We’ve gone from arguing over which actor deserves his or her own action franchise to which actor deserves a mentor role in a Marvel movie. We’ve already seen movies like Deadpool 2, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Solo dominate the conversation in 2018 movies like The Equalizer 2 are relegated to counter-programming, fitting neatly into lulls in the release calendar between high-profile studio films. Now, however, the cycle of superhero movies and franchised releases control the release calendar. It’s not a coincidence that movies like Taken dominated the box office in the early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universes when studios released their tentpole films at an average of once a year, there was still plenty of room for smaller action movies to navigate the box office. Then the current era of franchise movies kicked into high gear. Even as these films began to lag behind domestically, there was still more than enough international love for actors like Liam Neeson to keep the franchises afloat for a few more sequels. Even Taken 3, a film that had critics calling for an end to the very idea of a geri-action movie, grossed more than $300 million worldwide.
Then came the Sylvester Stallone ’80s party that was The Expendables ($274 million), Denzel Washington’s first Equalizer film ($192 million), and countless one-offs and sequels to the already successful franchises. Liam Neeson’s Taken grossed $226 million worldwide in 2008 Bruce Willis’s Red, which leaned even harder into the conceit of retired super-soldiers, made $199 million just two years later. Their rediscovered action stars gave them new life in turn.Īnd the formula worked, at least for a while.
Not dramatic enough? FlavorWire critic Alexander Huls took this resurgence one step further that same year, arguing that this wave of action films was in direct response to the creeping obsolescence of the Boomer generation. “We watch action movies for the visceral pleasure that comes from an actor or actress pushing themselves physically,” Patches wrote, noting that “age adds to the audience’s satisfaction” when seeing someone like Sylvester Stallone throw down as a 64-year-old in The Expendables. As licensed characters became more important than the actors playing them, studios capitalized on this star power void by reintroducing some of the biggest names of the ’80s and ’90s. Like many critics, Patches contrasted the mainstream resurgence of actors like Bruce Willis to the rising popularity of superhero movies across Hollywood.
THE EQUALIZER 2 CAST MOVIE
And while The Equalizer 2 is a far-worse movie than its predecessor, it serves as a useful measurement of just how much things have changed.īack in 2013, Vulture’s Matt Patches coined the phrase ‘Geri-Action’ to describe the trend of retirement-age action stars. Set against a landscape of superhero movies and a dying trend of elderly action movies, The Equalizer was also a film caught straddling two eras of action films. Remember those heady days in the early 2010s when it seemed like every 60-year-old actor was primed for their own action vehicle? When audiences would flock to see movies headlined by Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington, not out of respect for their talent as actors, but from a desire to watch them punch people in the throat with guns? Washington’s The Equalizer was a particularly curious result of this movement. Even Denzel Washington’s latest action movie recognizes the end of an era and adjusts accordingly.