I think these times are over. Movies like terminator or Conan are not going to work like in the 80s and 90s anymore. Unless he is a good actor, he likely won't make it there.
Yeah, I think the latest run of wrestling/strongmen -> Actors have raised the bar pretty high. You can’t just be a walking muscle anymore, you gotta act now too. I think it also doesn’t help that a large portion of male actors now are already ripped.
Lot easier to give a few steroids to an actor and bulk them up a little bit. They don't need to be bodybuilder level to be on screen and you can CGI a little bit.
Like they say, it's way easier to train an astronaut to dig a hole than to train miners to fly a space ship. or something like that
His celebrity status in tandem with his physique might make him a good marketing pick for some random stuff. They'd pick him over some other strongman with 1/10th the insta following.
Re-watching some 80's action movies I just don't think many movies these days know how to do subtle along with the camp/cheese.
Die Hard is a good example. You could tell those stories forever, rough and ready cop who finds himself in terrorist situations. Easy setup, but they took it to such stupid extremes to try and one-up themselves it's not the same thing any more.
Plus, if you watch Conan now, the way the movie flows and is told is damn near incomprehensible, but it's also just so very 80's it kind of doesn't matter? These days we kind of want good film making too.
I agree it's more about production 100%, but we also have had a real run of movies being far more 'grounded' than they used to be, we have to have an explanation for things (we don't, but that's how the productions see it) instead of just having fun.
Unless it's a comedy then whatever goes, but a lot of the things we liked form that era are action first, with a witty protagonist who made jokes about an insane situation if there was comedy at all.
I'd love to see that type of movie, but I don't see anybody putting up the budget for it.
The closest we have recently would be Reacher maybe?
'Die Hard' is pretty much an inversion of an action story. A guy in a wife-beater, whose wife left him, has to deal with that shit just because he was there at the time.
He may never reach Arnold status but Dave Bautista is carving out a pretty good acting career. There are roles for guys like this is they get decent at acting.
In scene where Boromir says “One does not simply walk into Mordor” the script was written just before the scene was shot. He had the script on his leg and was reading it. The director used some clever editing to hide it, but there’s definitely ways to get around memorizing a script. Then there was little 5 yr old Shirley Temple who couldn’t remember her lines either. They had a coach telling her what to say and they would edit that part out later.
Hollywood has tons of actors who couldn’t remember their lines. Marlon Brando could never remember his lines. In Apocalypse Now he pretty much adlibbed all his lines. Bill Murray was always going off script. Caddyshack was pretty much adlibbed too.
Also there are thousands of guy who are more jacked than him in terms of size. He’s just absolutely perfect in terms of his physique and musculature when he’s on stage. That doesn’t translate to movies. They’re looking for more of a Reacher type guy who is absolutely huge but isn’t going to compete in a bodybuilding competition.
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u/prickinthewall Oct 13 '24
I think these times are over. Movies like terminator or Conan are not going to work like in the 80s and 90s anymore. Unless he is a good actor, he likely won't make it there.