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Note from the pundits: Macho is still out. There have been wispy rumors that old strongmen are coming back. But as far as we’re concerned for right now — and in American cinema especially — the poker-faced romantic hero who takes out the bad guys with a casual twirl of the gun and saves the helpless bombshell is dead. The social climate and the balance of power have changed, and even James Bond is ducking a potential sexual harassment suit from Moneypenny while receiving verbal kicks in the groin from the now female M.
The evidence is at the box office. Sylvester Stallone’s soiled bandanna resides forgotten in somebody’s sock drawer. His bankability has sunk significantly below sea level (See Exhibit A: Judge Dredd and Daylight). Arnold Schwarzenegger turned into a self-parody with Last Action Hero and True Lies. His return to playing the straight man with Eraser failed to thrill audiences. Although he can’t be faulted for the downfall of the Batman franchise (hamming things up laughably as Mr. Freeze), his presence certainly didn’t help.
Bruce Willis couldn’t wring another action hit without Ben Affleck and an oversized meteor.
Armageddon went through the roof, but does anybody remember Mercury Rising and The Jackal? Even Harrison Ford, who was still igniting box offices as an action hero in 1997 with Air Force One, had a decidedly mediocre follow-up with Six Days, Seven Nights. And if he were to don the fedora and bullwhip once again, as he has said he is willing to do, he might be better off fathering a cinematic son and letting Indy Jr. beat up the Nazis.
The evidence is in cultural attitudes. People listen to the cheesy lines of traditional action heroes and laugh. Our modern, enlightened age generally deems it hip to ridicule men. As a result, many real-life guys, in an effort to seem more female-friendly over the years, have repositioned themselves as “sensitive” and “vulnerable.” Gratuitous brawling is no longer cool. I can’t remember the last time I heard a guy brag about the size of his penis. And even singer Paula Cole has wondered, “Where have all the cowboys gone?”
As a result, today’s action stars have to factor in adorability to compensate for their toughness. They have to make fun of themselves (or have a woman do it for them, which is often the case), and be men of flesh instead of men of steel.
One could argue that Will Smith is a red-blooded American action star. But in all truth, he is most entertaining when he’s getting his ass kicked by an F/X creation, like the infant squid that body-slams him in Men In Black. People often point out Smith’s humor as a source of appeal. But honestly, his wisecracks have no more wit than Stallone or Big Arnold.
The last generation of American action stars are wheezing their funeral dirge. And none of the younger Hollywood upstarts have risen to take their place. There’s been a lot of talk that today’s young actors are considerably less willing to be typecast as pure genre characters. They’re certainly more involved in the business and creative side of filmmaking than the Rob Lowes of the world, who were primarily interested in merely showing up.
Some of today’s stars have taken a brief stab at the action genre. But they often had their roots firmly planted elsewhere first. And they’re not willing to strap on the gun belt unless they have a clear road back. Nicolas Cage already had a solid decade of comedies and dramas behind him, including an Oscar for his beautiful performance in Leaving Las Vegas, before entering the gladiator’s arena. Now, after The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off, he’s taken a step back into lukewarm dramas and thrillers like City of Angels and 8 Millimeter.
Strategy has changed as well. It’s no longer enough to have a few good gunfights and car chases. Action films today are synonymous with special effects-driven blockbusters. The focus is not so much on the hero as on the digital spectacle around him. Brendan Fraser is just another panicked face, trying to clear a path for the rampaging mummy. Will Smith’s best pictures have him overwhelmed by aliens both hostile and benign. And this summer he’ll be trying to avoid being trampled by Kenneth Branagh’s monstrous contraptions in Wild Wild West. Wesley Snipes checked in with the sci-fi bloodsucker flick Blade. But what little appeal that film had lay not in Snipes but in the décor. The most eye-catching moment was a vampire bar with blood sprinklers. In fact, Snipes provided the film’s most annoying moments. Speaking his lines thickly, as if his cheeks were bloated by Novocain, he could’ve been Vito Corleone’s illegitimate son. After actioners such as Point Break and Speed, it appeared that Keanu Reeves would be in the action mold to stay. But he plays second fiddle to the special effects and cartoonish violence in The Matrix.
The straight, romantic Hollywood action films like Rambo, the poor social outsider who destroys things because that’s all he’s qualified to do, have been swept away. Blockbusters today rely as much on humor as they do on special effects to disarm the audience. The heroes are often silly and make a point not to take themselves seriously. Will Smith’s cockiness and Jeff Goldblum’s geeky sarcasm kept Independence Day rolling. The goofball pranks of the oil driller misfits in Armageddon lent the film a light atmosphere. Those guys were in an awfully good mood considering the fate of the Earth was in their hands. The latest big adventure from Hollywood, The Mummy, featured absurd (yet funny) scenes like the sleazy desert con man muttering prayers from every religion to ensure divine protection as the mummy bears down on him. Also in The Mummy, the scheming brother who, via contrived facial distortions, impersonates the zombies around him to avoid capture.
It’s as if Hollywood was setting up a nationwide conference call, saying “Hey, guys, we don’t believe in this crap either. Come share a laugh with us.”
This studio method of ingratiating itself with its audience is kind of pathetic. If you’re making an overblown film with a ridiculous plot, then do so. But don’t set up an absurd premise and then knock it down because you know audiences will laugh at you.
It’s not that Hollywood is no longer interested in the straight action flick. The only difference is they’re looking in places other than their own backyard. The proof: their successful commandeering of Hong Kong’s action stars. I can almost see the Hollywood execs hooting and laughing. “We can still release and profit from these dumb movies,” they’d giggle. “But we’re not the ones making them!”
First there was Jackie Chan who, as taglines for First Strike cheerfully announced, is fighting for America now! Only when he became a success over here did a Hollywood studio produce a Chan film. His acrobatic grace is complemented by a strong sense of social awkwardness. He spends a lot of time looking confused. He’s the only guy who can foot-sweep an enemy with a broom handle one minute and then trip over his shoelaces the next.
Next came Chow-Yun Fat, who has failed to thrill American audiences in every way that Chan succeeded. Why? He has nothing to offer that hasn’t been done thousands of times before. He comes in with a poker face, grabs himself a scantily clad girl and shoots everybody. Whoopee. He’s too serious. He’s a hit man who suffers a crisis of conscience when he’s ordered to assassinate a child. Unfortunately, by disobeying his employers, he is then forced to kill about 200 people. Basically the message is that life loses all sanctity once you grow up. Maybe the kid would’ve been better off dead.
And finally, we have the man long considered to be Bruce Lee’s successor, Jet Li.
With Black Mask, a film released in Hong Kong in 1996 only now coming over here, Li combines Chan’s martial ballet and Chow Yun-Fat’s romantic heroism. He broods over his violent past and we’re intended to feel sympathy for the poor, used-to-be bad guy who wants to change. But then the message is diluted a bit when he winds up destroying everything anyway.
Although you could admire a film like Black Mask for not pretending to be something that it isn’t, it doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t very good.
Action films will never die. They mutate, they ooze, they assume different shapes and subsequently become more manipulative than ever. They disguise themselves as progressive heroes when the results still come out the same. Movies might mock maleness, but the action star still has the girl in the end and a pile of bodies in his wake. At the end of Speed, when the bus finally rolls to a stop and Dennis Hopper is properly laid out, Sandra Bullock says to Keanu Reeves, “We’ll just have lots of sex.”
This is a deliberate counterpoint to the expectations of audiences. Instead of having the young maiden fix a gooey-eyed look on her hero, she dismisses the obligatory “falling in love and living happily ever after” bit with an offhand remark. On the eve of the millennium, it’s a bit sad that my favorite action hero of the 1990s is unabashedly awful, self-deprecating and serious at the same time: Bruce Campbell, in filmmaker Sam Rami’s funky conclusion to his Evil Dead trilogy, Army of Darkness.
This article appears in Jun 2-8, 1999.