Chris Evans has built much of his screen identity around characters who can take a hit, throw one back, and keep moving, from Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four to Steve Rogers in the MCU and action-heavy roles in The Gray Man. His performances often come wrapped in physicality, swagger and a particular brand of masculine heroism. Then came Ghosted, where Evans deliberately stepped into the shoes of an ordinary farmer whose biggest weapon was essentially being a decent guy. 

That difference was part of the fun, and Evans once explained exactly what he found appealing about playing Cole.

During a 2023 interview with Entertainment Tonight while promoting Ghosted with Ana de Armas, Chris Evans reflected on the pleasure of playing someone who was almost comically under-equipped compared with Captain America. 

“It’s nice to play someone who has not only, you know, far less capabilities than someone like Captain America, but in moments of panic has a very human reaction,” he said. “He goes to pieces. But it’s endearing,” he continued.

There is something revealing about Evans describing Cole this way. The joke is not simply that the actor famous for carrying a vibranium shield is suddenly playing a guy who cannot handle a crisis.

It is that Ghosted lets Evans weaponize the qualities that superhero roles usually have to suppress. As per Entertainment Tonight, director Dexter Fletcher similarly noted that Evans was conscious of not allowing his established action-star persona to bleed into Cole.   

Released on Apple TV+ on April 21, 2023, Ghosted was never a conventional Hollywood box-office proposition. It went directly to streaming, so there is no meaningful theatrical gross to report. Critically, however, it was hardly a knockout: Rotten Tomatoes currently lists the film at 25% from critics and 55% from audiences. Yet commercially within Apple's streaming ecosystem, the film performed considerably better. 

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And that modest, old-school romantic adventure was hiding a much bigger spy movie underneath.

Ghosted begins almost deliberately small. Cole Turner is an agricultural writer and farmer who meets Sadie Rhodes, played by Ana de Armas, and becomes convinced after one date that he has found something special. When Sadie stops responding, Cole makes the questionable decision to travel to London to find her, only to discover that the woman he thought was simply mysterious is actually a highly capable secret agent. 

From there, the movie flips its romantic-comedy premise into a globe-trotting action adventure, with Cole becoming collateral damage in Sadie's latest mission. The casting joke is obvious but effective: de Armas gets to inhabit the lethal operative while Evans plays the civilian desperately trying to survive beside her. Even the film's Marvel connections became part of its meta-text, with Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan and other Evans acquaintances appearing in cameo roles. 

The contrast feels even more amusing now because Evans is returning to the MCU as Steve Rogers in Avengers: Doomsday, due December 18, 2026, with Avengers: Secret Wars scheduled for December 17, 2027. 

Ghosted may not have become a critical darling, but Cole remains an interesting detour in Evans' career: proof that the actor behind one of cinema's most recognizable superheroes can find comedy in simply letting a character fall apart.

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