P English Language and Composition

Name: Chapter: 6
“Have Superheroes Killed the Movie Star?” by
Bastien
Period: Pages:
344-348

Paragrap Page 344-345 Student

h Introduction Notes
#
1 Looking back at this dismal summer of superhero adaptations,
I am reminded of something Chris Rock said during the 77th
Academy Awards: “There are only four real stars, and the rest
are just popular people.” This was February 2005, mind you —
a few months before Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins
would hit theaters and three years before Marvel would kick-
start its cinematic universe with Iron Man.

2 Stardom was already changing pretty dramatically thanks to

reality television. But Rock’s somewhat exaggerated
statement is truer now than ever before. Yes, social media,
YouTube vloggers, and reality TV have greatly altered who
becomes a star and what it even means to be one. But movie
stardom — once an integral part of the Hollywood ecosystem
— has arguably taken its biggest hit ever, thanks to the current
dominance of onscreen superheroes.

3 Just take a look at the careers of actors like the various Marvel
Chrises (they’re interchangeable enough so choosing any will
do). Each has achieved some level of popularity and even a
somewhat dedicated fandom. But they have also been unable
to translate the visibility their characters bring them into
success elsewhere.

4 Watching one superhero film after another, it becomes

undeniable that the actors aren’t the stars — the characters
and property are. Most ticket-buyers don’t go to Deadpool
because they’re enamored of Ryan Reynolds’s charm or see
Suicide Squad because of Margot Robbie’s skills. Perhaps
that’s why it’s disorienting to see traditional, undeniable stars
like Will Smith and Ben Affleck play characters like Deadshot
and Batman. Stars of their caliber alter the films they’re in by
their mere presence, as if they have a gravitational pull. And
there are moments in their respective turgid superhero epics
where their levity suggests much better films than the ones we
get.

With true movie stars, we bring baggage to every performance

5 we watch — the emotions we attach to their early
performances, their triumphs and their downfalls.
 But superheroes and nostalgia-tinged reboots have replaced
the alluring mythology of movie stars themselves. That isn’t
because we don’t need stars. If anything, Hollywood needs a
new crop and to expand on what stardom means in the first
place.

“What Is a Star?”

Paragrap Page 346-347 Student

h Notes
#
6 Bankability is often the easiest answer to the question of what
makes a movie star. But box-office results aren’t everything.
Hollywood history is littered with actors whose films made
bank but have little lasting cultural impact. Chris Pratt — now
trading in the rugged American machismo that drew us to
Harrison Ford — has found success leading Jurassic World and
Guardians of the Galaxy. But it’s hard to argue that he is
successful on his own and not just replicating a bland
approximation of actors before him. Is he truly bankable, or is
he just choosing the properties that guarantee some level of
financial success? Pratt is a good model of someone who is
popular but has yet to become a true star, the kind who is
either bankable in original films or in possession of a star
image that alters the film around him.

7 So, what makes a movie star beyond box-office appeal?

Looking at the careers of everyone from Bette Davis to
Michelle Pfeiffer to Angelina Jolie, you can get a sense of the
alchemy involved. A true star, in essence, is a potent mix of
sex appeal, mystery, and relatability all spiced with the ability
to surprise and a certain something extra that no one else has.
This adds up to an identity that audiences come to recognize
and seek out time and again.
8 When we go to a Brad Pitt film, we know we’re getting a
character actor in a leading man’s body often wrestling with
what his beauty means. When we see a Keanu Reeves film,
we know we’re getting an actor who asks us what it means for
a man to be heroic in the first place, one who makes
vulnerability central to his performance and who often
interacts with the camera in ways that we expect of female
sex symbols. Of course, there’s always a level of trial and error
with this. Even after figuring out who they are on-screen, the
best stars often subvert, fight against, or deconstruct their
 own image.

9 Having this sort of crafted narrative is important; without it

stars don’t exist. That’s the danger of new, hot actors joining
comic franchises that lock them into absurd seven-picture
deals: They don’t have the ability or time to craft their own
star image. The superhero characters they take on subsume
their image. The moviegoing public has a hard time seeing
these actors beyond the comic book and legacy franchise
characters they play. These performers get stuck playing
characters that all seem crafted from similar molds: the
emotionally bruised white dude full of snappy comebacks. Or
the badass, leather-clad heroine who has more of an
interesting moral landscape than her peers but still gets little
to do. The stalwart all-American hero who is proud and true. If
even stars as big as Will Smith now rarely bring the kind of
box-office results that justify their huge paydays, do the
studios really even need them? From the perspective of the
executives, what is the point of a movie star beyond
marketability?

"Why Stars Matter”

Paragrap Page 347-348 Student

h Notes
#
10 The studio system during Hollywood’s golden age had one
surefire commodity: the stars themselves. Whole genres were
born out of the necessity to market these figures. Stars were
under contract with the studios who groomed them, changed
their names, created stories around them, and thrust them in
front of the camera until they found a formula that they could
package over and over again.
11 That may make movie stars seem, to today’s audiences,
unimportant. Many of the most popular stars from decades
ago are unrecognizable to audiences today for a variety of
reasons, including changing tastes. But when we look back on
the stars with true legacies — the Cary Grants, the Paul
Newmans, the Marilyn Monroes — it’s clear they weren’t ever
just products of Hollywood’s star system like their peers in the
 first place. They often had a clear hand in shaping their
images, with actors such as Bette Davis notoriously reworking
scripts, giving advice on direction, and making choices that
directly affected the production of their films, even to the
chagrin of directors and producers.
12 The great stars challenged the studios and America itself.
Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and River Phoenix helped
us question what it means to be a man in this country. The
stardom of Sidney Poitier gave white audiences a peek into
the black experience and perhaps the ability to see the
humanity of African-Americans. The activism of Harry
Belafonte and Angelina Jolie brings attention to causes that
many would like to forget. Stars can start trends in fashion,
affect political conversations, and leave an important
footprint on American culture. But most powerful is how they
affect the medium itself.

13 Critics’ conception of cinema’s “canon” perhaps bends far too

much toward directors. Great stars are often responsible for
some of the more unforgettable images in film. And stars can
be auteurs in their own right — playing with their images from
film to film, always in conversation with the expectations of
their audience. The rise of superhero films has taken some
great actors off the table for years, skewing their ability to
craft any sort of image outside the familiar heroes that they
play.

"What Has Been Lost”

Paragrap Page 347-348 Student

h Notes
#
14 The rise of comic book movies is an integral part of the
disappearance of an important kind of film: the mid-budget
adult drama, where actresses like Sandra Bullock, Michelle
Pfeiffer, and Meryl Streep cut their teeth. Going farther back, I
can’t help but think of the women’s picture — a strange,
somewhat feminist subgenre during the era of classic
 Hollywood that existed because the studio heads needed
vehicles for their actresses. An actress can’t become a star if
she has no meaty leading roles, a truth that Hollywood seems
to have forgotten. Mid-budget studio films are often where
stars have been able to craft themselves. It’s also where we
most often see the consistent star and director collaborations.
But now directors seem to jump directly from small
independent films to gargantuan would-be blockbusters, and
with so much money on the line, there’s no room for
experimentation or for directors to push themselves and their
actors in bold directions.
15 Ultimately, I’m not worried about the white male actors —
like the Marvel Chrises — when it comes to the changing and
charged landscape of modern Hollywood. They will get chance
after chance to prove their worth as stars even if they can
barely inhabit the superhero roles they play, let alone figure
out and craft their own public images. Just ask Jai Courtney.
Or any of the interchangeable white, blond-ish, sharp-jawed
men that Hollywood can’t get enough of despite audiences’
difficulty in differentiating them.

16 Actors like Chris Hemsworth may never figure out what brand
of stardom suits them, but their careers will be just fine.
Although, with his turn in Ghostbusters and the more comic
approach to Thor in the DVD-extra short film packaged with
Captain America: Civil War, Hemsworth seems to be realizing
what kind of star he truly is: someone a bit funnier and more
subversive than the straight-up heartthrobs his physicality
may lead us to expect of him. When it comes to the
frustrating lack of mid-budget pictures — where true stardom
finds its beginnings — the actors I’m worried about are the
ones rarely given a chance to play superhero characters in the
first place.

17 The ecstatic reaction to the casting of Marvel’s upcoming

Black Panther, a film with nary a light-skinned or white actor
in sight, isn’t just because of the character’s history or the
rarity of seeing black people headlining a major film where
slavery isn’t the thrust of the narrative. It’s also a reaction to
the dearth of black actors (especially dark-skinned black
women) who become movie stars in the first place. And it’s
indicative of what a movie star can do for the culture and film
itself. It’s actors like Michael B. Jordan and Lupita Nyong’o
who offer the most interesting opportunities for the evolution
of movie stardom. But with no mid-budget pictures to give
them the chance to create their own legacies — rather than
adapt those of characters that have existed in comics for
decades — will we see them get that opportunity? Will we see
them collaborate with a writer/director over decades in a way
that is both risky and rewarding? Will they be able to develop
the intimacy with their audience that a great star turn can
achieve if they’re stuck vacillating between big-budget films
 that offer little to no narrative risks, very small independent
films (if they’re lucky), television, and the stage?
18 To say that who becomes a star doesn’t matter is to forget
that Hollywood is a microcosm of America itself, and to forget
how stardom has shaped the history of the medium. What is
Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest work without the way Cary Grant
riffs on his own image in North by Northwest and Notorious?
What is the arc of the antihero in cinema without Vivien
Leigh’s infuriating yet enchanting Scarlett O’Hara or the way
Bette Davis wrestled with female anger? What is the history of
the musical without the elegance of Fred Astaire or the
bristling heat of Gene Kelly? Movie stars can make good films
masterpieces, electrically charge a close-up, and alter our
understanding of a film due to their image. They are often the
reason certain genres like the women’s picture exists in the
first place. Film needs its movie stars. And television shouldn’t
be the only place they’re allowed to breathe. Until Hollywood
remembers this, the medium itself will continue to suffer.