Hello, friend! I've noticed that you've been watching both Big Sky and Countdown lately, and I had a bit of an odd (maybe? Maybe not) question for you. I know you'll answer this honestly and in an unbiased manner: based on Jensen's non-SPN roles that you've seen (Beau Arlen, Mark Meachum, and any other roles--I dont remember if you've seen The Boys or not), what do you think about his range as an actor? I have some opinions but haven't posted them on here. Im just curious :)
Not at all odd, and thank you for the question. I've actually been talking with @supernaturalkickparty about this lately, too.
I think that, while Jensen is a good actor imo, he doesn't have a lot of range. At least, not so far as I've seen in his current body of work. Maybe he's typecast; maybe he was Dean so long it's hard not to fall back into the comfort of that kind of character; maybe he's generally working with too many friends and not working to get outside his comfort zone and challenge himself with a different type of character; maybe his expectations of challenging himself have more to do with stunts and the type of raunchiness he gets up to on The Boys. I can't say for sure.
What I CAN say is that every character since spn has felt like some type of Dean. Out of all of them, I think I like Beau Arlen best. He has elements of the things I like about Dean, and very little of Dean's worse features. He also has a teen daughter, and an ex he still loves, and I think Jensen got to channel more of his Texas-boy self into Beau rather than his Deanism. And I love his wardrobe.
But the other post-spn things he's been in feel a little awkward to me with how Dean-like it is, like he's exaggerating being cool and forcing in too many easter eggs. Jared does easter eggs, too, but they feel more subtle and natural to me.
I feel bad about comparing Jensen and Jared sometimes, because I like them both and they each have different strengths, but I do think Jared has more of a range of characters. I can't help thinking how even in spn, when Jensen had to play demon!dean or michael!dean, etc, there really wasn't much nuance there. Whereas Jared brings a mindfulness to his character acting. I wonder how much these differences are affected by their acting styles, where Jared will study scripts and make up a character story in his head, but Jensen doesn't like to look at the script ahead.
It's been awhile since I watched Soldier Boy's episodes of The Boys, so it's hard to remember details... he was an interesting character to watch, but still sort of a prism refraction of Dean's worst traits.
Russell Shaw on Tracker is probably the most uncomfortably-Dean out of any post-spn Jensen character so far. He feels like he's INTENDED to be one big easter egg of "hey! this is definitely AU Dean and he's barely resisting breaking the 4th wall!"
Mark Meachum is like if Dean got put in an action movie version of Changing Channels. The character he's playing has an inoperable brain tumor, but so far it just means migraines that provoke blackouts and blurry vision... which my brain responds to like: this is Dean's body reacting to being stuck in this AU or trap or Djinn dream and the world around him responds by filling in that it's a tumor.
I kinda wish I could look Jensen in the eyes and tell him we're not going to forget he was Dean or that Dean lives in his heart, so he doesn't have to keep playing versions of him. He can be free!
Ironically, the least Deanlike Jensen has played since Carry On was his cameos in The Winchesters.💀It was like he forgot how to do the voice, or the hair, or how Dean mostly complains about douchey costumes. Like wtf happened. 😱
Uhh and then there's his Batman voice acting, which just... did not sound like Batman to me.🙈
The one thing about most of these basically-Deans, though, is that it does thread the needle for my mind to wander to crossover ideas for how each of his roles fits into the spnverse.😅😅
