Why Brendan Fraser's Hollywood Comeback Story is Both Warming Hearts and Raising Ire

“It’s almost like the public was just waiting for this moment,” said Yogerst. “Everyone has missed him. Seeing him back on the screen, it was like an old friend was back.”

Nostalgia certainly plays into the joy this moment brings to some people, Yogerst said.

“I mean, I’m still nostalgic about the silly remake of Bedazzled,” a Fraser movie with Elizabeth Hurley that came out in 2000, Yogerst said.

Part of this collective happiness also stems from knowledge of Fraser’s recent struggles, according to Nicholas Baer, an assistant professor of film studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

After Fraser was absent from any big Hollywood movie for several years, GQ published a profile in 2018 of the actor titled, “What ever happened to Brendan Fraser?”

In it, Fraser discussed years of suffering from injuries (sustained from performing stunts during filming of The Mummy franchise), subsequent surgeries, personal loss and a divorce. Most startling were details Fraser shared of being allegedly groped by Philip Berk, a former president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Berk told GQ that Fraser’s account was “a total fabrication.”

Fraser in the GQ article openly questioned whether he was actually blacklisted from Hollywood because he came forward about his experience.

“[The Whale] is offering us an opportunity to kind of recognize the virtue and the kind of fundamental decency of Brendan Fraser, who has been really wronged by the industry and has long suffered,” Baer said.

A comeback with controversy

The Whale is about a reclusive English teacher (Fraser) who weighs 600 pounds, and as he struggles with his health, tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter. A combination of prosthetics and CGI help Fraser as he portrays this character.

Fraser’s return will likely be controversial for some, Baer noted.

“I think it’s definitely going to be a point of contention in the discourse. I think it’s a practice [the use of prosthetics or so-called fat suits] that has been relatively commonplace among major Hollywood actors for a long time and that’s been increasingly criticized for being fat phobic and offensive,” Baer said.

Indeed, critics have turned to social media to say that the movie’s premise is inherently dehumanizing. There’s a question of whether it should have been made at all.

This kind of media just “reinforces viewers’ anti-fat bias,” she wrote.

Pia Glenn, a Broadway actress, also criticized the movie, lamenting the fact that this film is Fraser’s comeback.

“Mr. Fraser’s ‘comeback’ and personal journey as an actor and human are significant and I hate that I feel so negatively about the project that brought them about. I know I won’t see it, so I’ve been reading reviews,” she wrote on Twitter. “References to rolls and hanging flesh and Jabba the Hut (!) NO.”

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