Last week the Jon Hamm-Superman casting rumor was back in full swing.
Any Mad Men poster of Hamm dressed up as Don Draper in a fedora could be recycled as an advertisement for the film showing him as Clark Kent.
I cannot think of any other actor who so convincingly looks the part.
But of course, people rightfully continue to question the chances of Hamm landing the role because he is 39.
Increasingly, stars of Hollywood action films are trending younger – apparently 30 is the new 50, or even 60. I’m the target demographic of summer action films, and I’ve reached my saturation point of watching kids barely old enough to shave save the world.
Shia LaBeouf is becoming the new Will Smith of summer movies.
He’s 24 and already has two Transformers movies and an Indiana Jones film under his belt. He’s part of a larger development of pipsqueak action stars. Spiderman (2002) seems to have helped lay the groundwork for this. Compared to the superhero films before it – X-Men and the 1990s Batman films – the cast was relatively young. But things have really gotten out of control recently.
Hollywood officially jumped the youth shark with the Star Trek reboot.
Kirk went from cadet to captain of a star ship without even graduating from Star Fleet Academy. I can suspend my disbelief on whatever the hell red matter is, but the 23rd century equivalent of an aircraft carrier being commanded by a 29 year-old? No. I’ve always felt that one of the reasons Star Trek: The Next Generation was the most successful and enduring of the spin-off shows was due to the casting being age appropriate. The captain of a space fleet’s flag ship probably would be a middle-aged bald guy (and the fact that Patrick Stewart was such a superb actor greatly aided the writers in the material they were able to come up with).
Hollywood now thinks that younger actors are the panacea to sagging action franchises. We’re either getting older actors teaming up with young ones – Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and Live Free or Die Hard – or wholesale recasting of franchises with young faces – the upcoming X-Men and Spiderman films. The 2002 version of Spiderman began with Peter Parker graduating from high school; the new version will take place with Parker back in high school and will deal with – wait for it, wait for it – teenage angst.
It’s difficult to imagine most of the greatest action films having ever worked with young actors. If you look at some of the biggest action stars of the last several decades, they were all over 30 when they stared in their first big Hollywood action film. Sean Connery was 32 in Dr. No, Clint Eastwood 34 in A Fistful of Dollars, Bruce Willis 33 in Die Hard and Mel Gibson 31 in Lethal Weapon. And the greatest of them all, Harrison Ford, was 39 in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Ford’s charm has always been that he’s five years too old for the action the characters he plays must perform. Whether he’s Indiana Jones or Dr. Richard Kimball, Ford is unmatched in how disheveled he can look by the end of a film. It lends a sense of authenticity to the characters he plays. The actors above have excelled in a similar manner. And of course, Ford is a great actor.
Because of their nature, actions films don’t leave much room for character development.
But what separates a good action movie from a movie with good action sequences, is what happens in-between the action – the part of the film where we see what makes the hero tick. There are simply more themes that can be explored with an older actor, such as age/mortality, failed relationships/marriages, psychological trauma, etc. Again with Harrison Ford, his age paid off in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the film deals with his lifelong estranged relationship with his father. The big problems younger heroes face is their dating life and fitting in at high school or college.
A particular struggle with superhero movies has always been trying to make someone who is omnipotent have a less than perfect life like the rest of us mortals.
I have to give the writers of Superman Returns some credit for wanting to explore the idea of what if Superman had a baby out of wedlock with Lois Lane and then left her to be a single mother. But if that’s the direction they wanted to go, then why cast a 27 year-old as Superman and a 23 year-old as Lois? The theme doesn’t work when the actors look barely old enough to procreate. Now imagine exploring that theme with an older Superman, maybe someone like Jon Hamm. We obviously don’t need a Superman movie where it’s Don Draper in tights, but an older Superman played by a talented actor opens up so many possibilities.
The last point I want to make without being too cynical is that a lot of these young actors simply aren’t very good.
I’m sure they’ll mature, but they aren’t there yet. Shia LaBeouf is nothing without giant CGI robots to back him up. The one action filmed he stared in without massive special effects, Eagle Eye, was a flop. As bad as the last Indiana Jones film was, it was still a pleasure to watch Harrison Ford doing his thing.
And the box office results would seem to show I wasn’t the only person who felt this way about Ford.
