From A-listers to IP: The slow demise of the movie star
The concept of the movie star originated during a time when the studio system was the omnipotent force in Hollywood, so if anything, it’s done a stellar job in remaining relevant for so long.
In decades past, it was the names on the poster who sold the tickets, convinced audiences to head to their local cinema, and held the potential to elevate even a mediocre film to great success, based almost entirely on the popularity of the top-billed name in the cast. While that remains true today, it only applies to a very select band of performers.
There aren’t many people who have that in-built aura, status, and reputation, and the concerning thing is that the majority of them have been around for going on 40 years. Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio are among them, but Will Smith’s well-publicised fall from grace and the dismal box office performance of Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny may well have eliminated them from the list.
Martin Scorsese has been railing against the onslaught of franchise fare for a while now, but it’s not like he doesn’t have a point. The vast majority of the biggest hits from the last quarter of a century aren’t star vehicles, with recognisable properties and world-renowned franchises becoming the biggest enticement for a casual audience. Scorsese calls Adam Driver the best actor of his generation, and he may well be, but is he a movie star? In terms of drawing power based on his involvement and nothing else, no, he isn’t.
Of the 53 features so far to have earned over a billion dollars in ticket sales, how many of them are traditional, star-driven vehicles in the typical sense, which can attribute the lion’s share of their success to the A-lister leading from the front? The answer is one: it’s Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, and at the end of the day, it’s still a sequel.
Sam Worthington is the star of two of the three highest-grossing films in history, but he’s not a star. Zoe Saldaña played an important on-screen role in four of the six movies to have ever grossed north of $2 billion, but putting her name above the title on a poster isn’t going to yield results, either. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has propelled many of its main attractions to new heights, but that doesn’t make them draws.
Robert Downey Jr stepped out of his comfort zone and watched Dolittle blow up in his face, while the likes of Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, and Tom Holland have struggled outside of their costumed comfort zones. Chris Pratt has been the top-billed name in four billion-dollar hits outside of his Marvel safety net, but that’s comprised of the Jurassic World trilogy and The Super Mario Bros Movie, so it didn’t happen on account of his presence.
Anthony Mackie has been part of the MCU machine for a decade, and he put it better than most. “There are no movie stars any more. Anthony Mackie isn’t a movie star; The Falcon is a movie star. And that’s what’s weird.” Furthering his point, the actor explained how, in the past, “You went to go see the Stallone movie, you went to go see the Schwarzenegger movie.” In music to Scorsese’s ears, he suggested “the evolution of the superhero has meant the death of the movie star.”
Ana de Armas partly blamed it on social media, telling Variety how “the concept of a movie star is someone untouchable you only see onscreen,” but through a combination of the internet and franchise eras, “That mystery is gone. For the most part, we’ve done that to ourselves.” That’s not to say there isn’t a new crop coming through, and there won’t be ever again, but the traditional concept of the movie star as it existed for decades is firmly on the way out.
Denis Villeneuve named Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, and Florence Pugh as the next generation, but their biggest hits to date are all adaptations in one way or another, whether they be literary, comic books, or life stories. Tinseltown remains littered with big names, incandescent talents, and performers known the world over, but it nonetheless feels like the twilight years of a dying age.
Cinema has always moved with the times, adapted, and evolved to remain at the forefront of culture, but it’s a sad state of affairs when the people bringing any given project to life aren’t its biggest selling points. It’s been heading that way for a while, but that doesn’t make it any less disheartening to realise that the days of A-listers, personalities, and personas being pushed to the forefront are on the way out, with sequels, reboots, reimaginings, reinventions, remakes, and adaptations continuing to take precedence.
