“What’s Behind Hollywood’s Obsession With Old Man Action Heroes?”

The Expendables. Taken. Red. Bullet to the Head. A Good Day to Die Hard. What’s the deal with “old man action heroes”? That’s a question raised in this Flavorwire article:

These days it seems action films aren’t just a young man’s game anymore — they’re becoming a game for finely aged actors. We’ve had actors dolling out justice well into their middle-years before (see: John Wayne, Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, the cast of The Wild Bunch ), but it’s never been this pervasive as a trend. Which begs the question: why now?

One reason is the current state of the action genre. As Adam Sternbergh noted in his heartfelt eulogy for the bygone days of Commandos and Rambos — “America forgot how to make action movies.” Where once we had a healthy action genre, now we just have action movies — most of which are superhero flicks or CGI sinkholes. There’s no more good old-fashioned bare-chested, bare-knuckled grit. Not that there’s anyone to get bare-chested or knuckled. Aside from Jason Statham and false-starters Vin Diesel and The Rock, no new young action stars have come along to replace the old, and the existing ones have faded (Tom Cruise, Will Smith). Now we just get regular actors like Matt Damon and Daniel Craig taking on action movies.

Ah, so Hollywood somehow forgot how to make action movies. What, this particular type of genre movie is ultra complicated to craft? There was some sort of expiration date on the secrets of making action movies and that date has passed? And of course, with the passing of this ability to understand how to make action movies, the number of Hollywood projects in that genre has absolutely plummeted, right? I mean look at these spec script sales in 2011 where… hm… the #1 genre was Action with 29 deals. Okay, that was 2 years ago. Surely, in 2012, sales for Action spec scripts just crashed and burned with a measly total of… uh… 29… again leading the pack as the top genre.

Well…

I don’t claim to be a genius, but here’s another number for you: 87 million.That’s the number of Baby Boomers still kicking who grew up with action movies, love action movies and have proven they will show up in numbers… if Hollywood actually produces good action movies aimed at them. And names like Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Lima Neeson, and Helen Mirren for God’s sake actually mean something to that target demo.

What do you think? Has Hollywood somehow forgotten how to make action movies? Or could it possibly be that there is a sizable audience that actually wants to see Old Farts on screen kicking ass?

For more of the Flavorwrite article, go here.

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