One thing I’ve learned about myself, as I approach middle age, is that I like to see actors older than me pretend to beat up villains and save the world. The good news is that the offer of this type of production is greater than ever. The formula is simple: a mature man who leads a quiet life is forced by circumstances to use his abilities to teach a lesson to those who have made the mistake of underestimating him. It all starts when some clueless man behaves cruelly or aggressively towards someone and issues a challenge to our well-mannered hero: “What are you going to do about it, Grandpa?”. The veteran proceeds to demonstrate everything he learned in the special forces or in the Belarusian mafia. Liam Neeson’s career-transforming 2008 film Taken and its two sequels exemplify this subgenre best, along with The Grey, a 2011 film in which Neeson straps broken bottles to his knuckles to confront blows with a pack of wolves. Since then, everyone of his contemporaries, and some older than him, have gotten into the game, from Jackie Chan and Jean-Claude Van Damme to Jeff Bridges (The Old Man) and Bob Odenkirk (Nobody). Even Denzel Washington has appeared in a couple of such movies and will do so once again this year with The Equalizer 3. One look at the billboards shows that we are living in the age of veteran action heroes. Jason Momoa, 43, and Vin Diesel, 55, appear in the recently released Fast X. At 58, Keanu Reeves gives life, for the fourth time, to John Wick. When what is supposed to be the penultimate Mission: Impossible premieres, Tom Cruise will be 61. And, of course, there’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, in which Harrison Ford will wield his whip again at age 80. On the other hand, on Instagram you can see Hugh Jackman, 54, gaining back the necessary muscle to play Wolverine in Deadpool III, a film in which he will coincide with the also incredibly fit Ryan Reynolds, 46.
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THE RISE OF THE VETERAN HERO
What action movies allow us to do is imagine doing something we would never be able to do in real life, like crashing a multimillion-dollar car into a helicopter or saying a hackneyed but punchy line right after throwing a villain off a building. . But for those who grew up, and then started to get older, watching Cruise and Reeves, the veteran action hero subgenre is about more than just action fantasies, it’s something that reminds us that our bodies still have a lot to give and that If the situation calls for it, we, too, might find the courage to risk everything for an ideal, that our lower back pain and knocking knees do not define us.
A while ago, it was not common to see fifty-somethings kicking, and when it did happen it was not something you could enjoy. Roger Moore turned 57 while filming his seventh appearance as James Bond in A View to a Kill. And despite the support of several stuntmen, an epic soundtrack courtesy of Duran Duran and a great performance from Grace Jones as May Day, it is considered one of the worst Bond films. With the exception of Clint Eastwood, who was 55, and Charles Bronson, 64, the big action stars in 1985 were considerably younger than Moore. Chuck Norris was 45; Harrison Ford 43; Michael Douglas 41; Sylvester Stallone 39; Arnold Schwarzenegger 38; Mel Gibson 29 and Eddie Murphy 24. But the big problem wasn’t that Moore was 57, it was that he looked like he was that age. He looked tired and every time he shared the scene with Tanya Roberts, the Bond girl, he seemed like her uncle. Moore himself knew that it was something strange and decided to give up the role after that tape.
But something unexpected has happened in recent decades. The average age of male leads in Hollywood has increased year by year. The mid-century is no longer the line that divides the young from the old, and neither is the 60s. This is especially true when it comes to actors, individuals who have access to the latest in training and nutrition, plus the best surgeries money can buy and the power of CGI.
WHAT AGE OF RETIREMENT?
Part of the reason Cruise, Reeves and their colleagues haven’t put these papers behind them yet is that they don’t have to. In addition to the fact that it is not entirely clear what is next for them once the shootings and persecutions are behind them. Men aren’t completely immune to age considerations in movies. “Sean Connery went on acting for 40 years without having to be doing stunts at 60,” says veteran columnist Richard Rushfield of The Ankler. “There was a concept of respectability that came with age. I think now if you can’t continue through the action scenes it’s like you’re dead. No one wants to play a parent or, worse yet, a grandparent.”
But the main reason these players continue on the same path is that the business won’t let them get away. Ford, Cruise and Reeves (and even Diesel) are relics of times when everyone consumed the same entertainment and audiences agreed on who was a star and who was not. “Around the time the iPhone was invented, that star concept started to fade,” says Rushfield. Maybe Michael B. Jordan or Simu Liu have the talent and charisma to be the next Neeson or Jackman, but Hollywood no longer provides the kind of productions that could get them there. A superhero movie may make you famous, but it won’t make you a phenomenon like Cruise or Reeves, whose fame transcends individual projects. Playing a Marvel superhero is more like being one of the many leads in a TV series than doing Top Gun. The studios are left with two options: focus on superheroes, where the real star is Spiderman, and not who plays him, or stick to what they did before.
As long as it stays that way, anyone who wants to make an action movie with a hero in his fifties should look to those movies where the age of the protagonist is something that is taken advantage of, and not something that is ignored. “The mistake,” according to director James Mangold, who spoke with The Hollywood Reporter“is when the protagonist is already someone mature but throughout the film an effort is made to pretend that this is not true.”
An example of how to approach the issue in a good way is what you have done Keanu Reeves. Was about to turn 50 when he accepted the role of John Wick, which was intended for someone older. Now, he’s 60 and still doing it. The movies work because he’s good, but also because they offer insight into the dilemma of aging. They tell the story of a man who is very good at one thing, and those forces that prevent him from doing it.
RELATED: How Tom Cruise stays young at 61, and how you can too
Phrases about aging that do not go out of style.
People get old, no one is invincible forever in this world.
-Ip Man (Donnie Yen), Ip Man
I’m too old for this
Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover), Lethal Weapon
I am old, not obsolete
T-800 “Abuelo” (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Terminator Genisys
Something is not beautiful because it has to last
Visión (Paul Bettany), Avengers: The Age of Ultron
The older I get, the more things I have to let go of. This is life
Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), Rocky Balboa
This article was published in the July/August edition of Men’s Health México y Latinoamérica
2023-08-08 20:02:46
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