This Friday sees the release of Liam Neeson’s newest action-thriller Non-Stop. In the Universal Pictures (a division of Comcast Comcast) release, 61-year old and 6’4″ actor stars as an air marshal who must stop a killer aboard a crowded commercial airline. I’ve avoided most of the marketing, but I can presume when I see it tonight that it will involve Neeson barking at people and kicking a certain amount of righteous butt. The $50 million production is predicted to open with around $25 million for the weekend. What’s notable is that the vast majority of its audiences will be showing up for the express purpose of watching Neeson beat people up and/or shoot at them. Non-Stop isn’t just an&n bsp;action film, it’s a Liam Neeson action film. In an era when the stand-alone action hero movie star is all-but-extinct, Neeson is perhaps the last man standing.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone both bombed hard last year in the surprisingly good The Last Stand (Lionsgate, a division of Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.) and the mediocre Bullet to the Head (Warner Bros., a division of Time Warner) respectively, while their so-so team-up film Escape Plan (Lionsgate) avoided embarrassment thanks to a strong overseas performance ($25 million here, $137 million worldwide on a $55 million budget). Jason Statham made one of his worst films (Parker for Film District) and one of his best films (the Stallone-penned Homefront for Open Road Films) and neither of them topped $21 million domestic. Bruce Willis at least had a decent opening for A Good Day To Die Hard ($25 million), but it was both the franchise&rsqu o;s lowest-grosser in the states ($65 million) and one of the worst movies ever made. But Liam Neeson closed out 2012 with a $49 million debut and $375 million worldwide gross for Taken 2.
What started as perhaps a novelty in 2009, with “very serious actor” Liam Neeson headlining an exploitation picture, has become something of a career comeback. Taken was released over Super Bowl weekend in 2009 with minimal expectations. But thanks to a terrific teaser that gave away almost nothing save for the core premise (it was based around the film’s most iconic sequence) a primal concept (former US spy-turned overprotective dad rescues his teenage daughter from sex trafficking foreigners), and the curiosity factor of seeing Oskar Schindler as a one-man killing machine, the picture opened with $24 million. It kept on kicking for weeks, pulling the kind of weekend-to-weekend drops usually associated with James Cameron films. It earned $145 million domestically, a stunning 6x weekend-to-final multiplier, for a $226 million worldwide cume on a $25 million budget.
After supporting roles in action pictures both successful (Clash Of The Titans with $493 million worldwide) and not successful enough to justify their $100 million+ budgets (The A-Team Team with $177 million worldwide off a $25 million debut), Neeson returned as an action lead in the genuinely Hitchockian (think B-grade Hitchcock) action thriller Unknown. The film had a harder to explain and far less primal premise (amnesia, assassins, the much younger January Jones playing his would-be love interest), but it still opened with $21 million and made its way to $130 million on a $30 million budget. He started out 2012 with another would-be action vehicle, Joe Carnahan’s unexpectedly good The Grey< /em>. The film is an existential look at men coming to terms with their impending deaths, but it was successfully sold by Open Road Films as “Come see Liam Neeson punch wolves!” Cue a $19 million debut weekend and a $77 million worldwide gross for the $25 million drama.
2012 continued with supporting roles in two too-expensive would-be blockbusters, Wrath of the Titans ($305 million on a $150 million budget) and Battleship ($303 million on a $209 million budget). Both Wrath of the Titans and Battleship still pulled $25 million+ debuts although we can debate how much credit Neeson deserves for either. He finished off 2012 with Taken 2, which is of course the sequel to the film that turned him into an icon in the first place. Despite terrible reviews, a rehashed premise, and yet another case of a Luc Besson production being cut to ribbons for a PG-13, it debuted with $49.5 million in mid-October. To put that somewhat stunning number in perspective, it’s one of the largest non-fantasy action debuts of all time, even when adjusted for inflation.
In terms of fantasy-laden “one man army” action pictures not based on a comic book superhero, the Indiana Jones sequels had larger opening weekends when adjusted for inflation, as did The Matrix Reloaded and the middle Terminator sequels. In terms of non-fantasy action-man adventures, Harrison Ford’s Air Force One ($67 million in 2014 dollars), Mel Gibson’s Ransom ($64 million when adjusted for inflation), and the last two Lethal Weapon films sold more tickets on opening weekend. If you’re counting spy franchises, then toss in the three Daniel Craig 007s, the last two Pierce Brosnan Bond films, the middle two Bourne sequels, and Mission: Impossible 1, 2, and 3. Taken 2 still had a bigger debut than any Die Hard, any Rambo, or anything involving Jean Claude V an Damme, Steven Seagal, Chuck Norris, or any other conventional action star you can think of.
That $49.5 million debut for Taken 2 was most impressive because of how little it had to sell. Its success wasn’t based on a known property outside of its status as a sequel to a popular and leggy action original from 2009. It didn’t have any “added value elements” for the second go-around. It didn’t tweak the formula all that much, and it was arguably less violent and less visceral than its predecessor, since the makers were intentionally aiming for a PG-13 this time (the first Taken went out as an equivalent of an R overseas but was cut to a PG-13 in America by 20th Century Fox Fox). Taken 2 was clearly an example of the classic “break out sequel” that I discuss f rom time-to-time (think The Bourne Supremacy). But it also had nothing going for it aside from the appeal of seeing Liam Neeson dish out righteous and paternalistic violence. It’s little wonder he’s earning $20 million for Taken 3.
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone are clearly on their last legs (to be fair, Schwarzenegger’s Sabotage looks decent and could surprise), as is Bruce Willis. Harrison Ford has, give or take one more round as Indiana Jones, finally embraced the role of aging character actor while Kevin Costner failed at his action hero comeback this very weekend. Mel Gibson’s leading man days are over. Jason Statham never got that A-level “Under Siege” that might have catapulted him to the major leagues, so he is destined to churn out B-movie action vehicles of varying quality (I recommend Safe and The Bank Job) which are lucky to open with $8 million. Angelina Jolie has moved past her Tomb Raider/Wanted/Salt days and is focused on directing films like In The Land Of Blood and Honey and Unbroken. Dwayne Johnson h as, like Bruce Willis, mostly settled into the comfort zone of ensemble action franchises. Channing Tatum scores best as a lover, not a fighter, while Gerald Butler may be an action star if he ever makes more than one every several years.
The Scott Adkins of the world struggle to break out of the direct-to-DVD basement, while former or would-be action stars find comfort in ensemble franchises like G.I. Joe, Expendables, and Fast/Furious. The only actors who still qualify as action stars, to the extent that major studios still make conventional action pictures, are arguably Tom Cruise, Mark Wahlberg, and Denzel Washington, although I would argue that Wahlberg and Cruise are old-school movie stars who occasionally do action vehicles. The catch is that, arguably, much of their draw pertains to the idea that their star vehicles will attain a certain level of quality, especially for Cruise and Washington (Wahlberg is more of a mixed bag). No one expected Taken 2 to be any good, and it frankly wasn’t. Few expected much from Unknown and The Grey succeeded almost in spite of its meditative quality (and despi te its somewhat misleading marketing). Liam Neeson has gone from a respected dramatic actor to, diversions into films like Chloe aside, something of an action hero punch line while maintaining his gravitas as a respected actor.
Neeson stands as the least likely and last vestige of a time seemingly passed. He’s pulling in A-level opening weekends for unapologetically B-level action pictures. If audiences show up to Non-Stop this weekend, and I believe they will, it won’t be because of the supporting cast (Julianne Moore, Corey Stoll, and Lupita Nyong’o all playing “not the killer” and/or ” totally the killer”) or because director Jaume Collet-Serra has a big following from his quirky and amusing B-movies like Orphan and the House of Wax remake. It won’t be because Non-Stop is based on a known property or because the trailers do more than a serviceable job of selling the plot. If Non-Stop is a hit, it will be because audiences want to see Liam Neeson in action-hero mode, plain and simple.
That kind of “by myself” pull is what makes a genuine movie star. And that’s what makes Liam Neeson our latest and perhaps least likely action hero. And in this current cinematic climate, he is perhaps our last action hero.
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