Hugo Weaving is busy burning bridges between himself and his more superficial film roles. The Australian actor recently said that he wouldn’t care to reprise his role as “Red Skull” in any Marvel follow-up from his turn in Captain America: The First Avenger, and now he’s saying that he didn’t bother to prepare for his role as “Megatron” in the Transformers franchise, calling the role “meaningless.”
Despite the ambiguity regarding the demise of The Red Skull, Weaving has ruled out a future appearance as the character (even though Marvel could one-line fix his resurrection with relatively little effort). Though he’s not interested in donning a red latex mask for Marvel anymore, he seemed relativly pleased with the role in general.
“I’m glad I did it,” Weaving told Collider. “I did sign up for a number of pictures and I suppose, contractually, I would be obliged to, if they forced me to, but they wouldn’t want to force someone to do it, if they didn’t want to. I think I’ve done my dash with that sort of film. It was good to do it and try it out, but to be honest, it’s not the sort of film I seek out and really am excited by.”
Weaving feels much less generous about his role as Megatron in the Transformers series of films, and seems quite relieved that his characters has been killed off for good. Speaking of the role, Weaving confessed:
“It was one of the only things I’ve ever done where I had no knowledge of it, I didn’t care about it, I didn’t think about it. They wanted me to do it. In one way, I regret that bit. I don’t regret doing it, but I very rarely do something if it’s meaningless. It was meaningless to me, honestly. I don’t mean that in any nasty way. I did it. It was a two-hour voice job, while I was doing other things. Of course, it’s a massive film that’s made masses of money. I just happened to be the voice of one of the iconic villainous characters.”
Weaving also admitted his little-to-no preparation going into Transformers, and the interesting fact that he never even met director Michael Bay:
“I have never met him. I was never on set. I’ve seen his face on Skype. I know nothing about him, really. I just went in and did it. I never read the script. I just have my lines, and I don’t know what they mean. That sounds absolutely pathetic! I’ve never done anything like that, in my life. It’s hard to say any more about it than that, really.”
No matter. Hugo Weaving has a lot on his plate anyway what with another turn as Elrond in The Hobbit, and a central role in the upcoming Wachowski film Cloud Atlas. He really doesn’t need to worry about commitments to Marvel or Hasbro (though it would be nice to see him as Red Skull again).
Did you like Hugo Weaving as Megatron in Transformers?
Weaving already has a full slate of work scheduled for next year, including two Australian films, a month-long stage role and whatever additional work is required on the Hobbit (Peter Jackson being the perfectionist he is, there is sure to be some). The notion that he's sitting around waiting for Hollywood franchise directors to call and offer him one-note villain roles is preposterous, but is apparently what Michael Bay and some fanboys think.
Does anyone seriously think a different voice actor playing Megatron would have affected the film's grosses the slightest bit? No one is seeing these films for the acting, they're going to see robots fight one another blow s— up. And Michael Bay has a history of inspiring antagonism in even his onscreen, lead actors. Nothing Weaving said was remotely as cutting as what Meagan Fox or Shia LeBeouf have said about him. And I seriously doubt Bay asked him to prepare for the Megatron role… he probably just said "Get that Agent Smith guy and have him read these lines in a menacing way."
Weaving has been well respected in the industry for over 25 years and many directors (including the Wachowskis) have worked with him repeatedly, fostering mutual loyalty and generosity in the press. I seriously doubt he'll ever have trouble getting roles, just fewer of the sort of limited genre baddie role offers he's trying to discourage anyhow. (Weaving will doubtless still play antagonists– look at Cloud Atlas– but ideally in better films.) As someone with somewhat geeky tastes, I'm thrilled when any serious actor does the odd horror or scifi film. I'm fine with "I'm glad I did it, it was fun, but I want to move on to other things." And I'm grateful for variety. Some fans clearly expect perpetual servitude to the genre, or even specific franchises. Don't they get bored of typecasting? Weaving isn't motivated by personal enrichment, or he'd learn to BS and keep accepting these jobs. Instead, he has artistic integrity and isn't afraid to be honest. (It should be noted that all of these comments came in the context of interviews for Cloud Atlas… and that many reporters asked Weaving questions about the franchise films. Only one contained comments that could be misinterpreted out of context as negative– so of course that's the interview everyone is running with.)