This is an example of focusing on the “action” instead of the “star” part.
Haywire was her big star vehicle where she was clearly the star and the big draw, plus she was surrounded by a strong supporting cast (Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas) to lend it legitimacy. It flopped pretty hard: With a $23 million budget (likely because of that cast list) it only grossed $19 million domestically, plus another $14 million in foreign markets meaning it didn’t even double its production budget with worldwide grosses. That’s a pretty significant flop, and she never really got another chance.
The other protagonist roles you list (In the Blood, Scorched Earth, and Daughter of the Wolf) were B-movies all the way, not even getting theatrical releases in the US and all three probably earned well under $1 million worldwide combined. For context, IMDb says Daughter of the Wolf “premiered” less than two weeks ago (June 14th, 2019) and I’ll wager nobody reading this has ever heard of it; it only has 419 user ratings on IMDb.
She could probably kick the ass of every other name in this thread even if they all got to fight her together, but the general public isn’t interested in watching her movies.
Fair enough, and I’ll grant you the Malaysian market. It seems like a reasonable thing to put her first and foremost on the Hong Kong Mt. Rushmore, but I’m not sure she gets on the unqualified mountain.
Absolutely. That’s what ‘Action Star’ means to me. Somebody specialized in action. Your Schwarzeneggers, your Bruce Lees, your Van Dammes.
It doesn’t mean, to me, ‘well-known actor who also has had an action role or two in their career’.
A “star” to me is someone who gets people to go see their movies. If nobody comes out to see them, it’s hard to justify the “star” part of “action star” regardless of how technically proficient you are with the “action” part of it.
Someone who has one major studio picture that flops and then a bunch of straight-to-video pictures that don’t even get theatrical releases isn’t a star. Well, I guess they are an “action star” in the same sense that a “porn star” is a “star,” but that’s nowhere near Mt Rushmore territory.
If we were to adhere to the caveats that A) They need to be considerable box office draws, and B) Be well known specifically for their action roles, then the Mount Rushmore of Female Action Stars consists solely of Michelle Yeoh.
So either we have our answer already, or we lower the bar in one of the two points.
Milla Jovovich is both a considerable box office draw in terms of commercial success of her action franchise, and she’s also known specifically for her action roles.
But by “specifically” do you mean “only”? Because, for example, one of the things Angelina Jolie is well known for is action roles. Same with Charlize Theron, at least now. It’s not the only thing either of them are known for by any stretch, but it is one of the things they’re known for.
Also, Gina Carano isn’t well known. You yourself felt the need to add “for those who don’t know her” in [post=21712483]your post[/post] declaring the thread invalid because she wasn’t included. You can’t be “known for action” if you aren’t known at all.
Not in the same sense I’d consider Schwarzenegger one. It’s a spectrum, of course, not a binary choice, and Cruise has got a lot of action movies under his belt, so a good argument can be made.
Yeah, that criterion would exclude some pretty big ‘action stars’ like Cruise, Harrison Ford, Keanu Reeves, and Bruce Willis. Certainly Ford was an ‘action star’ in his prime, and Willis made the Die Hard movies and a bunch of other action movies, but they are only a portion of his work.
I think an ‘action star’ is someone who can credibly carry an action movie physically, and who is a big enough name to be a significant box office draw. It doesn’t matter if they’ve also starred in Rom-Coms or anything else, if they can pull off the action role.
I’d say two of the biggest action stars today are Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves, and both of them have extensive non-action filmographies.
I would say that Cruise and Reeves are regular actors that have been going for the action movie market lately, but not really action stars in the sense that The Rock or Vin Diesel are.
Then again, Cruise’s action roles are starting to overtake his non-action gigs, so he may very well start counting as a pure action star too.
Bruce Willis filmography is 90% action. Harrison Ford as an action star is debatable.
Oh, yeah, Keanu Reeves, good call. When I tossed together my male Mt. Rushmore version upthread I forgot about him. He’d definitely be on my short list of contenders for the last two spots. (I have both Arnold and Sly as mortal locks, with the other two spots up for grabs.)
Reading your list also made me think of Liam Neeson, who could have an entire mountain all by himself of “Greatest action stars who didn’t become an action star until their 50s.” (He was 55 or 56 in the first Taken film.)
Not just a good argument, but a great one. While many other ‘action stars’ rely on stunt men and camera trickery to make it look like they know what they are doing, Cruise does all his own stunts and works his ass off to actually be good at the things he’s shown doing on the big screen. The character is flying a helicopter through a dangerous canyon? That’s actually Cruise doing the flying. Rappel off the Burj Khalifa? That’s actually Cruise doing it on the real thing, not in a sound stage in front of a green screen. Race cars and motorcycles at high speed down narrow streets? That’s Cruise actually doing the driving. Cruise’s gun work on screen is first practiced at a real gun range, using live ammo. He can really shoot. Really well.
To me, that’s what embodies a real action star. Keanu Reeves is like that. So was Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, in their action movie days. And people like Bruce Lee, Steven Seagal, Van Damme and Chuck Norris came to movies after already proving themselves in martial arts.
Most of the female ‘action stars’ don’t actually know anything about what’s depicted on the screen. They get by with stunt doubles, CGI and editing. That doesn’t mean they aren’t ‘action stars’ if they are believable on screen and have the other characteristics of an action star, but they definitely lose points with me for not actually having the chops to do what’s depicted. There are a few exceptions like Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock.
Again, this would seem to disqualify Arnold Schwarzenegger, who I would describe as the ultimate, undisputed greatest action star of all time. So I don’t think that logic holds up to scrutiny as a primary measure. (It’s a fantastic bit of “and also…” justification, though.)
And now that I understand the context better, revisiting this:
Not only do I think it makes more sense to lower the bar on B) instead of A), I don’t think B) makes sense to include at all.
Also, anyone who can’t credibly aim a gun is not an action star unless the movie doesn’t have guns. Gina Torres in ‘Firefly’ always looked horribly awkward shooting her gun. She didn’t even know how to hold it properly to aim it.
An ‘action star’ who needs to shoot guns on screen should be down at a gun range getting serious instruction before ever stepping on stage if they are required to portray a character that really knows how to shoot, just as a star in a movie about anything else should learn something about it so they don’t look amateurish on screen.
If Robert Duvall was required to play a carpenter, I would expect him to learn how to hold and use a hammer and saw comfortably if he didn’t know already. When actors can’t be bothered to learn the skills their characters are supposed to have, it takes me right out of the movie. Too many ‘action stars’ fail that basic test.
From my point of view, it’s the other way around. It’s just a way to fill FAMS Mount Rushmore with any popular actress, as long as she’s done an action role at some point in time.
I never said “done an action role at some point” was my criteria. I said headlined a commercially successul action movie. As in, people want to go see that action movie starring her because they want to see her kick ass.
Relatively speaking, nobody wanted to go see Gina Carano kick ass in a movie so she pretty much can’t be considered to be an “action star.” By contrast, tons of people wanted to go see Scarlett Johansson kick ass in Lucy, and likely more still are looking forward to seeing her kick ass in her upcoming Black Widow movie.
Top Gun, Days of Thunder, and Mission Impossible were all made in the 20th century. They all qualify as ‘action movies’. But my point was that being an ‘action movie star’ does not require you to focus on that exclusively. Steve McQueen was considered an ‘action star’ in his day, and he made lots of serious, non-action movies. Clint Eastwood was considered an action star back when he was making spaghetti westerns, Dirty Harry films and WWII films like the Eiger Sanction. But at the same time he was starring in, writing, and directing other kinds of movies like “Play Misty For Me”.
I did say that it’s not NECESSARY to have real cred, but to me it adds significantly to the performance and my perception of someone as an action star. But it’s not exclusive. I have no idea if Bruce Willis did his own stunts in ‘Die Hard’, or whether he can actually do anything remotely like what the character did in the movie. But he pulled it off credibly, and he was obviously an action star.
But with Schwarzenegger, I would argue that being the world champion body builder already gave him that credibility. Those muscles were real, and they were generally the big draw for his character.