Robert Downey Jr’s Oscar nom proves we need better movies for our stars

For years now, pundits have been declaring that film stardom is lifeless. Everyone from Jennifer Aniston to The New York Times appears to have agreed that we merely don’t make ’em like we used to.

When folks discuss “movie stars” — versus simply anybody who stars in a film — they particularly imply these uncommon people gifted with a lot on-screen allure and charisma that they’re unimaginable to look away from. They’re individuals who may open movies and ship the viewers to theaters in droves with nothing greater than their title on a poster — above the title of the film, in fact. When audiences of the previous went to see movies led by Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Cary Grant, Paul Newman, or Katharine Hepburn, it didn’t matter what character they have been enjoying, as a result of everybody knew they’d carry that indefinable excellence to a task. Or at the very least they used to.

Image: Universal Pictures

The pundits say the stars we have are ageing out, although, and that the comedian e-book movies dominating the cultural panorama aren’t making new ones to fill the void. Robert Downey Jr.’s newly Oscar-nominated efficiency in Oppenheimer is a compelling knowledge level for that argument. It proves that the issue isn’t that actors can’t deal with stardom anymore — it’s that they aren’t getting the sorts of roles that correctly venture their charisma.

Downey is a particular case that makes this clear. He was proper on the sting of true film stardom within the Nineties, following a stint on Saturday Night Live with a string of modest hits like Soapdish and Air America and an Oscar nomination for Chaplin. But Downey fell off within the early 2000s, showing in far fewer movies and even fewer box-office hits. Iron Man in 2008, and his recurring position as Tony Stark within the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies that adopted, launched RDJ’s profession into the stratosphere and made him a celebrity. He’s the one one who obtained that degree of fame enhance from the Marvel machine, although. And getting there required him to begin off with virtually 20 years of public notability and nice performing.

After a decade within the Marvel Cinematic industrial complicated — a machine that grew more and more environment friendly at earning profits with out established star energy throughout his tenure — RDJ has largely been misplaced within the moviemaking wilderness. At least till Oppenheimer.

In Christopher Nolan’s epic in regards to the man behind the atomic bomb, Downey turns in a career-best efficiency. As U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss, he sheds his frequent sarcasm and vainness to play an formidable, backbiting coward. Strauss’ puffed-up pettiness comes via in Downey’s each gesture and phrase with out ever slipping into cartoonish showiness. In what’s in any other case an infinite film, Downey trusts that his model of subtlety will carry all the burden it must.

The efficiency echoes and reverberates across the film even when Strauss is off display, which Nolan makes use of as a form of invisible tether to carry the film’s two competing timelines collectively. And all of this with out ever overwhelming or overpowering the remainder of the film. It’s a real movie-star efficiency, and a reminder of Downey’s unbelievable display charisma and expertise. It’s additionally a reminder of what Downey can do as an actor that his cocky, sarcastic Marvel persona by no means even hinted at.

Image: Marvel Studios

But none of this is able to be doable with out nice materials for him to carry out. And the identical goes for all of the almost-A-listers who jumped into the Marvel Cinematic Universe whereas their stars have been on the rise. In 2023, Mark Ruffalo obtained the same alternative to point out off his vary as a dastardly, completely outfoxed asshole in Poor Things. Scarlett Johansson has had loads of nice roles since she left Black Widow behind.

The MCU’s youthful heroes haven’t gotten a lot of an opportunity to tackle different career-defining roles but. Tom Holland hasn’t managed to open a success outdoors of the Marvel IP but; he’s been trapped in middling movies that don’t know what to do with him, just like the Russo brothers’ dismal 2021 habit film Cherry. And even Captain America himself, Chris Evans, who was nice in Knives Out however not so nice in his starring roles in Ghosted and The Gray Man, hasn’t managed to interrupt via a lot past his superhero days. They’re only a few of the various actors who’ve by no means managed to interrupt freed from Marvel’s gravitational pull to succeed in stardom of their very own — not together with those that jumped into comedian e-book universes effectively after their star had risen, like Benedict Cumberbatch or Florence Pugh.

Just as a result of most MCU actors haven’t ascended to movie-star standing doesn’t imply they aren’t likable, proficient, or partaking. The drawback is, at the very least partially, that they’ve by no means had materials that lets them shine. Becoming a film star takes a certain quantity of area in your lead roles. Great actors need components which have room to inject persona, charisma, coronary heart, and ache into the empty areas. Real film stars carry some little a part of themselves onto the display with them and make their film better, it doesn’t matter what the confines of their characters are.

But Marvel movies — actually, a lot of the franchise IP that dominates the field workplace — don’t depart any air for a efficiency like that to thrive, past some quips and tertiary allure. (The final position that did depart sufficient room for movie-star persona was most likely Kylo Ren, Adam Driver’s messy, haunted Star Wars villain.)

Photo: Lucasfilm

Meanwhile, movie-star automobiles are uncommon: spacious dramas like Lady Bird, Midsommar, and Silver Linings Playbook, or franchises just like the Creed movies, which give the actors beneficiant area to outline their roles. Thankfully, these sorts of movies are at the very least current sufficient to have minted a number of new A-list stars, like Pugh, Timothée Chalamet, and perhaps even Glen Powell.

The excellent news is that Hollywood’s comedian e-book film and franchise section can’t final ceaselessly. In reality, with Marvel’s movies struggling on the field workplace, and relatively modestly budgeted status movies and movie-star automobiles like Anyone But You, No Hard Feelings, and Oppenheimer all outperforming expectations, we can hope that Hollywood is getting the message.

While the explanations would possibly come all the way down to the fabric greater than the expertise, it’s true that Hollywood has spent 20 years struggling to supply new film stars with the effectivity it had within the 50 or so years earlier than that. And that lack left us all worse off. Movie stars are the spine within the squishy center of moviegoing that we’ve been lacking through the reign of the IP blockbuster. They’re the individuals who can get audiences to line up for two-hour talky dramas or taut thrillers about smaller stakes than the tip of the world.

The work of film stars is in grownup dramas, rom-coms, courtroom thrillers, and all of the genres which have misplaced standing and visibility over the past decade. And if a resurgence of these grand moviegoing traditions goes to occur — if one thing’s going to return alongside to interchange the slick IP blockbusters that viewers declare they’re bored with watching — it’s most likely going to have to begin with film stars who make folks need to run straight to their native theater.

Image: Twentieth Century Fox

More than their particular person movies, although, stars are individuals who develop a cinematic relationship with their fandoms. Each new half in a film is an interesting puzzle piece of their profession, concurrently in dialog with each their previous work and their public life. Gone Girl is an exceptional film, but it surely’s made even better by the sophisticated, messy relationship the general public has with Ben Affleck’s non-public life. Tom Cruise is likely one of the world’s foremost proponents of conserving movies as handcrafted, cautious artistic endeavors that individuals ought to get pleasure from in theaters, so when he fights an AI in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, he’s in a position to make connections to our world, and the position that AI performs in our artwork, extra successfully and effectively than the film’s screenplay.

Stars are like a secret sauce that, to borrow a phrase from one other film star’s AMC advert, make movies better. Even if Hollywood doesn’t be taught that anytime quickly, at the very least Robert Downey Jr. has one other well-deserved Academy Award nomination. And at the very least it wasn’t for a Marvel film.

All the nominees for the 96th Academy Awards may be discovered right here.