These are dark days for movie stars. Brad Pitt’s new action comedy Bullet Train took in $30.1m (£24.6m) in its US opening weekend, strong enough to top the box office domestic, but unspectacular given the film’s $90 million budget and Pitt’s star power. One of the few actors who can still “open” a movie, Pitt represents an increasingly endangered breed: the movie star who refuses to do television.
Another TV stopper, Tom Cruise, continued his streak with Top Gun: Maverick, which recently surpassed Titanic at the US box office, although the film’s same success is being heralded as the end of an era, with Cruise highlighted as “the last”. movie star” and “the last movie star in a changing Hollywood.” Meanwhile, obituaries declare the “movie star dead” and “RIP to the movie star.”
If the movie star isn’t exactly dead, they’re certainly enjoying the trickier death scenes, like Marlon Brando’s virtuoso farewell in The Young Lions: stumbling after being shot and rolling upside down down a hill , before being stopped by a branch, looking dazed and blinking in disbelief and then falling into a watery ditch.
Brad Pitt on the bullet train. He is one of the few stars who has resisted television in recent years. Photo: Sony/Scott Garfield/Allstar
List A is a reduced paddock of aged thoroughbreds. The five films in this year’s top 100 that could be called “star vehicles” – Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, Pitt in Bullet Train‚ Sandra Bullock in The Lost City‚ Mark Wahlberg in Father Stu and Jennifer Lopez in Marry Me – feature film protagonists who found fame in the 90s, with an average age of 56. The 2010s seem to have produced fewer certifiable movie stars than any previous decade. Chris Pratt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Adam Driver and Jennifer Lawrence have all had substantial careers out of superhero spandex, with Lawrence accelerating her genius phase to win an Oscar at 22 and now enjoying twilight semi-retirement from the routine that an Academy Award buys you. . Still, after a trio of failures from 2016 to 2018: Red Sparrow, Mother! and Passengers: The Hollywood Reporter published an article titled, “If Jennifer Lawrence Can’t Open a Movie, Who Can?”
“There are no more movie stars,” Avengers actor Anthony Mackie said in a clip that made the rounds on Twitter. “Anthony Mackie is not a movie star; The Falcon is a movie star. And that’s what’s weird. Before, with Tom Cruise and Will Smith and Stallone and Schwarzenegger, when you went to the movies, you went to see Stallone’s movie; you went to see Schwarzenegger’s movie. Now go watch X-Men. So the evolution of the superhero has meant the death of the movie star.” Chris Evans enjoyed playing against type in Knives Out and The Gray Man, but almost every member of the Avengers cast that came to fame through the series have struggled to break out of the Marvel bubble.
Of course, reports of the movie star’s death should be taken with a grain of salt. Part of this is the natural process of “aging” that occurs periodically in Hollywood, as one generation passes into another. “Glamour is a life support and you don’t expect it to live,” declared Joan Collins in the late 1960s, as the star system, whereby studios signed actors to exclusive seven-year contracts, giving them lessons in manners, diction, acting, riding, walking, dancing, singing and fencing – eventually crumbled. He gave way to the young Turks who followed him – Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino – who, in turn, paved the way for the stars of the 80s and 90s.
Studios rely almost exclusively on superhero movies and franchises, for which they can just as easily cast new people as stars.
But who can deny that a subtle waning of movie star power is taking place as the producers of the 2022 Oscars invited sports stars like Tony Hawk, Shaun White, Kelly Slater and the Williams sisters to the podium for present the awards, banishing Samuel L. Jackson, Elaine May, Liv Ullmann and Danny Glover to the untelevised Governors Awards to collect honorary Oscars?
For most of the ’90s, the big question hanging over George Clooney’s career was whether he could make it out of television and into movies. Today, Keanu Reeves just signed on for a TV show (executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio), joining Harrison Ford, Dakota Fanning, Jude Law, Emma Stone, Amy Adams, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Julia Roberts , Sean Penn and Matthew. McConaughey in completing the reverse exodus from the increasingly turbulent film business to the relative sanctuary of television. Clooney topped the list of highest-paid movie stars in 2017, not for any role, but for selling the tequila brand he co-founded for $1 billion.
“The business has completely changed,” Roberts told the New York Times in April, following the release of the miniseries Gaslit (which also stars Penn). “When I first started, I felt like if you did one movie and if it did well, maybe you’d be offered a couple of other movies and maybe you’d have more options and you’d get paid a little bit more on the next one. There were changes incrementals in the opportunity and it made more sense. Now, it’s made of more air; maybe it doesn’t feel as robust when you’re riding with you. I felt pretty confident about the choices I was making. You don’t have those incremental markers anymore, it seems not
Jennifer Lawrence, who won an Oscar for her performance opposite Bradley Cooper in 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook, was one of the few actors to be a movie star in the 2010s. Photo: Snap Stills/Rex Features
The causes of this volatility are multiple and far-reaching. These days, studios rely almost exclusively on superhero movies and other brand franchises, for which they can just as easily cast newcomers as stars, to draw crowds to theaters. Amazon paid $465 million for its production of Lord of the Rings, a starless spinoff, while subscription streaming services have changed the way everyone in Hollywood gets paid.
Most workers are better off (it’s a seller’s market), but the power of the megastars is fading. Last year, Scarlett Johansson fell out with Disney after the studio decided to stream Black Widow on Disney+ on the day of its theatrical release, thus keeping up to $50 million she might have owed the actor, depending on the box office performance of the film. . This dispute is but the most public in a series of feuds between studios and stars as actors try to determine their worth in the age of brand franchises. Henry Cavill has ended his run as Warner Bros’ Superman, while Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth have walked away from Star Trek 4, after the actors’ contract talks broke down over their pay.
So how much is a star worth? This has always been a dark science. “As far as the movie-making process goes, the stars are essentially useless and absolutely essential,” said screenwriter William Goldman after the collapse of the star system. Freed from studios for the first time, actors were able to negotiate multi-million dollar deals. For 1989’s Batman, Jack Nicholson took a $6 million salary and a cut of the box office and merchandise sales, ultimately grossing around $60 million. The closest recent equivalent is Robert Downey Jr’s $10 million fee for Iron Man 2, but that was negotiated only after the success of the first film, for which he took home $500,000 dollars Even established actors like Downey Jr are only as valuable as the superheroes they play. In another role, its price would plummet.
Jack Nicholson as the Joker in Batman. He earned about $60 million from the film. Photography: Snap/Rex Features
The current has only muddied the waters even more. Before the pandemic, everyone in Hollywood engaged in the anxious weekly ritual of poring over the weekend’s box office to determine the week’s winners and losers. Streamers now look at audience data, keep score of streaming app logs and retention rates, and measure unconventional metrics like social media mentions as they try to determine what quality is worth quick cash a star.
But the connection between stardom and quarterly subscription rate is even more nebulous than that between stardom and weekly box office returns. When big movies come to HBO Max, downloads of its app increase, a recent study found. One agent recently confided that some of his more famous clients prefer the streamers’ secrecy around ratings because it avoids the box office glitz.
From the stars’ point of view, the connection between their work and their value has been weakened. They may not be paid as exorbitantly for their successes, but neither are they blamed as harshly for their failures. In fact, they are brought down by the same economic forces as the rest of us. “When we were content to watch movie stars on a screen that seemed larger than life, the exchange was pretty simple,” critic Ty Burr wrote in Gods Like Us, his 2012 history of movie stardom. . “We paid money to see our daily dilemmas played out in a dreamlike setting, with ourselves recast as prettier, smarter, tougher, or just not as scary.”
Studio-era stars like James Dean longed for their work to be valued artistically, as is increasingly the case with famous actors. Photography: Snap/Rex Features
Today, celebrities tuned into social media are much closer to their audience. The Internet has led to a “marked devaluation of the traditional movie star,” Burr argued, conspiring to strip movie stars of their mystique and marking what he calls “the triumph of celebrity socialism.” The means of production of stardom are at last in the hands of the people.”
The gods have become mortal. One of the advantages is that it has returned a level of art to the discussion of his work. Spend a lot of time on fan sites and you’ll find…