WHY Did He Lose His Box Office Power?
We all know when...1995 or 96 or 97 a few clunkers/a few hits and then just a meteor of flop after flop.
But WHY do you think he lost his gig as one of the most bankable stars?
Brawny action heroes in general were on the way out by the late nineties. They would be replaced by the nerd archtype, like Keanu Reeves as Neo, or Toby Maguire as Spiderman, or Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.
Action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger can only exist in an environment where jocks still ruled the halls in high school and terrorized nerds like in the John Hughes movies. Once the world moved past that dynamic, they became dinosaurs.
21 Jump Street was right. People look up to the nerds now, because they're responsible for our Apple products, Windows operating systems, social media, smart phones, etc. Plus, they're the ones who wield all the power now. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg -- they're our billionaire bosses. Steve Jobs in particular made them look cool.
This take is beyond wrong. Billionaires have power regardless of whether they are nerds or not. Moreover, Reeves was hardly a nerd in the Matrix movies and he continues to thrive as a bankable action star well into his 50s in the John Wick movies, where he is far from a "nerd".
share