These stories don’t even reach the extreme lengths the director put into making the film. Whether he compromises an entire film crew in order to delve deeper and deeper into the Peruvian rainforest or whether he hypnotizes the entire cast Heart made of glassthere are some things Herzog won’t do to achieve his vision.

It’s no wonder he’s fallen into a thriving side gig playing villains. With his unforgettable voice and air of hard-won invincibility, he’s a better man for the job than Mads Mikkelsen or Anthony Hopkins. In conversation with iNews In 2020, the revered director and accidental movie star was characteristically stripped of modesty. “I’m particularly good when it comes to dysfunctional characters,” he said. “Violent, degrading and hostile or downright scary and dangerous. I’m good at that.”

This was particularly clear in the 2012 film Jack Reacherwith Tom Cruise. It stars Duke Zec Chelovek, a ruthless former Soviet prisoner who turns out to be the arch-villain of the story. There’s more than a hint of comedy in Herzog’s performance, if only because the screenwriters seemed to know exactly what they were going to get from him. In one scene, he confronts a cowering henchman and, in his usual hoarse, heavily accented voice, tells him about the time he spent imprisoned in Siberia.

“I spent my first winter in a dead man’s coat,” he croaks. “A hole in a pocket. I bit off those fingers before the frostbite could turn into gangrene.”

It’s perfect casting in an otherwise unremarkable action film, and that fact wasn’t lost on either the casting directors or Herzog himself. Following his role in the film, he said that he gets “about ten offers a week” to play similar roles. However, don’t expect him to switch sides of the camera any time soon as the director has no interest in the films he offers. “I declined because the stories were too stupid,” he said.

Jack Reacher isn’t a masterpiece, nor are many other pulpy thrillers of its kind, but that would almost certainly change if Herzog simply accepted the roles he was offered. Bond villain? He would surpass them all. Marvel films? He would make them visible. Paddington 3? He would win an Oscar. Sure, he might have better things to do, but for the audience it would be an incalculable contribution to the medium.

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