Alan Ritchson has branded the James Bond franchise “misogynistic and predictable”.
Alan Ritchson has criticised James Bond for being 'misogynistic and predictable'
The 41-year-old actor insisted he has no desire to step into the shoes of the suave spy because he already has his fill of action in playing Jack Reacher in the Prime Video programme 'Reacher', which he finds far more fresh and exciting than the iconic movie series.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, he said: “It's funny, I kind of feel like ‘Reacher’ is the American James Bond.
“And I've never had more fun playing a character. I love those larger-than-life, over-the-top action thrillers and spy movies and the heists that are smart and ahead of the audience.
“That's really great, but I feel like Bond, to me personally — people are going to hate me for saying this — I love Bond, but I feel like it's all a little misogynistic and predictable at this point.”
Alan explained that he didn’t particularly like the British spy films because the character is too aware of his qualities.
He said: “‘Reacher’, to me, is like the American Bond, and I think it's a cool way to go about doing it where it's a little less purposefully cool.
“He’s not in on how slick he is.
“I don't feel like we can have characters these days that are in on the joke. Either they know that they're funny, they know that they're smart, they know that they're very cool or capable or invincible — I feel like it reduces the stakes of stories, and we've seen too many movies, we're too savvy as an audience to be entertained by that.”
The actor then revealed he wanted to see more vulnerable and humanised characters in cinema rather than just flawless heroes.
He said: “What we want is, when there's life and death stakes, characters who are not so sure that they're going to make it, but they just maybe by the skin of their teeth figure it out.
“And that feels more human to me. That's more my story. We're all just figuring it out, and we want to escape somewhere where we trust that somebody will.
“And maybe it can even be done in sort of a superhero fashion, but we still want to know that there's a humanity to the people that we escape to.”