Marking Time
In a 9.29 piece called “Generation Next: The Realignment,” Marshall Fine makes various calls about where certain actors are in their careers, sinking- or rising-wise. Most of Fine’s assessments are no-brainers, but I’m wondering if HE readers generally agree or not.
Assertion #1: “Larry Crowne marked Tom Hanks, who is now 55, as a star who can no longer open a movie. [He] isn’t a star who is attractive to the demographic — the 18-to-34 crowd — that crowns box-office stars. And the audience that is interested in Hanks — i.e., those closer to his own age — aren’t rushing out to see movies on their opening weekend.” Wells response: Larry Crowne fizzled because it wasn’t good enough.
Assertion #2: Hanks “had his best decade as an actor in the 1990s,” but “like Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner and a few others, he came into stardom in the 1980s” and, Fine implies, is not likely to revisit that plateau again. Wells response: Agreed — Hanks is no box-office powerhouse, but he’s still “Tom Hanks.”
Assertion 3: “Tom Cruise still remains a force. But the young generation of moviegoers accepts him as a star because, to them, it’s received wisdom; they didn’t crown him and, before we know it, they’ll ignore him the same way they ignore other superstars in their 50s – as someone their parents liked. (Sean Penn is part of Cruise’s cohort – but he’s never been a box-office force.)” Wells response: The older Cruise gets, the more interesting he becomes. Nobody pushes harder at delivering quality goods.
Assertion #4: Descendants star and Ides of March director-cowriter-star George Clooney “has hit his superstar peak, and is now at about the same point where, say, Cary Grant was in the 1950s.” Wells response: For whatever reason I hadn’t thought of Clooney in this light. He’s at his To Catch A Thief phase, which is to say he’s got 10 good years left, 15 at the outside.
Assertion #5: “Everyone knows who Clooney is, as well as his cohort: Brad Pitt, Hugh Grant, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe. They’re a generation of actors who picked up the gauntlet in the 1990s, battled their way through heartthrob and flavor-of-the-month status to achieve a certain longevity. They’ve now reached their prime or are just gliding past it.” Wells response: All these guys are right in their moment. No fade, no leaky gas tank, no starting to glide past it.” Except, possibly, for Smith because he’s so afraid of doing anything that isn’t in his popular fan-base wheelhouse.
Assertion #6: “Ryan Gosling is now where Clooney or Pitt were 15 years or so ago: an actor with some strong credits but not quite the mass-audience awareness.” Wells response: There are people out there who are still going Ryan who”? Really? Even that dumb-sounding girl who took the video of Gosling breaking up a Manhattan street fight called him “that Notebook guy.”
Assertion #7: “Leonardo DiCaprio is the biggest superstar among the youngest group of name actors — Gosling, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ewan McGregor, James Franco, Adrien Brody, Seth Rogen and Jesse Eisenberg.” Wells response: Yeah, sure, whatever.
Assertion #8: “It’s a marker when Paramount has dumped a Warren Beatty project (i.e., Hughes), but also a symptom. Jack Nicholson is Jack Nicholson; if he hasn’t retired (as Gene Hackman has), he’ll show up and surprise us sometime soon. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino keep working and undoubtedly still have great work in them; whether they’ll be offered material worthy of their talent (and whether they’ll select it) is another question. And Clint Eastwood, ever the contrarian, keeps directing (and occasionally acting) into his 80s.”
“So there it is — a glimmer when you can see both into the past and into the future at the same time,” Fine concludes. “Time is the conqueror – and the wheel keeps turning.
Of all the stupid valley girl verbal tics of the kind you, Jeff, regularly castigate and opine that they immediately lower your estimation of the offerer’s intellectual capacity, “Yeah sure, whatever,” has got to be among the worst. Yet, there it is.
Who is the Charles Lane of this batch? Jonah Hill?
Charles Lane?
Ewan McGregor’s 40 years old and has been working forever – hardly some up-and-coming young star.
“The older Cruise gets, the more interesting he becomes. Nobody pushes harder at delivering quality goods.”
Explain, because I’m a fan, but I found him quite uninteresting in his last two movies. It’s been 10 years since he’s been able to muster any onscreen chemistry with an actress, which is a problem. And the whole Rock of Ages thing seems very calculated, Gwenyth-y, and thus unlikeable to me.
The best Tom Cruise performance, BTW, of the last 5 years was Adam Scott in Stepbrothers.
Don’t really see how Larry Crowne bombing had anything to do with Hanks’ drawing power. It was a low-profile film which had little appeal, no matter who was in it. If Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close underperforms, *then* you can question his box office clout.
“All these guys are right in their moment. No fade, no leaky gas tank, no starting to glide past it.” Except, possibly, for Smith because he’s so afraid of doing anything that isn’t in his popular fan-base wheelhouse.”
I dunno. I see Downey’s 15 minutes ticking away, while Pitt still can’t sell non-genre films on his own name.
“”It’s a marker when Paramount has dumped a Warren Beatty project (i.e., Hughes), but also a symptom. ”
Beatty still has Dick Tracy 2, so….
It’s also a pretty middlebrow examination of stars. No mention of Jason Statham, The Rock, Vin Diesel, Kevin James, etc.
Charles Lane played the crotchety old guy in movies and TV shoes from 1931 until 2006. Lived to be 102. He pops up all over the place though the decades. Capra used him a lot.
Fine also apparently doesn’t know or care that actresses work in Hollywood as well. The two biggest non-sequel, non-Marvel movies of the year are The Help and Bridesmaids, and Bad Teacher is right there. But, yeah, let’s talk about Warren Beatty. Ass.
What about Bale? Farrell? Josh Hartnett?
Cruise pushes hard, that’s for sure, but what’s he pushing at? KNIGHT AND DAY and MI:3 are star-turn choices designed in large part to shore up the franchise, not be as daunting a departure as MAGNOLIA or even COLLATERAL. I don’t blame him for that, in a way, but his choices seem too self-conscious, “big movie/art movie” calculated. I wish he’d drop blockbusters altogether and have one of those middle-key, almost chamber-piece careers — like Clooney, the OCEANS excepted.
Kakihara — “I see Downery’s 15 minutes ticking away.” I’ll take issue. That 15 minutes has been ticking away for 25 years or so then. Saw LESS THAN ZERO the other night and the guy hasn’t lost any of the magnetism and ability to hold the screen he had back when. But I’d hate to see it lost in craptastic conventional leads in piffle like SHERLOCK HOLMES.
How is Hugh Grant “in his prime” and Matt Damon doesn’t even warrant a mention?
Beatty still has Dick Tracy 2, so….
No one cares about Warren Beatty, and he was too old in Dick Tracy 1. He killed his own career, and handicapped that of Annette Bening. Get real.
This probably belongs in Fine’s original piece but:
“Leonardo DiCaprio is the biggest superstar among the youngest group of name actors — Gosling, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ewan McGregor, James Franco, Adrien Brody, Seth Rogen and Jesse Eisenberg.”
As others have implied, this is a really bizarre group of actors to put together. McGregor, DiCaprio, and Brody are pretty clearly of a different age-group than the rest; they’re circling 40, while the others are all closer to 30, and, moreover, have only really been making movies for the past decade, while McGregor and DiCaprio, especially, were working through much of the nineties.
I’d also say that Cruise and Hanks are still a cut above Ford, Costner, etc., in terms of having big and/or recent hits and/or prestige. Interestingly, Clooney basically skipped right to that phase; he’s never really had much of a blockbuster period. His movies tend to do moderately well, and his name helps them. But since Batman, he’s rarely alligned himself with the kind of big-hit factory that could’ve put him at that Cruise-or-Hanks-in-the-nineties level. But you know, if Cruise and Hanks had been coming up ten or fifteen years later and choosing those same types of projects, they probably would not have had these streaks of two, three, five $100 million movies. Well, Cruise would’ve had plenty of hits, but the kind of material both of them gravitate towards is a lot more ADULT than what gets the biggest marketing pushes these days. Not to go all good-old-days, because Clooney, Pitt, Damon, and DiCaprio support a lot of great stuff. But usually not $100/200 milion stuff.
(It’s also amazing that DZ is able to pick two of the MOST solid box-office performers from that list (Pitt and Downey) and say THOSE are the ones who aren’t on such solid ground. Pitt has shown more box office muscle in the past five or six years than he did through much of his more-hyped nineties period.)
I do think these star-market type things are interesting, though. I’d say the current top ten, at least domestically, are something like this (off the top of my head):
1. Johnny Depp
2. Will Smith (more due to inactivity)
3. Robert Downey Jr.
4. Brad Pitt
5. Adam Sandler
6. Leonardo DiCaprio
7. Sandra Bullock
8. Tom Cruise
Then I dunno, Ferrell or Stiller? Carell? It’s hard to pit the comedy guys against others, because Pitt can sell a wider range of movies while a lot of comedy stars can’t really sell a serious movie, but in their main genre they’re pretty damn consistent.
Also: Hugh Grant?!? Has he really been in play for the past seven or eight years?
To Jesse’s point, Clooney has had such an interesting career — people make the glib Cary Grant comparisons based on his charm and light touch, but the parallels run deeper: Grant went independent early and was rigorous and shrewd in controlling his own career and choices, and Clooney is obviously very much the same. Wearing rubber nipples probably put him off wham-bam spectacles forever, and good for him.
Interesting how Fine’s article — and our own discussion — is exclusively a sausage-fest. Does he even have a take on female stars? Do they exist in a parallel universe, or are they ephemeral to his way of looking at this?
Yes, Jeff, to the mass audience, Ryan Gosling is still “that guy from The Notebook.” Gosling even has been joking about people coming up to him thinking he’s Ryan Reynolds. And we all know Ryan Reynolds is not a star.
I think Gosling and Christian Bale were at about the same career point in the middle of the last decade.
Bale started making commercial films and is now in that spot where he can float between blockbusters and prestige films.
Gosling decided to play the artiste and went out to make Lars and the Real Girl and other such things. He really hasn’t been in good roles or popular hits until this summer. He’s only now trying to make that move that Bale completed.
Not only does Hugh Grant not belong on the list, but his inclusion on it is so off-base that it makes it hard for me to take the entire thread seriously. At least go with Matthew McConaughey to make the same point with some basis in reality.
I met Charles Lane at a screening of “It’s A Wonderful Life” a few years back. What an amazing old guy he was.
I’m really enjoying this perfect era of Ryan Gosling, when he’s making cool movies.
Soon he’ll wind up in the inevitable comic book bullshit franchise-tentpole crapfest and he’ll be gone. But we’ll always have “Drive”.
What women outside of Streep and the rom-com chicks are viable?
I love actresses but Hollywood throws them away the minute they lose their instant fuckability.
Before this turns into a Hugh Grant pot-shot contest, know that whenever he works again, he is a much more profitable international draw than either Denzel or Russell. Hands down. So of all the article’s many flaws, maybe leave Hugh alone.
For the record, I don’t dislike Gosling doing what he’s been doing, although I’m more skeptical of the indie scene nowadays. You need to be seen to be appreciated.
I’m more surprised that film writers and bloggers think that because an actor or actress receives praise in a relatively lightly seen film they automatically become a major star. It doesn’t work that way anymore.
Actually, this may be the best era to be an actress over 40 in a while.
Streep
Bullock
Aniston
Roberts (not like in the 90s, granted, but still a draw to the right film)
Blanchett
Yeah, most of the “name” actresses out there are older. Even Jolie’s 36. In addition to K. Bowen’s list, there’s Kidman, Watts, Cruz, Farmiga, etc. None of them can really be considered box office stars (Kidman used to be) but they’re certainly the ones who project the most star wattage at awards shows, etc.
What younger actresses can really be considered stars? Seyfried? Stone?
I have to agree with K. Bowen; most average moviegoers still see Ryan Gosling as “that guy from The Notebook.” He hasn’t made the transition into “movie star” at all, though he’s clearly inching toward it this year. At the same time, I understand actionlover’s point about enjoying this pure moment in time for him as an actor who’s committed to at least interesting films.
I miss the Tom Cruise era of 1999-2005, during which he seemed to strive for the nearly perfect balance of the risky and commercial. Making films like Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, Collateral and War of the Worlds, all which displayed his “movie star persona” through a considerably different lens than the one before it. He’s been more calculating and intent on “shoring up his fanbase” as has been said, and the results have been dramatically less interesting because of this.
Lumping the two Toms, no matter how much they’ve “fallen” in the very recent time period, with guys like Ford (whose only big hit in ages was Indy 4), Costner and Willis, though? Fairly ridiculous.
Clooney’s career has been a “low-key chamber piece” in the past decade, save for the Ocean’s movies, as Peterzee said, that it’s difficult for me to roll with the statement that he has “hit his superstar peak,” which was probably the case ten years ago with the first Ocean’s remake, as it was a commercial property that he, along with a boatload of other stars, opened big and established as a viable franchise. Otherwise, it’s somewhat strange terminology for Clooney’s career trajectory, which is just about unlike anybody else in present Hollywood.
“I miss the Tom Cruise era of 1999-2005, during which he seemed to strive for the nearly perfect balance of the risky and commercial. Making films like Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia, Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, Collateral and War of the Worlds”
Yeah, that was a great run. Hanks also had a great run from around ’93-’02.
Pitt’s in the middle of one now. Basterds, ToL, Moneyball, Jesse James, etc.
The thing about Clooney … he has a very specific kind of stardom … he attracts his very loyal audience to pretty risky projects. My guess is that he could go back and make blockbusters if he wanted to and do reasonably well. Instead, he’s content to bring largely than normal audiences to mature fare.
I agree, Pitt’s been hitting home runs in the past five years or so. His run of Jesse James, Burn After Reading, Benjamin Button (his performance at least, in my opinion), Basterds, Tree of Life and now Moneyball… Like Cruise during that aforementioned period, he’s also trying to work with as many heavyweight and talented directors as he can, evidently. Looking forward to Cogan’s Trade next year.
Emma Stone is $50M in the bank. She’s top 5 and rising among female draws.
D.Z. said: “while Pitt still can’t sell non-genre films on his own name.”
What the fuck do you call opening a fairly dry film like Moneyball to over $20 million?
And is Benjamin Button supposed to be “genre” too? Because that film was a moderate success.
I know we occasionally post links to Bill Simmons on HE (egads! Sports talk!)… but he made some interesting points about Hanks in a recent column:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7007777/the-conclusion-summer-mailbag
While Hanks’ career isn’t what it used to be at its peak… what a peak it was.
Among the younger actresses, it’s a little hard to say right now, because of the recent hard times for the rom-com in the past year or two. It used to be Heigl, Hudson, Hathaway, etc. but I’m not sure it still is. Witherspoon still gets overlooked.
I would guess, not in exact order:
Heigl
The Portman resurgence
Witherspoon
Stone
Adams
Knightley (maybe)
Hathaway (maybe)
Hudson (maybe)
K-Stew (maybe)
Seyfried
One of the interesting things I’ve found … when you go to non-movie websites, Mila Kunis isn’t necessarily as well known as we all think. Whenever the topic of her Marine Ball date was opened for discussion, there would be a decent amount of “who’s she?” answered by “the girl on That 70s Show.” I was fairly surprised.
raygo: “No one cares about Warren Beatty, and he was too old in Dick Tracy 1. ”
Clint did ok in Gran Torino.
“He killed his own career, and handicapped that of Annette Bening.”
Did he tell her to star in The Women remake?
jesse: ” Pitt has shown more box office muscle in the past five or six years than he did through much of his more-hyped nineties period.”
Other than Basterds and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Pitt has not really hit it out of the park in a while. Even Benjamin Button underperformed domestically, in relation to its budget.
“know that whenever he works again, he is a much more profitable international draw than either Denzel or Russell”
He’s made three movies in the past six years, and two of them lost money even with international factored in. I would agree that Crowe is also questionable, but at least he’s a working actor, and has ‘Robin Hood’ to boost his recent average gross (and they both have the quite profitable ‘American Gangster’).
“Other than Basterds and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Pitt has not really hit it out of the park in a while”
I think you mean “other than Basterds which DZ always credited solely to Pitt’s star power but is now backing off on because he wants to criticize Pitt too”.
Bobby: just wait — we’ll soon hear how audiences flocked to see B.J. Novak coming off of so many successful years on “The Office.”
As I’ve stated before, the Next Ruling Generation is comprise of:
Michael Fassbender
Michael Shannon
Ryan Gosling
Tom Hardy
Cillian Murphy
maybe Armie Hammer
maybe Idris Elba
Eric Bana, Christian Bale and Robert Downey Jr are still faves of mine, but I’m a bit worried by the sudden disappearance of Clive Owen.
Clive Owen is far too interesting an actor to be stuck in the kind of shit like SHOOT ‘EM UP or KILLER ELITE (Jesus, the Reemstache alone should be a career-killer!) where you could just as easily swap in Gerard Butler or some pablum of Brit in the part. Did DUPLICITY’s failure perceptions of him in those kind of coolly-cynical roles? Give me CROUPIER five times over versus one more THE INTERNATIONAL.
Is Nicholson retired? He’s looking so out of shape lately that it’ll be hard to buy him in anything other than a tailor made role. But if and when he does come back for a leading role he has, like Clint, a lot of older fans waiting for him. The Bucket List was a hit.
I shouldn’t even get into it, but I guess this is vaguely instructive and helpful for other people who aren’t insane to remember, too:
DZ: A movie’s budget has almost nothing to do with whether someone involved is a movie star, unless that star is commanding a crazy budget-eating salary. Hence, whether or not Benjamin Button didn’t match its budget by grossing 140 (and I’d say that offhand, the studio was probably pleased with a career-high gross on a Fincher movie that wasn’t exactly crowd-pleasing) is irrelevant. It made 140, largely off of Pitt. Star wattage is generally determined by whether paying audiences want to see someone in a movie. Those paying audiences don’t say “well, I liked this movie OK, but not a LOT, and the budget was pretty high, so I’m NOT going to tell anyone to see it, or see it again, because I want to limit its profitability.”
Obviously if a movie costs $40 million and grosses only 30, then that’s a case of the star not getting enough people interested. But the standard for “hit” does not vary by budget. That’s PROFIT. In fact, the crazy thing about a lot of Hollywood business is that you *can* have a hit movie and still not make a big profit. The two things are not the same. I mean, even saying Green Lantern “bombed” would be kind of inaccurate. It disappointed related to cost and had little staying power. But a lot of people saw it.
Anyway:
French Ant, you think so? You think Idris Elba is going to be a huge star? Or Cillian Murphy, who is great, but didn’t he kind of get his shot four or five years ago? He seems more in the Ewan McGregor mode — he doesn’t seem to really want big movie-star parts. Or MICHAEL SHANNON? He’s awesome, but you think this guy who has played almost exclusively LUNATICS is part of the next generation?! He’s more like a Chris Walken in training. Which is awesome. But he’s not going to “happen.”
Gosling, I think can do it, not least because he’s often BETTER in studio movies than in his precious indies. Tom Hardy, eh, maybe. Fassbender, he’s got a shot.
Bale is one of the few guys in the last five or six years to reach a higher plateau than most. I don’t think he’s ever going to be DiCaprio in terms of fanbase/likability, but he’ll be popular the way Pacino and De Niro are popular — sometimes in hits, respected when he’s not (well, you know, most of the time).
Also agree on that Cruise run. I’m surprised Wells feels like he’s still really bringing it. I don’t think he’s “lost it” by any means and obviously still endeavors to work with above-average talent. But with Knight & Day, it felt like for the first time in years, he was making a conscious effort to do “fun Cruise shtick” with subpar material and a middling director. As much as I like the cast, Rock of Ages seems like the same type of deal — “this’ll hold the SOBs!”
I am looking forward to MI4, because I love MI movies and I love Brad Bird. But projects with Adam Shankman and the director of Tron 2 feel like the Cruise who worked with Spielberg, Kubrick, De Palma, Crowe, Singer, and PT Anderson is starting to feel like he needs to dumb it down.
My money is on Michael Fassbender as the next big Movie Star Superstar. Dudes like him and women love him. My wife could give a fuck about movies but Fassy makes her jeans creamy.
1. Larry Crowne never looked appealing. He IS still “Tom Hanks.” There’s still another Robert Langdon book out there he can do (even if it was terrible) and Extremely Loud and Cloud Atlas look like interesting projects. But I fear about him and Tim Allen starring in the live-action Jungle Cruise. Only sounds slightly more appealing than Travolta & Williams in Old Dogs.
2. How many actors have ever been just as big as they were 20-25 years ago? John Wayne?
3. The media loved it when MI3 didn’t do as well as perceived it should have, but like Hanks, he IS still “Tom Cruise.” Knight & Day wasn’t good, but I saw somewhere he was reteaming with Robert Duvall on his next movie. Cruise likes to surround himself with talent.
4. Agree on Clooney.
5. The assertion is that everyone knows who Hugh Grant is. He may not be as relevant these days, but it’s true. Everyone knows who he is. But Grant hit his prime with About A Boy. Hasn’t done much of note since. As for the others, Crowe was not big in the 1990′s. LA Confidential was 1999, and Gladiator put him on the map in 2000. But Crowe’s never been reliably bankable. Next Three Days, anyone? Downey’s in danger of Depp-utizing himself by doing Holmes 2, Avengers, Iron Man 3 all in a row.
6. Agree on Gosling.
7. Adrien Brody’s had a couple movies go straight-to-DVD lately. DiCaprio’s king of the under-40′s, but yeah, next bankable one from that list has got to be Seth Rogen.
8. Really hope Nicholson has a couple more movies in him. I’d hate for him to just suddenly stop working like Hackman and Connery. But they were also making poor choices in their latest projects. (It’s one reason I fear DeNiro suddenly quitting.) Pacino gets good work on HBO. Wouldn’t surprise me if he got his own series around 2014.
As for Clive Owen, his movies have a history of underperforming no matter how good or bad they are. And I like Clive. But his biggest successes were Bourne Identity, where he had no lines, and Inside Man, which had more to do with Denzel and Jodie than him.
Christian Bale is not a movie star. BATMAN, as played by Christian Bale is a movie star, but not Bale himself. Very good, very interesting actor, but nobody cares when he’s not Batman. See also: Hugh Jackman and Wolverine, save that Jackman actually IS a star onstage (but still not in movies.)
Chris Evans is on the same track right now – they’ll be trying to put him into “carry this movie” roles because of Captain America; and then everyone will be SHOCKED when they don’t open. Actors, by and large, are not stars anymore – characters, franchises and ‘brands’ are stars.
Information moves too fast and audiences are too fickle for most actors to really be a “star” in the pre-2000s sense anymore unless they’re willing to be a multimedia icon like Will Smith or – on a smaller but noteworthy scale – a “professional celebrity who also acts” like Ashton Kutcher (don’t scoff, more of the “key demo” knows him than Gosling) or Neil Patrick Harris among TV guys.
I guess Josh Brolin’s 15 min. are up.
TheMovieBob, I think you make some good points about the difficulty of really becoming a traditional movie star — you’re right, Kutcher is more famous than a lot of the serious actors we like to bandy around as the next big thing. A lot of younger actors (and older ones, especially ladies) are obviously fine with making TV a major part of their careers — it’s steady work, can probably be fulfilling on a good show, and can lead to some better supporting roles in movies.
That said: no, Christian Bale can’t really open a movie. But given that the concept of a movie star is much-deflated from even ten years ago, he has a lot more recognition than some actors in his age group. And, for that matter, more hits. I’d say that people know who he is. That may be in large part because of Batman, but look at Michael Keaton’s box office during and after two Batman movies, and look at Bale’s. Bale has The Prestige ($53 million domestic), 3:10 to Yuma ($53 million), Terminator 4 ($127 million), Public Enemies ($97 million), The Fighter ($93 million).
Now, did he carry any of those absolutely solo? He did not. But that’s why I compared him to Pacino or De Niro: he’s going to be in hit movies, as well as artsier flops or nonstarters, for probably the next ten or twenty years. That puts him ahead of a lot the other non-Downey superhero actors.
Jackman, I see your case, although he has way more name recongition than Chris Evans, I think.
But in general, yes, it would be smart for a lot of these actors, rather than franchise-chase, to get to the level that Clooeny/Damon/PItt found in the late nineties (no easy fit, admittedly) and then follow their apparentl material-first strategy… which has resulted in lots of hits for all of them.
This is the way I see it:
In terms of versatility, charm and overall class level, Fassbender could be the next Clooney (minus the Cary Grant stigma).
Shannon could very well succeed in a Nicholson-like kind of way. Walken is a good reference, too. His role in the upcoming Superman flick could be the stratospheric gig that No One Ever Saw Coming.
Gosling could be the next Bale (a man fronting the most valuable franchise of the last 10 years: Nolan’s Batman).
Tom Hardy could be the next ultra macho type Hollywood is dying to cast on a more regular basis. Think Statham with much *much* more depth. Hardy is gonna OWN that spot for the next 5 years in such a dominant manner that it’s not even funny.
If Cillian Murphy is the next McGregor, than he can consider his life a complete success. You can loathe those flicks all you want, but “The Beach” and “The Phantom Menace” were probably the most sought after gigs at the time.
Idris Elba is the next Foxx, in a macho type, Hardy-like kind of way.
Hammer, as a total stranger, has shown enough spark in “The Social Network” to feed my curiosity.
Oh, look, I agree that Murphy having McGregor’s career is fine. I actually love McGregor (love his Obi-Wan, even), and think Murphy is great. But a lot of those ultra-talented British actors like Clive Owen and Ewan McGregor and Cillian Murphy have great careers, which is not the same thing as becoming mainstay movie stars. Nothing wrong with that, although it is puzzling in that I think McGregor could totally do those movie star roles — Moulin Rouge and Down with Love and Star Wars all have pretty fine movie-star-charisma acting, moreso than his grittier English roles. But it’s not going to happen in a big movie-star way for him. Probably not Murphy, either.
Elba, though, I don’t know.. sure, I think he’s a badass, but I don’t know if he’s quite as movie-star-ish as Jamie Foxx. He’s not as showy. The audience needed to really make someone a big star isn’t interested in dudes like Elba or Owen who are tough and slick yet a little subtle about it.
Which is why maybe it’s not such a bad thing that movie stars aren’t what they used to be. As long as good people can still get work, to hell with movie stars!
Uh…notably absent from these lists is THE BEEF. Googlehell, Eisenberg, and Levitt don’t have his hits. Even if you ignore the giant robot movies, Beef carried Eagle Eye and Disturbia to hitsville; Wall Street was not exactly huge, but that was more of a move to show he could play with the big boys. Yes, Leonardo is the biggest of that (bizarre) group, but its laughable if you don’t recognize BEEF POWER.
I was just about to say LaBoeuf.
Fassbender, I would say, has it in him. It won’t be because he’s great in Shame, however. He’ll be in either Day-Lewis or Blanchett territory.
Shannon – no way.
No one really cares about the next Clooney or Bale. All people really care about is who is the next Pitt and Cruise, who were the next Redford and Newman. You’d think Di Caprio would have become one of them, but he’s repeatedly refused to embrace his looks and charisma, and continues on his path of playing period-piece assholes.
Hardy’s path, btw, is the most interesting, because a lot depends on whether or not he wants to keep the muscle.
Where did this recent flurry of Idris Elba mania come from? I love The Wire and am one of the few who made the effort to see (and enjoyed) Takers, Obsessed and The Losers, but when did he take over as The One Random Black Character Actor that white movie geeks are championing as some next big thing? Did the Chewitel Eljiofor fever run out now that he’s proving to be just kind of a sadsack background guy? Nothing against Elba, but he doesn’t scream leading man or movie star– too tall, seems 20 years older than his age… If this were 1978 it’d be like you guys throwing Burt Young into the discussion alongside Gere and Travolta like it was an option.
Also, one issue here is building blocks; All these names being bandied about as “new stars” have been in movies for nearly a decade now… even a relative newcomer like Fassbender’s been in like a dozen movies in the last four years. What are their “STAR!” building blocks that audiences actually REMEMBER them from? In the first few years of their careers, Cruise had Risky Business, Pitt had Thelma and Louise. What was the one big thing for some of these guys that clicked with audiences? Sorry, but Tom Hardy hasn’t had a “Risky Business,” so I don’t know how you throw him in the pool yet. Cilian Murphy and Michael Shannon have been Walken-esque freakshows for a decade, I don’t know where anyone’s getting “star” or “leading man.” Fassbender gets a lot of ink from movie geeks who have a boner for him, but even X-Men, good as he was, didn’t make him a household name; He’s more like a Clive Owen/Timothy Dalton type uber-serious, borderline dour actor’s actor than 80s Cruise.
Just for the hell of it: Chris Hemsworth.
To really know who’s coming up next, you have to recast a major movie from the previous decade. So in the 80′s, Penn = Hagen, Cage = Michael, and maybe Gere = Sonny. In the 90′s, Leo = Sheen, MacGregor = Elias, and Crowe = Barnes. And now, Garfield = Exley, Edgerton = Budd, and Fassbender = Vincennes
“Christian Bale is not a movie star. BATMAN, as played by Christian Bale is a movie star, but not Bale himself. Very good, very interesting actor, but nobody cares when he’s not Batman. See also: Hugh Jackman and Wolverine, save that Jackman actually IS a star onstage (but still not in movies.)”
Being fair, nobody is as perfect an example of that phenomenon as Jackman. Bale has done at least a decent job of using the “star power” afforded him by Batman to get himself into interesting projects. All Jackman has done is prove that nobody wants to see him as anything at all besides ‘Wolverine’. [And I say that despite liking Jackman, and thinking quite highly of 'The Fountain'.]
Lex – Idris Elba worked his way up to that slot by being cast in a bunch of stuff. He got cast because he has a HUGE black following, but, given his talent, it was inevitable that white film bloggers would catch on eventually.
Yeah its interesting that Jackman and Bale have gone in entirely opposite directions with their superhero stardom. Compare Bale’s work with Malick, Mann, Herzog, O’Russell, etc. to Jackman’s oeuvre, which, with the exception of The Fountain, is a resume of forgettable, cheeseball fluff – Van Helsing, Australia, Deception (WTF?), and a movie about boxing robots.
Bale and Jackman are quite different actors, though, which is why their pairing on The Prestige was so enjoyable. Jackman the old-timey showman, all charisma and charm, and Bale, the edgy, dangerous, methodical one.
Jackman can do great work when he wants to, but he was always going to be more of a broad-strokes movie star-type actor than Bale, who is the kind of shape-shifting Day-Lewis types that auteurs love.
Also :
“Everyone knows who Clooney is, as well as his cohort: Brad Pitt, Hugh Grant, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe. They’re a generation of actors who picked up the gauntlet in the 1990s, battled their way through heartthrob and flavor-of-the-month status to achieve a certain longevity. They’ve now reached their prime or are just gliding past it.”"
Why isn’t Liam Neeson mentioned as part of this group? He’s more bankable than Grant and Crowe have been lately.
dino – I think ‘Australia’ might’ve looked good on paper when it was the new Baz Luhrmann movie (whose last project was Oscar-huge and popular) and the new Nicole Kidman movie (who was still picking “prestige” work). Also, to be fair, he did sign up for a Woody Allen movie. People forget because he was the worst part of one of Woody’s worst movies, but he did it.
Eloi – I agree with you. The odd thing is, Jackman has everything that makes a person a movie star except an audience’s desire to see him in movies.
I’m far more interested in who is picking up Streep’s gauntlet. McAdams? Hathaway? I hate to say it but, Kristen Stewart?
Blanchett is the new Streep.
For Sexy Fatty Lex — http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/29/idris-elba-as-james-bond-_n_987678.html
If predicting the future is stupid, there’s no point in retconning the past either.
Tom Cruise was far from reaching his present star power by the time of “Risky Business”, “Legend” or “Cocktail”. He was just a glorified up and comer among the crowd until then.
Right now, Ryan Gosling is Tom Cruise at the Legend-level of his own career.
@Colin
Have no fear. Jessica Chastain is gonna take on Streep and Roberts in the same breath.
FA – ‘Cocktail’ was post-Top Gun. In fact, ‘Legend’ was only a few weeks pre-Top Gun.
I love Jackman, too, but he hasn’t got that intimacy through the camera, or whatever you call it — he’s what one of my film profs called a “99-percenter,” who’s almost there but just can’t bring it the last fraction, who hasn’t got a persona that pulls you in. Plenty of amiable leading men out there who could never go the extra yard. I hope he gets there, though.
Jackman has everything you need to be a star, but doesn’t have “it.”
I really agree with Mark about DiCaprio. I get that he resented being thought of as a pretty boy, but that didn’t mean he had to spend the 14 years since Titanic working against the qualities that made him a star in the first place, with the exception of The Man in the Iron Mask and Catch Me If You Can, the only two films since that he allowed himself to be charming and likeable in.
I agree that it’s more interesting speculating abut the future of actresses. The trouble is that we’re sort on actresses like Michelle Williams and Rachel McAdams in the transitional phase between 20s and 30s. We’ve got a lot of actresses 25 and younger, and a lot of them 35 and up. The actresses 25 and down are trying to stay within the starlet age range as long as possible. Stewart and Seyfried are both very talented actresses, but they still lean in their roles more girl than woman. Mulligan did pretty well as a young mother in Brothers (as did Portman) and Drive. Very few though have the spunkier qualities of a young Kidman or Diaz; Emily Blunt, maybe Emma Stone.
Also agree with the point about Neeson. He’s the last person we would have expected to be an action star 10 years ago, but he’s fulfilling the role that Harrison Ford did in the 90s.
Hey Mark and Peterzee….before leaping to conclusions and labeling Fine an “ass”, why not take a brief glance at the linked article?
Like the fifth, parenthetical, paragraph, specifically?
Doesn’t Mark Wahlberg belong somewhere in this conversation?
Wahlberg’s track record is a bit spotty…The Happening, Max Payne, Shooter. You can’t say he guarantees bank.
Lupo: “I think you mean “other than Basterds which DZ always credited solely to Pitt’s star power but is now backing off on because he wants to criticize Pitt too”.”
I’ve said before that Pitt’s a draw on tentpoles, but not much else. He’s the opposite of Clooney, in that regard.
jesse: “Hence, whether or not Benjamin Button didn’t match its budget by grossing 140 (and I’d say that offhand, the studio was probably pleased with a career-high gross on a Fincher movie that wasn’t exactly crowd-pleasing) is irrelevant. It made 140, largely off of Pitt.”
Actually, it made $127 million domestic, off a $150 million budget, not counting P+A. Plus, it still ranked in third behind Marley and Me opening weekend. Maybe it could have done worse, but they were clearly hoping for bigger things from it, to give an uneven director like Fincher that kind of money.
“In fact, the crazy thing about a lot of Hollywood business is that you *can* have a hit movie and still not make a big profit. The two things are not the same. I mean, even saying Green Lantern “bombed” would be kind of inaccurate. It disappointed related to cost and had little staying power. But a lot of people saw it.”
GL did not make *any* profit. It cost $200 million, and, at best, made back its money, thus far.
reverent: Pro-tip: Leo was never charming and likeable.
“Wahlberg’s track record is a bit spotty…The Happening, Max Payne, Shooter. You can’t say he guarantees bank.”
Nobody *guarantees* bank, that’s part of the point of the article, but ‘The Happening’ made 3x its cost despite being R-rated *and* terrible, ‘Max Payne’ made 2.5x its cost despite being R-rated *and* even worse, and even ‘Lovely Bones’ made almost 100 mil (worldwide) despite being borderline incoherent. He’s doing something right.
I never think of Wahlberg myself, but if you look at his grosses, he’s doing a really good job of picking projects that connect. He hasn’t starred in an outright flop for about a decade.
Tom Cruise was far from reaching his present star power by the time of “Risky Business”.“Legend” or “Cocktail”. He was just a glorified up and comer among the crowd until then.
Lupo: Max Payne was PG-13. But I didn’t know The Happening was R-rated, ‘cus that’s an unusual route for Shyamalan to take with his stuff.
Wahlberg’s a bit like an upmarket Statham – he makes more forays into “respectable” filmmaking, but he knows his target audience mostly wants to see him in low-rent actioners. He usually does a decent job with them. Contraband looks fun. But then he’ll occasionally do a Departed or Fighter and get some critical love.
Baron Munchausen-by-Proxy, that parenthetical must have been added sometime after my post and before yours. Or you are the handle for Fine, and are sneakily reacting to my name calling.
Eloi – Statham belongs in the conversation too.
Hmm OK I’ll back off Mark Wahlberg a bit, he does seem to be able to attract a core following when he does action stuff. I had no idea The Happening did decently overseas! The Lovely Bones must be declared a bit of a dud though. Interestingly his two most recent movies The Fighter and The Other Guys are his two biggest hits in years, if you don’t count his supporting turn in The Departed, so maybe he’s stepping it up a bit. If his Seth MacFarlane comedy Ted is a hit, I think that’ll really make him A-list.
We should probably acknowledge Bradley Cooper on the up-and-comers list too.
“The Lovely Bones must be declared a bit of a dud though.”
I only mentioned it because I was surprised that it did as well as it did. Based off the budget cited on BOM vs. the gross, sure, it lost money, but it wasn’t as disastrous as I remembered. That was the weird thing about looking at the numbers — Wahlberg’s “flops” actually did pretty high business, and weren’t as stupidly expensive as a lot of similarly high-profile projects — and you have to factor in how terrible the word-of-mouth is on them, yet they still managed to draw crowds.
BEIBER’S POLITICS
MAKEUP & SKIN CARE
MOVIES, TV
SOCIETY, CAREER & POWER
Fact is that however hard you try you simply cannot find the right buyer for your machine! At the end of the day you ask yourself: What should I do to sell my forklift? Flexibility on terms and time-frames We delivered, and that has led to business in other areas of our company.” Clark Forklift Tilt Cylinders Price Used Forklift Carriage Audureau Wagnergas Alaska The accumulation of this monthly saving compensates the shelling of the huge amount at the time of buying any material handling equipment. Concrete What If The Ambulance Cartruck Ran Out Of Gas