The death of the movie star

At Hollywood's golden years the creation of movie stars came to replace in the minds of Americans the British royalty they did not have. But that world that used to create stars, industrialized royalty, has changed.

Oh, do you feel the breeze from the subway? Isn't it delicious?

Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch

The film critic of NPR (National Public Radio, the public broadcasting service of the United States)Bob Mondello believes that long before the advent of franchising and intellectual propertymajor studios such as MGM, Paramount y Warner Brothers relied heavily on the creation of stars such as claim to sell their films to the public. Stars were not born, they were made. Studios like MGM selected actors who made it to the mecca of cinema, and the "stars" were "born.arranged"in different ways. Not only was their appearance adapted to the character/star they wanted to create at the studio, even their names were changed. They would do everything in their power to turn the someone at glamorous.

You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow

Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not

The idea was, according to Aisha Harrisco-host of the hit podcast NPR Pop Culture Happy Hourto create movie stars that the viewers would believe they were larger than life.

With the inestimable help of fan magazines and powerful gossip columnists with studio connections, they cultivated those images of glamourThe star was the source of the star's personality, and remoteness that gave it its personality. Because the basis on which to create a star lies in the absolute belief that, like real stars, these are not achievable.

Those personalities prefabricated by public relations departments entered the minds of the public whose main form of entertainment was going to the movies. At the height of the popularity of this art, more than 80 million Americans went to the movies more than once a week.

It was not a very different working system from what television would later do, in the form of series. If something worked, such as a combination of actors and type of plot, it was repeated over and over again, sometimes releasing movies with the same stars, and in the same genre, every few months. For example, Ruby Keeler y Dick Powell made musicals together in the 1930s that seemed to come out every six months.. All with the sole objective of maintaining the system of studies. rolling.

But Mondello believes that the machinery would start to break down when stars wanted to have more control over their careers and directors had more control over their films. But even so, the legacy of that old studio system would cast a long and lasting shadow over the industry for decades.

Disruption came with the arrival of two overlapping elements: The reliance on franchising and social media.

The end of the 20th century and the arrival of the 21st century brought a new player into the entertainment business. Uninvited. If cinema endured the arrival of the televisionand after Internetstoic manner, something was going to change with the Networks.

Movie stars started using the networks to have a closer contact with their fan base. But this action, intended as a marketing activity to help the "sale"of the character/star actually consisted of breaking with the fourth wallwhich, in fact, turned them into stars.

It is true that public relations agencies saw how new public figures began to be born in the networks, and became enormously well known in a very short time, with a very controlled economic investment. This would give rise to the need to create accounts for their clients, or to encourage them to create them in order to "create their own accounts".to have a public image in networks"and that they would not lose their popularity to instagramers, twitterers and other fauna.

But being close is the antithesis of being a star, remember, unattainable.

On the other hand, studies have focused over the last 20 years on the development of franchises y industrial properties (IP)not in the creation of stars. They have developed fictitious characters and have distanced them from the interpreter. The important thing is not who plays the character, the important thing is who plays the character. is the character, the intellectual property.

The actor Anthony Mackiewho plays Sam Wilson / Falcon in the Marvel Universe, I would comment on this already at a Comic-Con event in 2018..

There are no movie stars anymore. Anthony Mackie is not a movie star. Falcon is a movie star. The evolution of the superhero has meant the death of the movie star.

Anthony Mackey

And he's not alone in blaming the dominance of superhero movies and other established intellectual properties for the decline of the movie star. The director Quentin Tarantino echoed his words on Tom Segura's podcast in late 2022.

You have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters, but they're not movie stars. Captain America is the star. Thor is the star.

Quentin Tarantino

It is clear that there is no one like Marilyn Monroe or Clark Gable left in the world of cinema, but is there really no one else, and does it really matter?

To answer the first question, Aisha Harris believes that we must first start from how to define a movie starand that if we think that a star is someone with the ability to pull in theaters, that actor who will draw a crowd just because he is in the movie, the answer is that there are no longer any movie stars as we defined them in the past..

And he gives the example of Tom Cruisesomeone we could consider as the last star. Cruise has not been seen much on the networks, he has retained his aura of mysticism, we know about his love affairs, his prominent position in a famous sect and little else, because in his networks he does not lavish beyond advertising the films in which he appears. But when you think of Tom Cruise, you think not of the person, but of the franchise. Mission Impossibleor Top Gun. You're not going to see a Tom Cruise movie, you're going to see the next Ethan Hunt movie. And it's something he knows himself, because most of the films he has made in the last decade have been franchise films.. And even in the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics did not appear Tom Cruise, the actor, but the character Ethan Hunt. doing what Hunt does.

All the big stars are now in franchises, and it's hard to say where their charisma and attraction begins and where the attraction of the franchise itself begins.

The concepts franchise and star has gradually become intertwined. since the big studios bet on filling superhero movies with them. The biggest presence of these big stars we find them in franchise movies. A far cry from where we used to see them before.

In the beginning, this was something curious to see, an image operation that sought to convey "...".quality"to the film product. Perhaps, one of the pioneering films to do this was the Original 1978 Superman. Richard Donner's excellent film covered itself with glory by attracting Marlon Brandothe great movie star for decades, and the new star of the moment Gene Hackman. From then on, the ban on stars in vehicles, not for self-realization, but to show off an IP, remained open. But it would not be until decades later, with the emergence of the world Marvel in film, that franchises would eventually gobble up the stars.

Industrial properties (IP) are now the star of the movies.

Harris gives another example to illustrate the idea that the stars today are intellectual properties and not the performers. This time with the actress Zoe Saldanalast year became the first female performer to star in four films that earned at least $2 billion at the box office. With these numbers on the table we could consider Zaldana a star, since the films in which she participated attracted millions of viewers. Under the prism of decades past on how we defined a star. Today, no one would see Zoe Zaldana as a movie star, just as we mentally see Zoe Zaldana as a movie star. Lauren Bacall or even to Julia Roberts. And it's that people didn't go to see "Guardians of the Galaxy" or "Avatar" because she was in those movies. They went to see the movie itself, and they found Zoe Saldana there.

Let's move on now to answer the second question. Whether it really matters that the way we are measuring movie stars has changed, because the circumstances are not the same as they used to be 10, 15 or 50 years ago.

It matters in the creative aspect. Although the creation of the concept of the movie star was an advertising action to continue attracting viewers to theaters, based on the design of a claim whose absolute owner was the studios. The independence from the studios that the interpreters would achieve years later led them to take risks in projects other than those that the studios designed for them.

The performers used their star aura to validate, financially, projects that the studios did not believe in. They had the ability to draw spectators to the halls, as athletes do today, capable of filling stadiums just to see them (not the team) play.

Nowadays, no interpreter has that capacity for dragging or validation. Very few people go to a movie theater because they believe that the actor, actress, director or producer of the film is a guarantee that they will like the movie. They don't even Spielberg already has that pulling power. This has prompted studios to believe that the only way to ensure a successful product, or minimize financial riskswhether to opt for franchises: sequels, reboots, well-known IPs...

If we look at the 2023 worldwide box officeOf the top 20 grossing films, 17 are already well-known franchises or IPs. Only the award-winning Oppenheimer and animated films Elemental by Pixar and Migration of Illumination are new creations.

1	Barbie	$1,445,638,421
2	The Super Mario Bros. Movie	$1,361,992,475
3	Oppenheimer	$975,440,031
4	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3	$845,555,777
5	Fast X	$704,875,015
6	Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse	$690,615,475
7	Wonka	$632,302,312
8	The Little Mermaid	$569,626,289
9	Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One	$567,535,383
10	Elemental	$496,444,308
11	Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania	$476,071,180
12	John Wick: Chapter 4	$440,157,245
13	Transformers: Rise of the Beasts	$438,966,392
14	Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom	$434,381,226
15	Meg 2: The Trench	$397,700,317
16	Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny	$383,963,057
17	The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes	$344,357,763
18	Migration	$299,161,774
19	Five Nights at Freddy's	$291,493,620
20	Creed III	$276,148,615

New IP-based franchises arrived last year, as the first chapter in what is expected to be a long series: Barbie, of which there is already talk of a sequel, The Super Mario Broswho tried again, this time with success, Five Nights at Freddy's based on the video game franchise of the same name, Wonkaa prequel to the famous novel and movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory from Roald Dahl.

With this data, it is clear that creativity is not at its best. At least the creation of new entertainment products that are not based on existing intellectual property. It seems to be increasingly difficult to create something completely new.At the very least, that those who put up the money to finance these adventures do so. Disney is a great example of this. In IMDB we found a list of projects from 2024 to 2027 of the entertainment giant:

Year of launch	Film	Franchise
2024	The girl and the sea	No
2024	Inside Out 2	Yes
2024	Deadpool and Wolverine	Yes
2024	Sister Act 3	Yes
2024	Vaiana 2	Yes
2024	Mufasa: The Lion King	Yes
2025	Captain America: Brave New World	Yes
2025	Snow White	Yes
2025	Thunderbolts	Yes
2025	Elío	No
2025	The Fantastic Four: First Steps	Yes
2025	Tron 3	Yes
2025	Blade	Yes
2025	Zootrópolis 2	Yes
2025	Avatar: Fire and Ash	Yes
2025	Lilo & Stitch	Yes
2025	Freakier Friday	Yes
2026	Avengers: Doomsday	Yes
2026	The Mandalorian & Grogu	Yes
2026	Toy Story 5	Yes
2026	Moana	Yes
2026	Star Wars: New Jedi Order	Yes
2027	Avengers: Secret Wars	Yes
2027	Frozen 3	Yes

From this list, which shows 3 years of planned launches, 22 are films based on existing IPor sequels, prequels or remakes of films. We found only 2 films with no connection to other filmsone for Disney+, i.e., not even intended for theatrical release, and Pixar's new animated film for next year.

Against this backdrop, it is clear that the figure of the Movie Star has nothing to say. Performers will go where they are told to go, they will do what they are told to do, they will woo their fans on the Networks hoping not to lose visibility to any every-day-a-new Internet personality, sacrificing in turn, his star aura.

The movie star is dead, in its original conception. But there are still stars for the general public. Stars of music, sports, even finance or politics. And, of course, from the networks. Even if these stars are lowcostbecause, in addition to be nicheThey are born and die with a speed close to that of flies.

Cover image: Public domain photo of Marilyn Monroe during the filming of The Seven Year Itch on the streets of New York. She apparently stopped at some point during the filming of the famous "upskirt scene" and posed for reporters and photographers covering the shoot.