Stars Exam Question

‘Neither producers nor audiences need stars anymore’  how far do you agree with this statement.

Personally I somewhat agree with this statement. Stars are seen as a dying breed and honestly it would be hard to disagree, the main piece of evidence being the box office results in recent years. In 2014 they’re where 8 franchise films and 2 that are arguably star drive. In 2015 the results were even sparser with only one star driven movie in the top 10 (The Martian).

            As I mentioned above stars can be shown to be in decline using box office figures alone, however there are many stars that will attract audiences in with star power alone, Dicaprio is a strong example of this. Known mainly for his prominent role in the hit movie Titanic, Leo now has a soft spot within all of our hearts making us queue up for his next movie regardless of the content. ‘The Revenant’ is no exception to this rule coming first on the box office and knocking off the long awaited ‘Star Wars, The Force Awakens’. ‘The Revenant’ is a high concept movie however it is no estimate to say if there was a lack of Dicaprio there would be a lack of box office results.

            I believe the decline of stars comes primarily from the fact the construction of their image has changed as stars were once held on a pedestal so high it almost reached Godlike. This image came from the inaccessibility of the stars the main way people viewed stars was via the roles in their films, this lead audiences to believe the actor had the same traits as the characters they play in their movies. Tom Cruise is living proof of this, he is widely known for his countless performances in the seemingly endless ‘Mission Impossible’ movies, due to this many seen him as heroic and patriotic. However due to advancements in technology and the emergence of social media, us as viewers can see Tom Cruise for who he is apart from the characters, a sexually ambiguous scientologist with a slight obsession with Katie Homes.   Due to this people will see the characters he plays in his movies differently and he therefore loses star power due to his unusual beliefs and quirks. I do believe that social media is to blame for this shift as the only way to contact a star years ago was to send them a fan letter and pray for a response-given the actor has a PO BOX set up. Now we can message these stars directly whether over Instagram or Facebook we can do this in less than a minute and possibly get a response.

            I think stars can be seen as a dying breed due to many of them being typecast, typecasting is the process of repeatedly using the same actor to for fill the same type of roles, this mainly happens throughout the means of a franchise-however can happen via playing the same type of roles such as Arnold Schwarzenegger confined within the action genre. I will be using Bruce Willis for my example. Bruce is stuck within not only the action genre but also the ‘Die Hard’ franchise this is due to his appearances within 5 ‘Die Hard’ films as of now. This means his career is in a rut since viewers no longer want to see him in ‘The Whole Nine Yards’ they want to see him play John McClain in ‘Die Hard’. Due to this I would say his star power has essentially died out as audiences’ expectations are met as John McClain but if he acts as anyone else no one really cares.

            Audiences now are smarter than they were many years ago, due to this we become far more drawn into characters. Franchises allow for audiences to do this via offering hours and hours of storyline spanning across multiple expanded universes that are so intricate and in depth they would be unimaginable years ago. Due to the possibility of the vast narrative to be conveyed many viewers almost forget the actor playing the role and remember the character. An example of this is if people seen Daniel Radcliff walking down the street most people would think ‘look its Harry Potter’ and not his true identity. I believe this change has occurred via the videogame industry. Video games have more users than ever before and with major games such as ‘Half Life’ and ‘Borderlands’ not allowing the main character to talk or even make their own decisions, this leads to a new level of immersion where you don't see a star playing the character you just learn about the character as a separate entity and an emotional connection is formed this way. Franchises have successfully tapped into this as they cast ‘relatively’ unheard of actors in protagonist roles lessening the need for stars.

            To summarise I believe that stars are a dying breed and there is multiple reasons for this such as franchises, typecasting and audiences new found intelligence. However I also think that there are exceptions to this rule such as Dicaprio in ‘The Revenant’.