Screen | Robert Downey Jr. has sold out

The more we learn about celebrities, those shiny people who star in our movies and TV shows, the less highly we tend to regard them. It's an inevitable phenomenon, but it hasn't always been this way.

Back during the so-called golden age of cinema, when actors were figuratively chained to studios via restrictive, long-term contracts, what we were allowed to know about the stars was very tightly managed. It was a frustrating, inherently bogus way to live for the talent, it worked great for the suits, and as for the man or woman on the street, what they didn't know didn't hurt them.

Ironically, just as today's motion pictures have become dominated by artifice as never before, weighed down by computer-generated effects that nobody for a minute perceives as real, we've come to see and accept that the stars in these pictures aren't artificial at all, but real people, rife with very human flaws and foibles.

Oh sure, we can suspend our disbelief, but the minute an actor gives an interview it becomes just a little bit harder for him to be seen as a character, rather than that celebrity playing a character. Depending on how he behaves in the interview, this may or may not become a problem.

I've had a problem with the actor Robert Downey Jr. for some years now, stemming from when I used to interview movie stars on a routine basis. Downey was by no means the only difficult interview subject I encountered, although prickly celebrities were always very much in the minority, but his rude responses to journalists' questions, whether mine or a colleague's, always stood out, perhaps because of his ability to be so witheringly nasty.

It got so I avoided interviews with Downey whenever possible, and now that that phase in my career is over, I can simply avoid his movies, which isn't difficult.

Now that Downey's acting career has taken off, he's abandoned the little, indie movies that helped get him where he is, seemingly for good, as he intimated recently in a chat with Entertainment Weekly.

"Sometimes the little movies are the ones that wind up taking the most out of you because they're like, 'Hey, man, we're just running a couple of days behind. Do you think you can stay through your birthday and then come back on the Fourth of July? And by the way, but, like, the crew – can you pay for the craft services? And oh, by the way, man, when we go to Sundance, can we just sit you in a chair and you can sell this for six days in a row so that we'll make 180 bucks when it opens in one theater?'" Downey said.

The actor wasn't exaggerating. There is very little about the making of a movie in the indie world that's glamorous, and there's rarely much money to go around. Most people do it because they love the art form and have something to express. A few do it in hopes that they can work their way up the food chain and then never have to look back, such as Downey.

At least to me, Downey's choices have become a lot less interesting since he's been appearing in I don't know how many movies as Iron Man, not to mention those awful "Sherlock Holmes" titles, which seem designed to appeal to people who have never read a "Sherlock Holmes" story and never will.

Still, Robert Downey Jr. is no Johnny Depp. There's no "Lone Ranger" on his resume, and he's become one of the best-paid movie stars working today. He's one of those rare actors with the ability to call the shots, rather than being forced to take what's offered him.

And sadly, he's expending his showbiz capital defending superhero movies. Asked by The Guardian recently to comment on "Birdman" director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 2014 statement that these genre titles are "cultural genocide," Downey expressed surprise that a Mexican could craft such an ambitious phrase. Not acceptable.

Inarritu was overstating things, oh, just a bit, but he is hardly the only figure in Hollywood questioning the overwhelming hold superhero flicks now have on the industry. Actor Simon Pegg recently observed to the Radio Times that these movies are dumbing down cinema.

"The more spectacle becomes the driving creative priority, the less thoughtful or challenging the films can become," Pegg said.

I don't think Hollywood should stop making superhero movies, I just feel they could perhaps make far fewer of them right now, and I believe they will in fairly short order. I don't want to be seen as trashing these flicks just because I'm not a fan.

However, when I see sellouts like Robert Downey Jr. stepping up for spandex flicks, while more and more celebrities I still respect take a contrary view, I can see where we're headed. Some actors might have to start acting again for a living.

thill3@nncogannett.com

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Twitter: @ToddHillMNJ