That’s why I said “reliable” and not “inevitable.”
A) You left out Inferno, A Hologram for the King, and The Circle. Plus the two movies right before that period, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Cloud Atlas, both from major novels and expected to do well. B) None of the movies you did mention grossed over $125 million in the U.S. The best was Sully, which ranked 24th for 2016. Behind the Ghostbusters remake.
What about DiCaprio? His last five movies were J. Edgar, a flop; Django Unchained, not a starring role; The Great Gatsby, a disappointment; The Wolf of Wall Street, 28th for the year; and The Revenant, a success and the highest grosser, almost as much in the U.S. as Pitch Perfect 2.
Tom Cruise. His last five movies were Edge of Tomorrow, 33rd for the year; Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, a true starring hit that ranked one spot above Pitch Perfect 2; Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, a flop; The Mummy, a huge flop; and American Made, which I thought was an indie but had a $50 million budget, grossed $51 million, and ranked 54th.
You can argue that foreign box office and ancillary rights are the true determiners of profitability. I agree. I’d respond that if you’re talking “stars” then the lack of huge top ten hits is a major flaw. Not one of the three have starred in a top ten grossing film since 2010’s Inception. And that did not make its millions because of DiCaprio.
Lainie Kazan, Michael Constantine, Andrea Martin? All extremely successful character actors before and since. Joey Fatone is famous for being Joey Fatone and always seems to be working on something. Other character actors like Gia Carides and Louis Mandylor were in it. They were able to get Ian Gomez cheap because he is married to the star/writer and was the inspiration for the movie. He certainly was successful before with the Drew Carey Show and after with Cougar Town.
Basically it was a relatively low budget movie that employed working character actors who continued to work in that capacity after the movie.
He’s too quirky to fit the star role.
Vivien Leigh’s career suffered because of her bipolar disorder more than anything else. When she was able to she did theater work.
de Havilland won two Oscars after appearing in GWTW and was nominated for two more. She reliably got top billing for at least twenty years after the film was released and ranked 9th in top box office grosses of the 1950s. And she managed this after being blacklisted for a couple of years for challenging the studio system.
But nowadays there are few actors that can draw people in automatically. Hanks, Cruise (though maybe no longer), probably a couple of others. But for a blockbuster, people go to see the franchise, not the actors.
After True Lies came out, everyone said it would salvage Tom Arnold’s career after the fiasco that was his association with Roseanne (not that he had much of a career before that, but whatever). If he appeared in anything after True Lies, I don’t know what it is.
Porky’s, despite being critically reviled, was a huge hit in 1982 but did it boost the career of any of its lead actors? Kim Cattrall did become a recognizable name but that was years later with “Sex and the City”.
With a few exceptions (Ian McKellen, Christopher Lee, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies), most of the main cast of LotR were comparatively unknown – and you’re probably right, none of them really went on to major stardom.
Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) seems to have largely chosen to make smaller, artsier films.
John Noble (Denethor) has apparently leveraged that role into a career of playing crazy / creepy old men (Fringe, Sleepy Hollow, etc.)
Other than Bloom, and the already-established stars, you could argue that the two actors who’ve gone on to the biggest success (relatively speaking) after LotR have been Karl Urban (Eomer), who plays Bones in the Star Trek reboot films, and Andy Serkis (Gollum), who’s become the go-to actor for motion-capture work (Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboot series, Snoke in the new Star Wars films), plus getting live-action work (e.g., Ulysses Klaue in Black Panther).
Both Elijah Wood and Sean Astin were very successful child actors prior to the movie. The fact that both were able to transition into steady work as adults is a rarity.
But both guys are still huge stars, regardless of box office numbers. It’s been said already, but number one movies are products of the environment more than the stars. Using the two guys you mentioned, Cruise is the closest to a star. No one is seeing Jack Reacher or the Mission Impossible movies because of the rest of the cast…they are going to see HIM. The fact these movies make anything at all in the box office are because of him.
DiCaprio’s movies are never made to be blockbusters/popular like Cruise’s because Leo is just taking movies for Oscar bait. The closest he had to non-Oscar bait in recent years was probably Inception, and given the writer/director it’s not outside the realm of possibility he could have been nominated.
That has more to do with the fact musicals were mostly on their way out during the 70s. Liza Minnelli was one of the most visible and recognizable women in the world during the decade so it’s not like she disappeared after winning her Oscar.
I have heard of Joey Fatone, but off the top of my head, I couldn’t name a single thing he has done. The others were character actors before “Wedding” and they are still character actors? I would say that definitely means that the movie failed to launch them into stardom. You’re kind of making my point for me.
It had some name actors in it, but its lead actor has been kind of a box-office dude. It’s Sam Worthington. I mean, he’s been in some big stuff, but I think there were higher expectations for him. Now he is up there filming Avatar 2-4 for over a year, I think.
Avatar as a whole has made almost no impact on the culture. Titanic was much more of a cultural moment than Avatar, even if it made more money.
I was telling my friend the other day that when Avatar-world opens in Disney, I can literally hear kids saying, “Hey, this place is awesome. They should make a movie out of this!”
If you look at all the other top grossing movies of all time (you need to adjust for inflation to get a clear picture) they’re all important. Gone with the Wind, Star Wars, Jaws, Snow White, The Godfather… these were movies that became cultural touchstones, part of the collective consciousness.
I can’t even name three characters from “Avatar.” It seems to just kind of be something you remember you watched. Does it even have FANS? I assume there are some but I have never met any. Titanic, the movie that was the top unadjusted box office champ before it, is still something people quote and talk about. The Godfather remains a revered movie. People still sing songs from The Sound Of Music. Star Wars is a goddamn religion. Avatar, though?
