Contrary Forces Aligned
Life is generally unfair, but for Taylor Kitsch, the star of two mega-bombs, John Carter and Battleship, over the past three months, life and fate have heaped bad cards on to staggering levels. And now there are indications that a third film that he’s a significant costar of, Oliver Stone‘s Savages (Universal, July 6), may not do all that well either.
Taylor Kitsch, star of John Carter and Battleship, costar of Savages.
During yesterday’s Oscar Poker chat, Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino projected that Savages will earn only about about $14 million on opening weekend. Not too bad from a layman’s perspective perhaps, but for a heavily promoted big-studio action flick with several recognizable names (Kitsch, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Blake Lively, Benicio del Toro, Salma Hayek, Emile Hirsch, John Travolta, Demian Bichir) and the Stone insignia, not exactly something to pop champagne over.
Late yesterday a German distributor friend told me if Savages under-performs or crashes Kitsch’s career will be in trouble. Contrino feels the same way.
“A young career cannot survive three bombs in a row and still hold on to real momentum,” he said today. “Kitsch has had unbelievably bad luck. If he wants to rebound, he’ll have to pick an interesting project from a trustworthy director. Working with Peter Berg again” — the IMDB says Kitch’s next film is Lone Survivor, a Berg-directed actioner about a mission to kill a Taliban leader” — “is not the solution.”
Is it fair when lead actors take the hit for starring in unsuccessful films? Nope, but that’s the general rule. When they star in hits, they always get a career boost. When they star in a flop, the industry usually doesn’t get too shook up and cuts them a break. But when they star in two tanks in a row, the stock drops. People start looking askance and saying “hmm, I don’t know.” And with three…?
Orlando Bloom went down and hasn’t yet recovered from starring in two bombs in a row — ’05′s Kingdom of Heaven and Elizabethtown.
The other big factor, for me, is that Kitsch doesn’t radiate much inner intelligence or light…no fire and definitely not a lot of technique. If you ask me his on-screen vibe is almost in the shark-eyed, anti-matter realm of Rob Pattinson.
I asked a few journo-critic friends for opinions. They all cut Kitsch a break, and that’s my inclination as far as the box-office situation is concerned. But still…
Marshall Fine: “To the average moviegoer, I can’t imagine that any of these films registered as ‘a Taylor Kitsch movie.’ Nor do I think there is much of a Taylor Kitsch following, except among former Friday Night Lights fans. On the other hand, I don’t think the guy is much of an actor.
“Of course studio idiots will see this as his fault, though Carter and Battleship were sold as an effects extravaganzas and Savages is being sold as an Oliver Stone film. Will Kitsch take the hit? Really, it’s his agent and his acting coach who should take the blame.
“Having collected what are probably big paychecks for these movies, Kitsch should scale back his lifestyle to make the money last, buy himself some acting classes and work in low-budget indys for a while…or perhaps go back to TV.”
Coming Soon‘s Edward Douglas: “I think Savages will be lucky to make $12 million its opening weekend to be honest, but that’s really not Taylor Kitsch’s show or his fault. From what I understand, it’s more of an ensemble piece and just as much of that relies on the better-known John Travolta, Salma Hayek, Benicio del Toro and even Blake Lively, who was being sold as some sort of ‘It Ggirl’ based on The Town but hasn’t really shown much acting talent beyond that.
“I’m also not sure either if John Carter or Battleship could be considered Kitsch’s fault as these were huge budget movies being sold more on the vision of the filmmakers and the original properties than on him having any drawing power. He’s just an actor who both Andrew Stanton and Peter Berg trusted to be able to pull off the role of a hero amidst lots of action and FX-driven eye candy, but neither movie even used his name in the advertising from what I remember.
“Sure, his career would be in better shape if either of those were hits, but these days, movies really can’t be sold only for the stars and many of the year’s more profitable movies such as The Devil Inside, Project X and Chronicle did decently and I doubt anyone could name a single actor in any of them. (Same for the Paranormal Activity movies.) I’m guessing there will always be star-driven films like Men in Black 3, Maleficent, and anything Brad Pitt stars in, but Hollywood has already been shying away from big budget star-driven vehicles and I think as long as Kitsch can prove himself to be versatile actor, he will continue to get work.”
Lewis Beale: “It seems to me we can accuse Kitsch of making bad choices with John Carter and Battleship, but starring in an Oliver Stone film should be a major step up, career-wise. I think the problem here might be that Savages looks really nasty — violent, hyper-sexualized — and it’s also going up against the new Spider-Man film, so it’s a lose-lose.
“As for Kitsch himself, beyond the terrible last name, which almost begs late-night host jokes, he just seems to be from some cookie-cutter line of new leading men, none of whom really stand out in any way. Other than Chris Pine, I don’t see any of these guys — Kitsch, Channing Tatum, etc. — hanging on for a long time, because their basic appeal is male model, not movie star.”
I’d reconsider Tatum’s situation, Lewis, until you see Magic Mike. Or have you?
Marshall Fine never watched Friday Night Lights. If he did, then he couldn’t with good conscious say that Kitsch isn’t much of an actor. That being said, these couple choices have been hideous, so I hope Savages works out for him. Funny, his work in FNL was all character based…maybe he needs to go back to that.
Very happy for Tatum, who showed some versatility in 21 Jump Street (seriously) and Haywire. Looking forward to Pine in People Like Us – I hear his scenes with Pfeiffer as his mother are revelatory. Have you seen it, Jeff?
“Oliver Stone’s Savages (Universal, July 6), may not do all that well either.”
Wasn’t the “may not do well” implied by “Oliver Stone’s”?
The all-media screening in L.A. for Savages is the day before it opens, which also happens to be the day after the fourth of July. What does that tell you?
Yes, maybe this should put an end to Oliver Stone’s career before it puts an end to Taylor’s.
I saw Savages when the Egyptian screened it last week, and overall it’s a good “B” with a real visceral quality that seemed more like the work of a talented up-an-comer rather than a 66 year old director in a slump. Travolta’s fantastic, the of slick, gold-hued beach settings mixed with the desaturated neo-noir interiors were well-balanced, and Lively brought some sympathy to a blandly drawn “rich bitch” kind of character,
BUT the weakness of the film lies in the work of Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch. They both give off this douchy vibe that you CANNOT have from your leads in a film of such lurid violence. You need rock-center leads who can hold the audience with a look, like Liotta in GoodFellas or Harrelson in Natural Born Killers. I had no interest in their fates and kept waiting for Travolta, Hayek, or Del Toro to get back on screen because they were so much more invigorated as performers. Kitsch plays an ex-Marine hard-nosed type to Johnson’s more wide-eyed idealist, but the intelligence was missing from Kitsch and the edge was missing from Johnson. Their characters weren’t given much to do, but neither actor provided that electricity that elevated their material. Damon and Affleck would have KILLED these roles 10-15 years ago. I think Johnson can carve a niche playing poetic dreamboat types, but Kitsch is 31 already and I think Fine’s right about TV being the better option. Try to find a good role that plays to his sort of goofy-strongman type and rock and roll in his comfort zone.
While Kitsch was indeed very, very good as the cowpoke James Dean in FNL, but he was also one of the few non-adult actors who attempted to show any variation of character, which was nigh impossible with such a large cast and intersecting story lines. Now that he’s been asked to carry large tentpole movies his lack of true cinematic leading man range has become apparent.
He does have simmering charisma when given the material to work with, but he needs to work on his craft and really challenge himself. If there’s anyone Kitsch should try to emulate it’s Colin Farrell, ironically another casualty of a lesser Stone project. Both had highly ballyhooed primary roles followed by pretty high-profile stinkers, but hopefully Kitsch can embrace the odd character role to better his stature and skill like Farrell so memorably did.
Kitsch was always sort of a low-key, brooding presence on FNL. It’s surprising that they catapult him into leading roles right away. You’d have thought Scott Porter was the more natural ‘leading man’ from that show. It’s a shame if Kitsch’s career is over already because he was very good on FNL.
Lone Survivor might be a good choice for him, though. He’s supporting Marky Mark so the pressure is off, and he has scene-chewing Ben Foster in there too, so Kitsch’s low-key charm might be a welcome respite from Alpha Dog Ben.
“The other big factor, for me, is that Kitsch doesn’t radiate much inner intelligence or light…no fire and definitely not a lot of technique.”
The other big factor, for everyone else, is that Jeff is so anti-television (especially BROADCAST television) that he is utterly unaware of just how good Kitsch was on the outstanding Friday Night Lights.
But nooooooo, keep on pretending it’s 1965 and TV means nothing.
I am officially last on the list of people who blame actors for the failures of films. I’m pretty sure there’s a long list of blockbusters whose success can’t really be credited to them either. No, “The fault (and by extension, the credit) is not in the stars, but in the suits.”
Taylor’s a great TV star, sort of like Jon Hamm…doesn’t really pop on the big screen as much as the little one. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Not everyone can be a movie star.
But I don’t know if I would say Chris Pine is the future either…without Star Trek, he’d be in a similar position.
Well, at least he’s getting paid the big bucks. Wish I could be in three high-profile flops and have that to show for it.
Not really surprised, though. Only an idiot would schedule Savages up against Spider-Man 2.0.
They keep giving huge roles to vapid pretty boys like these and they wonder why the public doesn’t respond. Just look at Conan, in 1984 they hired Arnold, not much of an actor but a great screen presence and he was a man that you would be convinced could be a warrior. The last Conan they hired an underwear model. Why are they doing this? They seem to hire these guys to either attract young girls or they are hiring them so they can be put on wish lists that casting directors would like to sleep with?
Bombs away… yet again! This guy is the kiss of death.
The bigger story is how bad Oliver Stone has become. How does a guy forget how to make good films?
This movie looks like a lame Tony Scott rip off. Just awful. Stone’s last great film was in 1994. Sad.
Agreed 100% with Eloi Wrath, Kitsch had great presence on Friday Night Lights as the quiet, brooding bad-boy. But I’m surprised he blasted into leading-man territory ahead of Scott Porter, who played FNL’s all-American quarterback, which would seemingly make for a more natural transition to classic leading roles.
But by far the best young actors on the show were Zach Gilford (Saracen), Adrianne Palicki (Tyra), and Michael B. Jordan (Vince). These 3 delivered some of the best performances I’ve seen in a long time, especially Gilford in Season 4′s “The Son”. Friday Night Lights had an embarassment of acting riches, especially Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, but I’m really hoping we see more of the show’s young talent in the future.
I also saw this at the Egyptian and concur with a lot of what Jesse Crall has to say. For most of its length, it’s an entertaining but unremarkable potboiler that has few hallmarks of “an Oliver Stone film” and that you’d guess was directed by a soulless but technically adept thirtysomething. It’s pretty much of a piece with “U-Turn,” as you might guess, but I enjoyed “U-Turn” more.
The older trio of actors are all fun (especially Travolta) and the younger trio bring very little besides competent performances and oodles of sexuality. But they’re really the least of the movie’s problems. Stone never brings much of a point of view to the movie other than maybe the editorial viewpoint that threesomes are good and dope can be good. There are no character arcs in this script; all the characters are exactly the same at the end as they were at the beginning, even though there is lip service given to an quickly introduced and laughably abandoned theme about how the world changes people. You expect someone to be transformed by the ordeal they go through, but they’re all bubbleheads–which at first I thought was being played for slight irony, before I realized better.
Stone shows some directorial courage just by making it a very hard R, with lots of people getting capped in the kneecaps and that sort of thing, and two reasonably explicit sex scenes right in the opening credits (although, naturally, all we see of Lively is her back).And the dope-smoking scenes are practically love scenes themselves, given the director’s apparent affection for the bong. But other than the “Jules and Jim” by way of Cheech and Chong elements, there’s not much originality to the way anything plays out.
I was still willing to go with it till the awful ending. Or endings. (Semi-spoiler alert.) Stone pulls a “Funny Games” by yanking one ending to give us a completely different one instead. But instead of following s happy ending with an unhappy one, it’s the opposite. So much for courage. The fake ending is just as lousy as the real one, for what it’s worth, both of them involving a ridiculous stand-off that makes no sense for any of the characters to have gotten themselves into. What a disappointment when you realize THIS is where the movie was taking us.
As an aside, Emile Hirsch mostly got cut out of the movie and Uma Thurman got entirely cut out. Maybe there was a less impersonal movie that got left on the cutting room floor. But I doubt it. Whoever invoked Tony Scott had it right. For a few minutes here and there, Travolta offers us the pleasure of his acting like a ninny (and acting without his rug), which has the effect of making his DEA character unbelievably campy but at least giving respite from the earnest drabness of the handsome kids–and at least for those few minutes it’s Tony Scott directing “True Romance.”
@Chris: I think overall you’re a little harder on it than I am, but yeah, I saw the same flaws. Really, Hirsch should have been one of the guys (Johnson’s character, probably) since he brings much more charisma to his work. And Thurman was supposed to play Lively’s mother, and that would have given the flick a much-needed dose of familial bonding, allowing her character to exist outside of the plot.
And that’s basically the weakness with Savages: It’s all plot, no story. Great actors like Travolta elevate the plot, weaker ones like Kitsch do not. But Stone keeps it interesting and I was never bored.
I root for this guy because I fucking love the shit out of Friday Night Lights. At the start of the show he is what you’d expect him to be. Eye candy for the ladies and not much else. He really grew as an actor over the five seasons and became one of the most interesting characters.
Also, Savages is based on a great book written by an insane person.
These guys aren’t movie stars. You have to have a spark, some kind of individuality… Kitsch, Pine and the rest are just completely vacant.
Markj74 still stick in 1985, as ever.
Kitsch rules. Yeah, must be horrible having starred in three of the BEST MOVIES EVER MADE all in a four-month span.
He’s also rich, famous, and good-looking. Not like he’s gonna be run out of town by an angry mob and end up working in an accounting office. He won. You guys lose.
Just bow to him.
I fear Kitsch is headed down the same unfortunate path as Kristen Bell. Stellar work on TV with an extremely well written character (FNL for Kitsch, Veronica Mars for Bell), but then moving on to the big screen with a seemingly unrelenting stream of medicre movies.
Which, ultimately, leads past the point of audiences yawning when seeing their name on the marquee to equating them and their films to immediate B or C movie status. ZYou know, the same thought you have when you see Seann William Scott as a lead…
That said, I’m one of the few that give permanent passes to virtually any actor from FNL or VM going forward…
Speaking of people no one wants to see, why is Ryan Reynolds still getting gigs?
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I root for this guy because I fucking love the shit out of Friday Night Lights. At the start of the show he is what you’d expect him to be. Eye candy for the ladies and not much else. He really grew as an actor over the five seasons and became one of the most interesting characters.
Also, Savages is based on a great book written by an insane person.