Gödel’s completeness theorem truly allows an axiom to be provable without recursion and (2) how Maru will get into this slim box which is stood on the floor. With just one video, Maru has just answered both questions.
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Which Book Scared You The Most As A Child?
Why did our parents even let us read these?!
Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed
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Which Weasley Are You?
Red hair, freckles, a hand-me-down robe… let me guess.
Warner Bros.
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The Cool Beach 2 by shadyshalaby-outdoorfiguration
Thursday, October 30, 2014
"Help Us! Great Warrior?" Is The Action Girl Comic You Want And Need
Just a potato shaped girl, saving the whole damn world.
"Help Us! Great Warrior?" started as a webcomic by the incredible Madeleine Flores.
BUTTSSSSSSSSS
It's about a potato shaped girl who's just trying to save her village.
While questing for hunky dudes.
And making some rad friends along the way.
#girlgang
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The Disturbing Misogynist History Of GamerGate's Goodwill Ambassadors
r/KotakuInAction bills itself as the responsible, respectful wing of GamerGate. The online activity of its moderators tells a much different story. (Warning: This post contains disturbing images.)
If the diffuse, hydra-headed internet phenomenon we call GamerGate has a polite public face, it's r/KotakuInAction. The 17,500-subscriber-strong subreddit presents itself as a forum solely dedicated to the oft-cited, oft-questioned justification for the two-month-long movement: the reformation of ethics in gaming journalism. According to its official description, r/KotakuInAction:
is a place to discuss the drama and other crazy bullshit that seems to be more and more a part of the gaming journalism industry these days.
KotakuInAction strains to differentiate itself from the murkier parishes of GamerGate, with their obsessive focus on the pernicious influence of various -isms in the world of gaming, a focus that at its extreme has been marked by an unconcealed hostility to women, and online hate campaigns up to and including rape and death threats. KotakuInAction, in the GamerGate universe, is billed as the place for reasonable discussion and rational analysis, not trolling and hate speech.
Indeed, the first three "rules" of KotakuInAction all have to do with maintaining standards of online decency: "1. No DOXX of any kind. 2. Do not be a dick to anyone. Harass anybody, and you're out. We don't want your kind here. 3. No witch hunt/call to arms type stuff."
KotakuInAction's "Guide for Guests" and "Guide for Gamers" submit an inclusive online community, united under the big tent of concern.
We DO NOT CARE what your political beliefs are. We have conservatives, liberals (more than half of us are liberal), feminists, egalitarians, mras - while everyone here is for their own reasons, there is one underlying cause that has united us. When we would normally fight each other, we fight together now, because we are gamers, we love games, and we are not giving them up to corruption and a lack of ethics. GamerGate does not end until we get transparency and ethics both on reviewsites and in their forums.
The "Guide" even includes a data plot of the political affiliations of the subreddit's members, to stress the broad — even left! — political orientation of the community.
A glance at the top all-time posts on KotakuInAction seems to bear this out: The subreddit is genuinely obsessed with perceived biases in the gaming and broader media. Over the past two weeks, KotakuInAction garnered a huge amount of attention for its campaign against Gawker Media — sparked by a complex Twitter discussion — that largely consisted of calling big brand advertisers in an attempt to get them to remove campaigns from Nick Denton's network of sites. (Kotaku is Gawker Media's video game site; the name KotakuInAction is a mockery of Kotaku's perceived liberal bias.)
If the campaign felt somewhat cynical (the grounds for KotakuInAction's campaign was the flimsy accusation that Gawker was pro-bullying), it was still inarguably of the subreddit's stated mission: exposing bias and "anti-gamer" sentiment among the media. Someone stumbling upon KotakuInAction for the first time might find that mission conspiratorial and out of touch, but also basically genuine.
Subreddits are noisy, democratic spaces. They naturally represent a diversity of opinion. This makes them fascinating. It also makes them, much like GamerGate itself, very, very difficult to truly characterize, as no one person can be held to represent the views whole.
But there are moderators, the people whose job it is to administer the subreddit and enforce its rules. And a look at the online behavior of the moderators of KotakuInAction reveals a community largely guided by a group of people who participate in and moderate subreddits devoted to the physical degradation of women and the mockery and the ridicule of feminism.
Take the Reddit user oxymuncha. A moderator of KotakuInAction, oxymuncha is also a frequent poster in r/struggleporn, a subreddit dedicated to pornographic images and videos of women being constrained and dominated by men. The media in r/struggleporn depict coercion so graphically that the subreddit has to specify in its guidelines "No snuff, real rape videos." As of this writing, oxymuncha has the top post on r/struggleporn, an image he posted last night of a woman tied up, blindfolded, and gagged inside the trunk of a car. View the image, entitled "The struggle begins...," at your own discretion here (NSFW).
Oxymuncha moderates several subreddits other than KotakuInAction including r/gor, which is dedicated to an obscure fantasy series called The Gor Saga. According to The Encylopedia of Fantasy, the series of 30 books "degenerate into extremely sexist, sadomasochistic pornography involving the ritual humiliation of women"; many of the top posts on r/gor show bound and constrained women.
In addition to r/gor and KIA, Oxymuncha also moderates r/breakfeminazis, a subreddit organized around an elaborate fantasy premise:
Breaking Feminist Superheroines
A Fantasy BDSM Subreddit devoted to a Supervillian who enslaves, degrades, and humiliates Feminist Superheroines to teach them their place as women
This Subreddit is centered around creatively exploring Female psychology under imagined speculative conditions in which Feminist indoctrination has been removed.
A Historical Chronicle of the Gender Civil Wars, in which Radical Feminists finally push Men too far, leading to a hot War of the Sexes in which the forces of the Feminist Menace are smashed in battle. What would a hypothetically constructed world in which Feminism has been decisively defeated, and women have been returned to their natural condition as Slaves look like?
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Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Jupiter Is Watching You This Halloween
Watching, waiting.
The Hubble Space Telescope was minding its own business, doing space things, when suddenly...
...it found Jupiter staring straight back at it.
The Hubble was monitoring the Great Red Spot, a vortex of gases that has been swirling since at least the 1830s.
NASA, ESA, and A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) / Via Flickr: gsfc
NASA/JPL/DLR
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Did Taylor Swift Sing This Lyric In 2006 Or 2014?
Because sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between teenage hormones and the ~feelings~ of an adult.
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15 Reasons We've Been Blessed By Marvel
IT’S CHRISTMAS IN OCTOBER.
BECAUSE AGE OF ULTRON IS LEGIT FANFIC COMING TO LIFE!!!
LOOK HOW FOND AND AMUSED STEVE IS BY TONY
Marvel
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Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Reminder: The Bassist In Coldplay Is A Total Hottie
It’s time Chris Martin moves over.
This is Chris Martin. Obviously you know him. He consciously coupled and then uncoupled with Gwyneth Paltrow, he dated Jennifer Lawrence and he's the lead singer of Coldplay.
Cindy Ord / Getty Images
While we were busy looking at his face and arms and listening to him sing. We missed something really important.
Ethan Miller / Getty Images for Clear Channel
This guy.
Dave Hogan / Getty Images
This is Guy Berryman. He's the bassist of Coldplay.
Claire R Greenway / Getty Images
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15 Everyday Things All "Doctor Who" Fans Are Secretly Afraid Of
Are Whovians afraid of everything?
Snowmen
Well there goes winter time fun...
BBC / Via tumblr.com
Statues
...and art history class.
BBC / Via radiotimes.com
Cracks
And don't even think about renting out a run down apartment.
BBC / Via tumblr.com
Christmas
You might just want to forget the Holidays altogether.
BBC / Via tardis.wikia.com
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This Is The Real Periodic Table They Should Teach In School
Chemistry just for the ladies.
The following alternative periodic table is a tribute to lady menses, part of Megan Amram's new book Science...for Her!, out November 4.
Megan Amram / Science...for Her!
Megan Amram / Science...for Her!
***
Megan Amram is a writer for the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation. Since she graduated from Harvard in 2010, she has amassed over 400,000 Twitter followers who enjoy her hilarious brand of off-beat humor. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's, Vulture,and The Awl, among others. Her viral video "Birth Control on the Bottom" prompted Jezebel to call her a "national treasure." She lives in Los Angeles.
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Here Is The Spidery Beast Of A Drone That Shot The 'Ok Go' Video
Cool footage, terrifying sky stalker.
Via youtube.com
By now, there's a good chance you've seen or heard about the music video from OK Go, which, in one five-minute continuous shot, moves from synchronized electric unicycling to hundreds of colorful wielding twirling dancers, who, when viewed from a bird's eye view, simulate LED pixels and display words. After debuting on the Today Show, it's amassed over 3 million views in 24 hours, and a whole lot of hype.
To get the shot though, Japanese director Morihiro Harano didn't have to spend a fortune. Camera and shoot logistics aside, the sequence was filmed using a DJISpreading Wings S1000 drone, which retails for around $4,000. Here's a behind the scenes photo, showing the drone in action.
Great footage aside, the S1000 is kind of terrifying. It's a spidery sky stalker, looming through the trees, looking to film you.
Via youtube.com
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Monday, October 27, 2014
Robbie Williams Is Live-Vlogging His Wife Giving Birth
Yes, really. We’re not sure his constant jokes will be helping.
And it seems the Take That star is now live-blogging the actual birth.
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Benedict Cumberbatch's First Audition For "The Hobbit" Is Quite Something
All fresh-faced and pretending to be a dragon back in 2010. <3
We've all seen Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Smaug brought to life in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
New Line Cinema
We've even seen him filming the process.
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Larry King Went On The Most Amazing Hour-Long Twitter Overshare Last Night
“Bring back the miniskirt!”
Getty Images
Larry King went on a massive Twitter spree last night, from around 10:30 p.m. PT to 11:30 p.m. PT, that led many to believe the veteran news anchor was either the victim of a cyber hack or completely hammered.
Both claims he later refuted in an Instagram video, saying, "I'm not drunk, haven't been hacked, and it's only eleven o'clock here."
But the stream of consciousness that lasted for the most glorious hour produced some serious Twitter gems.
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What's At Stake For Thor, Captain America, And The "Avengers" Franchise
Marvel / Justine Zwiebel for BuzzFeed
LONDON — Thor and Captain America are ensnared in an epic battle on the set of Avengers: Age of Ultron. A legion of robot “Ultrons” — like the malevolent swarm from those haunting posters for the film, opening May 1, 2015 — are laying waste to a city within the (fictional) nation of Sokovia, under the control of the artificially intelligent titular villain. Civilians flee in terror, racing through streets littered with the husks of bombed-out cars and hunks of debris and shards of glass (or, rather, painted styrofoam and crumbly clear plastic) scattered along the ground. To evade the Ultrons’ attack, Cap (Chris Evans) dives under an exploding pile of rubble, skidding along the ground on top of his trademark red, white, and blue shield. He then flips up onto his feet and kicks his shield into the air — just in time for Thor (Chris Hemsworth) to thwack it with his trademark hammer, slicing it through a pack of robots nearby like the most lethal and badass Frisbee ever.
"Welcome to Sokovia," writer-director Joss Whedon, affecting a thick Eastern European accent, turns and says to BuzzFeed News during a solo visit to the set late in the film’s production. "Miserable place. Everywhere robots."
Except, of course, the robots aren’t there. Nor is Cap’s shield. Thor and Captain America have been battling the air.
It’s an overcast and weirdly cold July afternoon, on what had been a training facility for London’s Metropolitan Police force and is now a Sokovian city under siege. Every so often, a small pack of extras wearing gray reference suits and shiny silver robot heads will lumber through the scene so the visual effects team can know roughly where to add them in later. But when it comes time for our heroes to step in front of the camera, strike back, and (hopefully) save the day, all they can do is use their imagination and pummel an enemy that isn’t there. Even Cap’s shield is a CGI prop.
Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth in Avengers: Age of Ultron
Jay Maidment / Marvel
"The biggest thing is just not looking stupid," Hemsworth says later with a laugh, unwinding in his nearby trailer. "You’ve just got to remember there’s another 30 different stages that are going to come into it before anyone will see that on screen."
However, the Chrises — as they’ve often been called by those in the Marvel Studios Industrial Complex — do not appear all that concerned about seeming silly. In between takes, they joke around and giggle, lost in an inside joke neither can later recall (or, perhaps, prefer not to share on the record). In fact, if they weren’t respectively dressed in the gleaming armor of an Asgardian warrior and the complex uniform of an American super-soldier, you might be forgiven for mistaking them as old friends goofing around in their backyard playing superhero, instead of two of the stars of the sequel to the third highest-grossing movie of all time.
"We’re buddies," Evans says later with a shrug in his own trailer. "We’ve been on a little bit of a ride doing these movies. You make really good friendships. It sounds cliché to say: ‘We all get along so well!’ We really get along phenomenally well. It’s like summer camp.”
If the set of Avengers: Age of Ultron is like a summer camp, then that would make Evans, 33, and Hemsworth, 31, something like veteran camp counselors. This is the fourth Marvel Studios movie for both actors; other than 2012’s The Avengers, each have headlined two of their own Marvel Studios films, to increasing box office returns. They have in turn made dramatically different choices about how they’ve built their careers outside of Marvel’s familiar campground. And to stretch this metaphor even further, neither actor can stay at camp forever.
Marvel / Adam B. Vary for BuzzFeed
Earlier in the day, the newest additions to the Avengers cast — Aaron Taylor-Johnson (as the super-fast Pietro Maximoff, aka Quicksilver) and Elizabeth Olsen (as the immensely powerful Wanda Maximoff, aka Scarlet Witch) — approach their action scenes with the intense, eager concentration of rookie recruits. When Evans first rehearses his ground-skidding stunt, by contrast, he casually moves through each beat at half speed, and when he’s finished, he flashes a wide grin, and jokingly announces to no one in particular, “I’ll be in my trailer!”
"The cast — they were very trusting the first time around," says Whedon. "But this time, [there’s an] ease and rapport, and just the fun that we have. Everybody’s got franchises and babies. Everyone’s very comfortable with themselves."
Chris Evans in 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger
Marvel
It’s the kind of comfort that can only come with years of experience of what it’s like embodying a Marvel superhero. “In the beginning, you’re just so grateful,” says Evans. “You’re very timid. You’re lucky you got invited to the barbecue, [and] you just don’t want to get in the way. Now, you feel a little more at home, and it feels a little more like a collaboration that you contribute to. If anything’s changed, it’s just my feeling of ‘welcomeness.’ Is that a word, welcomeness? We’re going to make it a word, fuck it.”
That familiarity, however, can cut both ways — there are only so many places one can take a character who is essentially an immortal god. “You know the rhythm of it,” says Hemsworth. “What becomes a challenge is trying to not repeat the same thing all the time. So you’ve got to work that bit harder to see what else you can do with the character.”
For Thor in Age of Ultron, “it was just lightening up a bit,” Hemsworth continues. “It gave us room to kind of make him a little more grounded and human and have him in some civilian clothes and mixing it up at a party. I want to do those scenes more. It’s what I loved about the first [Thor film]. There was an innocence and naïveté to him, which as he matured into the king of the second [Thor film] — or the rightful king — we sort of lost a little bit of that. That was that story.”
The biggest difference for Thor in Age of Ultron is the absence for the first time of his scheming brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), a character so outrageously popular that he has in many ways overshadowed Hemsworth’s work as Thor. Loki was last seen at the end of 2013’s Thor: The Dark World sitting on the throne of Asgard, masquerading as King Odin (Anthony Hopkins), and that is where he will remain for the time being, as Age of Ultron focuses the action on Earth.
Tom Hiddleston and Chris Hemsworth in 2013’s Thor: The Dark World
Marvel
"I mean, [I] loved working with Tom," says Hemsworth, "and that relationship is so much fun. But that also kept us in a bit of a box, because, you know, three films on one relationship, how much further can you go? What else can you do different? It was nice to have a whole different sort of motivation."
So what is that motivation this time out? Hemsworth won’t say outright, of course, but he does offer a few tantalizing details. The film’s central plot tracks the growing power of Ultron (voiced and performed via motion capture by The Blacklist's James Spader), a sentient robot created by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) with the intent of giving the Avengers a breather from constantly fighting the forces of evil. But if Loki's machinations brought the Avengers together in the first film, Ultron's global ambitions — he's not a big fan of humanity — would appear to split the squad apart. “Whereas the first [Avengers] was [about] the journey of the team, I think, this time, you have six or seven things going on, which I was really impressed by,” says Hemsworth. “I like where Thor has been taken in this. He sort of sees a whole other side to what’s going on in the conflict, and another potential threat. And he kind of segues a bit and has his own little sort of journey.”
That fractured storytelling portends a momentous shake-up in what we’ve come to know as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a sense that’s made all the more palpable in the trailer for the film. “The Avengers films, ideally, in the grand plan are always big, giant linchpins,” says producer and Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige on the Age of Ultron set. “It’s like as it was in publishing, when each of the characters would go on their own adventures and then occasionally team up for a big, 12-issue mega-event. Then they would go back into their own comics, and be changed from whatever that event was. I envision the same thing occurring after this movie, because the [Avengers] roster is altered by the finale of this film.”
Marvel / Adam B. Vary for BuzzFeed
Any overhaul in the makeup of the organizing force behind the MCU could weigh especially heavily on Evans’ Captain America, who in his most recent solo film, last spring’s Captain America: The Winter Solider, was instrumental in bringing down S.H.I.E.L.D., the organization that had unified the Avengers in the first place. “He’s still looking for a home, probably a metaphorical home,” says Evans. “He’s always felt comfortable as a soldier. And he likes structure. He works well taking orders. But when that dynamic turned on him, he’s now left to depend upon his team, the Avengers. There really is no one above them telling them what to do. They’re kind of having to operate independently. So there’s a lot of leaning on one another, but there really isn’t a kind of clear chain of command. And I think Cap looks for that. I think he’s looking to understand where he belongs, not just as a soldier, as Captain America, but as Steve Rogers, as a person.”
Chris Evans in 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Zade Rosenthal / Marvel
Of course, Steve Rogers was injected with a super serum that turned his body into a perfect physical specimen, and, for Evans, maintaining that physique on set has not gotten any easier. “I found out on the first movie, typically a lot of the stunt stuff is towards the end of the film,” says Evans. “And that’s when you’re in the suit. And when you’re in the suit every day for a month, you just drip sweat, and you shed weight. So you try to get as big as you can in the beginning, and hopefully they’ve tailored the schedule so the stuff where you’re walking around in a T-shirt is early. You know, we’re in the last three weeks right now. I feel like I’ve lost like nine pounds in the past couple weeks. By the time you finish a [Marvel] movie, you’re kind of back to your starting weight.”
For his part, Hemsworth has faced a slightly different issue with transforming his body into that of a superhero. “It’s not so much the staying in shape,” he says, chuckling. “Once you get to the shape, maintaining it — it’s work, but it’s less work than trying to get it off to do another role, or to put it back on when you start from scratch. That’s been tough.” Hemsworth cites the film In the Heart of the Sea, a harrowing nautical adventure he shot between Thor 2 and Avengers 2 in which he played a sailor stranded in the open ocean for several months. “Getting down to the weight I did for [that movie] was really exhausting,” he says. “It was a good six, eight months of being on some sort of restricted form of diet, and some high cardio sort of workout. And then the moment we wrapped that, literally the day of, was, OK, eat more and go the opposite direction, because Avengers is three months away. So you feel like an athlete more than an actor.” He laughs. (Hemsworth laughs a lot.) “It’s been insane over the last few years. But it’s great. I love it. I like just staying active anyway, and find this sort of extreme form of it fun. It’s a challenge.”
Chris Hemsworth in 2015’s In the Heart of the Sea
Marvel
It’s a challenge Hemsworth will almost certainly face again, since he is clear that his next major film “won’t be Thor 3 — that will be the following year.” (If you’re keeping track of this sort of thing, that would indicate a possible May or November 2017 release for Thor 3, at least a year after Captain America 3 opens in May 2016. When asked about this timing by BuzzFeed News, a rep for Marvel Studios had no comment.) Hemsworth says he hopes to get an adaptation of Steve Earle’s novel I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive that he’s also producing off the ground, and he’s also committed to shooting his first outright comedy, a reboot of sorts of the National Lampoon’s Vacation series, followed by a sequel to the 2012 Kristen Stewart vehicle Snow White and the Huntsman that will reportedly focus almost entirely on Hemsworth’s Huntsman character.
Keeping busy as a leading man has indeed been a career priority for Hemsworth since he was plucked from relative obscurity to play Thor. He also starred as rakish race car driver James Hunt in Ron Howard’s well-received 2013 drama Rush, and he’s headlining Michael Mann’s cyber-thriller Blackhat, due to open Jan. 16, 2015.
Marvel / Adam B. Vary for BuzzFeed
By comparison, Chris Evans has maintained a decidedly lower profile after landing his Captain America gig. His only leading role outside Marvel Studios has been in the rapturously reviewed dystopian sci-fi thriller Snowpiercer, a film that was something of a sensation overseas but received a limited, specialty release in the U.S. Unlike Hemsworth, however, Evans had been working as a leading man throughout the 2000s — he even played another Marvel superhero, the Human Torch, in two Fantastic Four movies for 20th Century Fox (which the studio, which owns the movie rights to the Fantastic Four characters, is currently rebooting with a brand-new cast). Still, when Evans gave interviews last spring in which he said, "When I’m down with this Marvel contract, I’ll take a little break from acting" and "I can’t see myself pursuing acting strictly outside of what I’m contractually obligated to do," the immediate headlines were that Evans was going to outright retire from acting once he was done playing Captain America.
Chris Evans in Snowpiercer
RADIUS-TWC
"Which I never said, and if you read the interview, you’ll see that,” says Evans. It is obviously something of an exasperating topic for him. “It’s not where I’m playing a sport where I’m just too old to do it. You can act until you’re dead. It was really one of those frustrating things that you give in an interview, and you can quote me, irresponsible journalism — everywhere I went, every interview was like, ‘So you’re quitting?!’ Didn’t say ‘quitting’! I said that I wanted to take a break!”
Evans is equally clear that his “break” will involve stepping behind the camera as a director — something he’s already done once already, with the indie film Before We Go, which debuted at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and was picked up for distribution in the U.S. by RADIUS-TWC (the same company that released Snowpiercer). “The beautiful thing about the Marvel contract is that it enables you opportunities that might be a little harder to get on their feet without the notoriety that Marvel brings,” says Evans. “So I’m going to try to capitalize on that while the iron’s hot. I have no problem acting in something I’m directing. I just don’t know that I’ll be pursuing anything acting-wise outside of my Marvel contract, unless I’m directing it. At least for a while.”
Ah yes, the infamous Marvel contract. After the release of Age of Ultron, Evans is set to return to the Marvel fold two more times, in 2016’s Captain America 3, and whenever Avengers 3 lands its official release date. And then that’s it. “So halfway through!” he says, throwing up his arms in his trailer with an enormous grin. “I mean, I’m going to miss these when they’re done. I really will. This has been a lot of fun, and they’re only getting more fun. Especially because there’s a trust in Marvel that you’re going to make something good. It would really be lousy to be stuck in a contract knowing that you’re making shit. And I just don’t feel that way. It’s really a blessing that this kind of fell in my lap. Sometimes you don’t really feel deserving of it. But I’ll take it.”
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