Quentin Tarantino can seem a bit grumpy at times.
He and a group of famous directors, mostly old and mostly male, are pretty upset with the state of movie culture in 2022. What really upsets them is the dominance of Marvel, with Disney comic book movies as synonym for any intellectual. blockbuster franchise driven by ownership.
Think DC, Star Wars, Godzilla vs Kong, Fast and Furious, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park and more.
People like Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, and Francis Ford Coppola feel like the existence of franchises influences what is and isn’t greenlit in Hollywood.
And they’re not wrong, although some of their more caustic take on how superhero movies aren’t real narratives is a bit shallow.
Intellectual property (IP) has taken over movie releases and has happened alongside the rise of streaming, making it much easier for audiences to stay home and press play on instead of splurging and paying at least $50 for two tickets, plus. if you want snacks and drinks and have to pay for parking or an Uber.
Many moviegoers will only go to this effort for a “campaign” or “event” movie, such as an Avengers movie or perhaps the next installment of Indiana Jones. Or a children’s movie like the umpteenth despicable me.
These brands are certainly bigger than any of their actors. And that’s what Tarantino’s latest missive comes down to.
He said to 2 bears, 1 cave podcast, “Part of the Marvel-isation of Hollywood is that you have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters. But they’re not movie stars. Right?
“Captain America is the star. Or Thor is the star. I mean I’m not the first person to say that. I think it’s been said a million times, but it’s like, you know, these characters are of the franchise who become a star.”
Tarantino is right. Evans can be a big star. Chris Hemsworth can be a big star. But they are not movie stars in the sense that the term has been understood for nearly a century.
They are not movie stars in the same way that George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie, Denzel Washington, Sandra Bullock, Whoopi Goldberg, Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett were and most yet. they are movie stars.
Audiences aren’t flocking to the next Thor movie because it’s a Hemsworth movie, but because it’s a Thor movie. Same with Evans. God of Thunder and People’s Sexiest Man Alive don’t sell movie tickets, they sell streaming subscriptions. For better or worse, this is a measure of success in 2022.
Marvel is the brand, it’s the drawing card. Evans and Hemsworth are not. Even when Jolie, Blanchett, Michael Douglas and Christian Bale are in a Marvel movie, they’re not bigger than the MCU. The public was not there Ant-Man because of Douglas. They didn’t go there Thor: Love and Thunder because of Bale.
But viewers will absolutely watch a movie for Hemsworth if it’s streaming at home. That’s why Netflix is so integrated into the Hemsworth business, and why the actor is paid $20 million to Extraction 2. That is why The gray man watch all these hours.
Actors like Hemsworth, Evans, Chris Pratt, Tom Holland and Millie Bobby Brown, who catapulted to stardom thanks to big franchises, are catnip for a streaming viewer. In the streaming home, what the movie is doesn’t matter as much as the fact that they’re there.
The barrier to entry is much lower. You’re already paying for a subscription, or maybe you’re willing to sign up for a free trial (or a cheap subscription) to see that new Adam Sandler movie you’ve been hearing about.
It takes about two minutes and you don’t even have to leave the sofa.
Compare this with Entrance to Paradise, a mediocre rom-com with a predictable and prosaic plot. What it was didn’t matter, what did was the combined star power of Clooney and Roberts in a genre that doesn’t challenge. Entrance to Paradise earned $158 million.
This is no disrespect to these three of the four Hollywood Chrises, or Brown or Holland. If it were 20 years earlier, they would be real movie stars, but the machine doesn’t produce them anymore.
And for people like Hemsworth, they shrewdly understand that when it comes to their personal brand, audiences and big paychecks are streaming. I wouldn’t mind this election.
Even the latest wave of new movie stars, the people who get you to pay a movie ticket regardless of the movie, like Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling and Charlize Theron, their statuses were minted almost two decades ago.
Tectonic changes in the industry and audience behavior have meant the end of the old order.
But Tarantino is wrong to attribute the end of movie stardom to Marvel’s influence. It has a lot to do with the rise of streaming, which has fueled the choices studios make about what they do and don’t fund, and what they do and don’t market.
The explosion of home entertainment options (and at reasonable prices) has changed what the public will and won’t leave in their homes. Cinema has become almost a premium experience and the average moviegoer in Australia goes to fewer than five films a year.
The economic imperative for studios is to put their money behind franchises with a built-in audience, whose brands are bigger than anyone.
Fans don’t go to Fast and Furious because they want to see Vin Diesel talk about family, but because they want increasingly weird car chases and stunts. And they know that’s exactly what they’re going to get, that’s a fact. So they know what they are paying for. And it will easily survive the death of a protagonist, as it happens with that of Paul Walker.
Convergence of franchise and streaming domain also leads to the chicken and egg thing.
Did audiences stop going to see mid-budget comedies in theaters first and that’s why they’re now the domain of streaming? Or did audiences realize there were great comedies streaming so they didn’t see the point in paying for it in theaters?
You’re far more likely to find the likes of Sandler, Will Ferrell, Jennifer Aniston, Amy Poehler, and Reese Witherspoon on a streaming service than in the movies.
Does this mean we don’t have movie stars anymore? It’s not so black and white. The likes of Pitt and Keanu Reeves are still around.
And there’s a front of young talent, like Florence Pugh and Timothee Chalamet, who sell tickets regardless of the project, but their ability to put bums in seats isn’t yet multi-generational. They appeal to their fellow devotees but not yet to their grandparents.
There are also names that are not so easily entered anywhere. Someone like Margot Robbie, who is undeniably a star, and who still works exclusively on the big screen. Or Emma Stone, Anya Taylor-Joy and Saoirse Ronan.
But their names alone are not enough. It must be a combination of name and project. by David O. Russell Amsterdam, a star-studded comedy starring Robbie, Bale, Robert De Niro and a dozen other names, was one of the biggest box office flops of the year. He will lose up to 100 million dollars.
Robbie and his compatriots are not in the same position as their peers 30 years ago. As IP does now.
It didn’t even matter that the new one lord of the rings The series had no “stars” because Middle Earth is what matters.
This change has its advantages, it gives coverage to the studios to cast actors with lower profiles and from more diverse origins because the strength of the brand is sufficient. People like Simu Liu, Chadwick Boseman, Ismael Cruz Cordova and Sonequa Martin-Green.
Culture has changed and rarely can anything be changed. Marvel may not have killed the movie star, but it certainly is the movie star now. Tarantino is at least half right.