Movies Aren't Star Driven?

“Neither producers nor audience need stars anymore”

How Far Do You Agree With This Statement?

I agree with this statement due to the fact many actors nowadays are mainly associated with their character. What I mean is, if you happened to see Daniel Radcliffe you would automatically refer to him as Harry Potter. This is more evident when we look at Robert Downey Jnr. Robert Downey Jnr plays the playboy billionaire known as Tony Stark and as you can see he has taken on the persona of him in real life. Also, Robert Downey Jnr wasn’t really known until he played Iron Man. He had played in films such as Sherlock Holmes and Tropic Thunder but he wasn’t really known. It was only until he played Iron Man when he started to get globally recognised.  Iron Man is apart of the popular Marvel Franchise and after playing Iron Man; RDJ had gained huge amounts of popularity therefore making him a film star. This shows that he had to depend on his character to make him famous therefore meaning that the character in the franchise is more important than the actual actor who plays them.

Another reason why I agree with this statement is that if you look at worldwide top 10 grosses of 2014, only one of the movies is star driven and that is Interstellar. This is due to the fact that Christopher Nolan directed this movie and he is actually classed as a star director. People will actually go and see his films regardless of what they are. This is pretty much the same in 2015. All of the movies that are on the world wide top 10 grosses are franchises apart from one and that is The Martian. Matt Damon is the main character in this movie therefore meaning that it is star driven.

People nowadays want their expectations to be met and these can easily be achieved by franchises. Franchises offer the audience a sense of security due to the fact that they know there isn’t going to be much difference between the movies that are going to be in the franchise. Franchises offer the audience a prolonged story that can last for many years. Franchises are also good because they don’t really need big A-List stars for their roles. They can just use young actors to portray certain characters and then them actors will automatically become known for being that character, this shows that franchises are not star driven but they are character driven. As long as the actor playing the character does a good job then the audience couldn’t care less. This shows that franchises are character driven over actor driven so this means that because franchises are the most popular type of movies then they don’t need big actors to sell their movies for them.

A reason why I disagree with this statement is that there are actually still some stars out there that can actually sell a film. For example, Leonardo Di Caprio is one of those people. This has been shown perfectly in his newest film The Revenant. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been at the top of the box office for many weeks now however The Revenant has managed to knock it off the top. Also the Revenant is not a franchise or apart of any expanded universe, this is just a stand-alone film that relies on the power of the star actor in order to draw in an audience.

Another reason why I disagree with this statement is that Star Wars: The Fore Awakens had a Black-leading character, John Boyega. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with this but in China apparently there is. Around the world, John Boyega had a huge section on the promotional posters of The Force Awakens but whereas in China he had actually been cut from the poster. This shows us that movies are still star driven in some locations.  He had been cut from the poster due to his skin colour.

In many movies nowadays, they are trying to film in more locations that are worldwide and they are trying to recruit actors with different ethnicities and nationalities. This is simply so that the films can actually attract more of a worldwide audience. You can see this in the most recent Transformers movie, Age Of Extinction. The majority of its scenes have been filmed in Hong Kong and the majority of its money that it earned was from China. This clearly shows us that the location of the movie can have a huge impact on the sales of the movie. This had a huge impact due to the fact that Age Of Extinction was the only movie in 2014 that earned over $1 Billion dollars at box office. Expanding on this point, The Expendables movie actually casted Jet Li so that they could increase their worldwide sales.

Nowadays, big A-List stars are on the decline. For example if you look at Will Smith, he was mainly casted in movies with a strong lead role. He starred in the Men In Black franchise, Independence Day and also he starred in I Am Legend. All of these movies were pretty successful however now Will Smith has actually been casted in Suicide Squad more recently. This means that there will be many main characters, not just one lead actor. This shows us that people aren’t going to be seeing suicide squad just to be seeing one big actor.

-Type Cast

-Terminator Case Study

-Killing Off Main Characters (Alien Case Study)