The recent plight of EXPEND4BLES – which didn’t even manage to pass its predecessor’s opening weekend even at the domestic box office even after 10 days in theaters – has potentially hammered one of the final nails into the coffin of the old man action movie.
Another ironclad piece of evidence is pretty much Liam Neeson’s entire filmography over the last decade, with the veteran ass-kicker struggling to find anything approaching widespread acclaim while repeatedly notching some of the worst-performing wide releases of his entire career.
On the other hand, Tom Cruise is 61 years old and Keanu Reeves turned 59 last month, but those ageless legends tend to be the exceptions that prove the rule. Lamenting on the failure of a new generation to emerge, Expendables and John Wick distributor Fred Kogel inevitably managed to get his shots in at the superhero genre too, as he opined at the Zurich Film Festival (per Variety).
“[There was] a great deal of identification with the type of the actor, with the physicality of the actor, so you could relate to that. The younger generation doesn’t even know who does what. I think it’s on us to build up new stars again, with the physicality, with the looks and with the sympathetic, great-acting factor – you need that. It’s in our own hands. See John Wick. John Wick really created a completely new kind of action genre. Who would have known 10 or 12 years ago, after Matrix, that Keanu would be able to pull it off again with his most successful franchise?”
It’s hard to think of a bankable, marketable, and proven action star who isn’t at least in their mid-40s, so it’s not like he doesn’t have a point. With a lack of fresh blood coming in to replace the elder statesmen and CGI-assisted carnage remaining the priority for virtually every major studio, it’s a concern that the musclebound meathead could soon become even more of a relic than ticket sales indicate it already is.