The 2004 movie you shouldn’t insult in front of Leonardo DiCaprio
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Everyone has seen movies that they love, and everyone has seen movies that they loathe, and those are opinions that they’re entitled to. However, if you say a bad word about a certain film in front of Leonardo DiCaprio, he absolutely will not stand for any such slander.
Actors can be a sensitive bunch at the best of times, but one thing that many of them have shown is that they don’t mind pointing to one of their own credits and admitting that it’s shite. Sometimes, they’ll even point to somebody else’s picture and call it shite, too, but what happens when the shoe’s on the other foot?
If you’re DiCaprio, you probably stick your fingers in your ears and pretend you didn’t hear anything. In an ideal world, perhaps he’d like to channel his inner Will Smith and slap anyone across the chops who dares to insult a movie that he holds closer to his heart than most, but when you’re a celebrity, you can’t really do that without getting sued.
The Academy Award winner has been in a few bad features in his time, but not many, comparatively speaking. For the last three decades, DiCaprio has focused on quality over quantity, and even Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up, which is pretentious, fart-sniffing garbage, lived up to its polarising reputation by inexplicably landing on the Oscar shortlist for ‘Best Picture’.
If you bumped into the patron saint of Leomania in the street and told him that you thought The Beach was crap, or that The Man in the Iron Mask was a waste of two hours, he probably wouldn’t mind. On the other hand, were you to tell him that Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator was an unflushable cinematic turd, he’s not having it.
“I suppose it was having some sense of control, involvement beyond just being asked to walk in and act, that makes me feel an emotional attachment to it,” he explained. That’s fair, since he was part of the project long before Scorsese got involved, having persevered with the role since 1999, when Michael Mann was set to direct.
He even saw off the challenge of Christopher Nolan and Jim Carrey, who were developing a Howard Hughes biopic of their own, and he’s called it the most cherished gig of his career. More than two decades after its 2004 release, those feelings haven’t changed, and if anything, they’ve gotten stronger.
“I find that, even today, I get slightly offended if people say something bad about The Aviator,” DiCaprio added, not that it’s got too many detractors. There are, of course, naysayers who’ve branded it superficial, thematically hollow, and focused more on style over substance, but for the most part, it’s a well-liked flick.
That’s just as well, because if The Aviator hadn’t won widespread critical and audience acclaim, the star would be spending a lot more time being offended whenever he overheard any negativity directed toward it.
