Everyone loves Ryan Gosling, so why is he not a draw?
Movie stardom is a very difficult thing to achieve, and it’s a position only a select few are lucky enough to find themselves in. Ryan Gosling is very popular, immensely talented, and never anything less than watchable, but he still hasn’t been able to establish himself as a major draw.
He’s been in some highly successful movies; that can’t be argued. However, it’s a different proposition entirely when he’s tasked to lead the line and take centre stage in a production that’s supposed to carry the potential to turn a tidy profit at the box office.
For the most part, it doesn’t even matter how good or bad these starring vehicles are because the most bankable names in Hollywood guarantee an audience regardless of quality. Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Dwayne Johnson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Adam Sandler, and even Chris Pratt, for somebody more aligned with Gosling’s age bracket, are all capable of putting in butts in seats, but he’s not.
The two highest-grossing films of his career are Barbie – by quite some distance – and La La Land. He was phenomenal in them and earned Academy Award nominations for his performances, but he wasn’t the focal point. Not only did Margot Robbie and Emma Stone take top billing, respectively, but the hype behind the iconic doll making its big screen bow in a candy-coloured comedy and the lure of an old-fashioned musical played a much bigger part in their shared success than Gosling did.
The Big Short turned a tidy profit, but it was much more of an ensemble piece. The same goes for Crazy, Stupid, Love. While Drive recouped its budget five times over and then some from cinemas, it was hardly mass-marketed entertainment aimed at the widest possible demographic that used the audience’s in-built love of its leading man to draw in a crowd.
Gangster Squad cost a pretty penny, positioned Gosling and his oozing charisma at the forefront, and it tanked. Blade Runner 2049 was the long-awaited follow-up to a sci-fi classic helmed by a modern auteur that placed him front and centre, and it flopped. The Nice Guys partnered him up with Russell Crowe for a fantastic throwback buddy comedy hailing from the creator of Lethal Weapon, and it bombed.
The Fall Guy combined action, comedy and romance, paired Gosling with a fellow star in Emily Blunt, and it was directed by the hitmaker behind John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw. Still, it ended up premiering on digital a measly 18 days after its theatrical release to ruin any chances it had of not suffering a similar fate.
That’s not to suggest the man is box office poison when it’s right there in the numbers that he’s held up his end of the bargain in a number of hits. However, when the burden is placed largely or entirely on him, it’s a completely different story. Gosling is one of his generation’s finest performers, is every bit as reliable as he is versatile, and is ridiculously handsome to an unfair degree. And yet, it would be a stretch to call him a movie star in the traditional sense.
There’s a distinct difference between being an actor and being a star, and while those margins are becoming increasingly thin in the IP-driven age, Gosling hasn’t quite mastered the balancing act. It doesn’t make any sense on a surface level that a performer who hasn’t suffered a shred of bad publicity, backlash, or negative headlines who also happens to be better at their job than most people of their generation and has a face tailor-made to be splashed all over the poster can’t guarantee a win, but it’s true.
Excluding the aforementioned Barbie and La La Land, Gosling has only ever been in one film that cleared $250million in ticket sales, and as mentioned, Blade Runner 2049 was a commercial bust despite being excellent. He’s got everything a superstar needs to elevate themselves into that rarefied air of their name being a bulletproof barometer of bankability, but for whatever reason, it hasn’t happened.
