As you may have heard, Hollywood has hit a rough patch. The box office has been wobbly, A.I. is looming and this year’s biggest live-action hit, “Deadpool and Wolverine,” is a Marvel movie that cracks jokes about how lousy Marvel movies are these days.
Amid this turmoil, though, there is hope. Something welcome is happening — and it promises a brighter future for the movie industry. In the parlance of a blockbuster, Hollywood has discovered its one, its savior, its Lisan al Gaib — that messianic figure who can lead the industry out of the desert and back to prosperity.
That figure is the movie star.
Not just a movie star but the idea of the movie star — the kind of larger-than-life pop-cultural force whose appeal stretches across all genres and demographics. Of course, this figure used to be plentiful — Hollywood relied on them to carry movies for decades. But sometime in the 1990s the movie-star factory started to falter, especially for men.
There were famous actors, sure, but fewer and fewer of those brand-name, put-him-in-a-fighter-jet-cockpit-or-behind-a-cocktail-bar species of movie star that Hollywood had always cultivated. Maybe it began when promising young stars like Ethan Hawke, Joaquin Phoenix and Heath Ledger all seemed to bristle at the movie-star machinery that would cast them as leads in summer blockbusters. Maybe the star-making machinery stalled for good when Hollywood realized that Marvel movies and their ilk are marketed on heroes and not who wears the costumes. But this year finally offers hope that movie stars are making a triumphant return.
We should start with an actress such as Zendaya, who had exactly the kind of year that movie stars are supposed to have: She starred in an all-ages sci-fi blockbuster (“Dune: Part 2”) and a sexy, R-rated surprise hit (“Challengers”). But the truly promising development for Hollywood was with the men: guys including Glen Powell, Timothée Chalamet, Paul Mescal and Dev Patel. For decades, male movie stars were Hollywood’s most reliable product, as the industry churned out icons such as Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant, Clint Eastwood and Sidney Poitier — the kind of actor whose surname became a shorthand for a whole identity as a man.
The apotheosis of the movie star economy was likely the 1980s, the heyday of your Stallone and Schwarzenegger, your Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford. Some of the members of that cohort are still active today, carrying action franchises well into their 60s, 70s and even 80s, with a little help from de-aging technology. They’re still here because no one’s come along to replace them, after a generation of would-be matinee idols was drafted to wear superhero tights and sign six-movie contracts with Marvel.
This year, reinforcements arrived. Admittedly, as surnames go, Chalamet, Powell, Mescal and Patel might not yet register on quite the same cultural scale as, say those of Mr. Cruise, George Clooney and Brad Pitt. But as green shoots go, this is a promising crop. These male stars are doing all the things that matinee idols have traditionally been tasked with: anchoring unexpected hits, shouldering fledgling franchises, strapping on the sandals of previous icons. They swept in like the cavalry, at a moment in American culture when the attention and admiration of young men is seemingly up for grabs.
Once matinee idols started vanishing — sometime between the indie-ascendant ’90s, when all the movie stars decided to be reluctant about their fame, and phase two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — it’s no wonder that audiences sought alternatives. Young men started gravitating to Twitch, Discord, YouTube and podcasts — to the defiantly anti-establishment manosphere of Joe Rogan and Pat McAfee, Jordan Peterson and Jake Paul.
Will new movie stars replace all that entirely? No, because the marketplace has been reset. But a fresh wave of young male stars might help lure a generation of fans that’s increasingly staying home, and living online, back out to the multiplex.
Your feelings about each of these actors individually may vary, but consider the objective evidence. Mr. Powell, a cocksure Texan who wears a cowboy hat in public neither ironically nor as a fashion flex, sits at the head of the current class: Not only did he elevate a sequel to a second-tier ’90s action flick into the summer’s most crowd-pleasing popcorn hit, but he also actually seems to enjoy all the trappings of being a star.
Between his precious name and delicate face, Mr. Chalamet should be unbearable, particularly to the men of a country that just elected Donald Trump. Yet he remains frustratingly likable, even appearing recently on ESPN’s “College GameDay” and winning over the heartland.
Mr. Mescal broke out as the internet’s pandemic boyfriend after “Normal People,” later nabbed an Oscar nomination, then this year revived the “Gladiator” story line, with an assist from a fellow ascendant star, Pedro Pascal. Seeing them act beside perhaps the greatest working male movie star, Denzel Washington, felt like the kind of generational torch-passing that Hollywood has needed for so long.
If those stars falter, there are plenty of other promising candidates who could level up. Austin Butler hopped from Elvis Presley to a hairless psycho-villain to a sexy biker, collecting his own Oscar nomination along the way. Mr. Patel, first seen as a baby-faced beanpole in “Slumdog Millionaire,” has matured into a chiseled, shaggy-haired action auteur with this year’s sleeper pick “Monkey Man.” Early next year, Michael B. Jordan teams again with his “Fruitvale Station,” “Creed” and “Black Panther” director, Ryan Coogler, cementing his résumé as the Robert De Niro to Mr. Coogler’s Martin Scorsese. There’s also Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist, who played Zendaya’s boy toys in “Challengers” (with Mr. O’Connor now rumored as a potential next James Bond) and Jonathan Bailey, currently breaking hearts as a man metaphorically missing a brain in “Wicked.”
The sheer depth of talent here suggests that at long last, we may have a generational bounty of young male stars that rivals the ’80s peak. We’ve had our stopgap stars along the way — Leonardo DiCaprio, Keanu Reeves, Ryan Gosling, the Damon-Affleck industrial complex — but they’ve all dodged and weaved around stardom as if it was something to be avoided. We had Mr. Clooney, the one star from this era who’s always carried his stardom effortlessly, but his solitude in this regard only accentuated Hollywood’s broader deficit. This new bunch of actors seem to want to be stars — you don’t go from a quiet, smoldering Sally Rooney adaptation to being directed by Ridley Scott in “Gladiator II” because you’re looking to avoid the limelight.
There have been rumblings beyond Hollywood for years that suggest a hunger for new male matinee idols — and maybe Hollywood is finally noticing. Consider how Mr. Pascal’s star turn hosting “Saturday Night Live” triggered months of #InternetDaddy memes. Mr. Mescal’s viability as a next-gen Maximus was boosted as much by his social media status as an object of fascination — and perennial hot-topic arm candy — as by anything on his impressive résumé. Mr. Chalamet not only became the industry’s most bankable male star but also inspired a look-alike contest this summer in Washington Square Park, then crashed it himself, then crashed the internet. Mr. Powell has done it the old-fashioned way, like a glad-handing politician — dutifully and even joyfully doing the publicity rounds, while also starring in several movies that lots of people actually like.
Remember that feeling? Going to see your favorite star at the theater in a movie you actually like? It feels good, right? In 2024, it felt good again. If movie stars are indeed back, let’s roll out the red carpet.
The post Hollywood Is Desperate for Movie Stars. This Year, the Cavalry Arrived. appeared first on New York Times.
