It’s that time of year when mature moviegoers are expected to give thanks for a few serious dramas amid the avalanche of supervillain cartoons and Harry Potter sequels.
This year, however, graying audiences are getting some firepower mixed in with the usual holiday servings of troubled British royals (“The King’s Speech”) and dissolute musicians on the road to redemption (“Country Strong”).
“The Expendables” and “RED” — ultra-violent action movies featuring retirement-age heroes — have banked big box office in recent months, redefining the definition of films for adults.
“I hope it endures as a subgenre, because that just opens up more variety of films for our audience,” said Bill Newcott, entertainment editor of AARP The Magazine and host of the retiree organization’s “Movies for Grown-ups” radio show and awards ceremony.
“Too often, when people think of a grown-up movie, that means there’s got to be a lot of moping, someone’s got to die slowly of a debilitating illness and everyone has to be lonely and someone has to lose their memory along the way. So it’s very refreshing to see films done like this.” Whether “Expendables” and “RED” will launch a new breed of geriatric action heroes remains to be seen.
Soon-to-be-61-year-old Jeff Bridges shows off some agile moves in the upcoming “Tron: Legacy” and “True Grit” remake (on the heels of an Oscar win for his redemption-bound country star in “Crazy Heart”).
And next year, 68-year-old Harrison Ford will try to erase the floppy taste of recent grumpy old-men roles with a new action franchise, “Cowboys & Aliens.”
Stallone started trend
It was not much of a surprise when Sylvester Stallone’s “Expendables,” a get-together of over-the-hill he-men, blasted its way past the $100 million gross mark last summer. Each of the 64-year- old muscleman’s recent comeback projects had done well, and this film boasted appearances by such other 1980s tough guys as Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But the Willis-starring “RED” (stands for Retired: Extremely Dangerous) includes such folks as Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren — names more often associated with Oscar-seeking films.
Bullet-riddled and blood-soaked, “RED” is also a satire, which playwright George S. Kaufman once defined as what closes on Saturday night.
Nonetheless, “RED” has hung in at the box-office since its Oct. 15 release. It was the oldest film in the top 10 last weekend, and its $83.6 million North American gross beats everything the picture’s distributor, Summit Entertainment, has released outside of its “Twilight” teen- monster-romance franchise.
Of course, these numbers are fractions of what youth-aimed franchises still earn. But they’re probably enough to make 63-year-old, soon-to-be-jobless Gov. Schwarzenegger feel optimistic.
“It’s still the case that teenagers are the most frequent moviegoers, but we’re seeing some very encouraging trends in older demographics coming out to the cinema,” said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners. “There are more movies that appeal to older audiences, so we’re seeing some successes in that demographic.”
That acknowledged, “Expendables” and “RED” bore special qualities that, say, “Wheelchair Warriors” with Timothy Dalton and Joan Collins would not. And there’s already been a bit of an underperformer in the mix: “Machete,” which grossed only a mid-$20 million box office.
“In terms of casting, ‘RED’ and ‘Expendables’ went totally opposite, but in equally satisfying ways,” said Erik Feig, Summit’s president of worldwide production. “I grew up watching action movies, and to see the ‘Expendables’ poster with all the greatest stars, you just thought, ‘They’re all in one movie? Wow!’
Mirren an action hero?
“With ‘RED,’ yes, Bruce Willis is an iconic action movie star. But then you have people like Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman and Brian Cox and John Malkovich, that lent a sense of, ‘These guys in that kind of movie? I haven’t seen that before.’ “
Feig said there have been discussions about a “RED” sequel, but there are no immediate plans. He also noted that the film seems to be playing equally well to younger and older audiences (opening- weekend attendance breakdowns had 58 percent over-35s, the age at which Hollywood marketers consider moviegoers really, really old).
He figures, though, that films such as his have a natural and ever-renewing audience: literally, anyone who’s ever felt threatened by younger competition.
“The idea appeals to everyone who is 65, 40 and 30, who’s got a 28-year-old guy in the office who is the hot new thing,” said Feig, 40. “I mean, I definitely have felt that, and it’s a universal thing.” Like other entries in the action-film field — which has grown increasingly impossible to believe since, at least, Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s 1980s heyday — these older hero movies operate on high doses of fantasy fulfillment.
“The appeal to the older audience is that the characters’ lifetime of experience helps them show the whippersnappers up,” observed AARP’s Newcott. “And they’re also, obviously, physically fit. But the key is that they’re not in denial about how old they are.”
“It’s the fantasy of a bed-and-breakfast being run by someone like Helen Mirren — who herself is a fantasy of what every woman would aspire to be at that age — and not only are the flower arrangements perfect, but she’s hiding a gun under a newspaper,” Feig said. “It’s a perfect bit of empowerment fantasy.”
Effective as such elements may have been, there’s a feeling out there that if elderly action flicks are going to thrive, future ones may have to try a little harder than this year’s novelty-exploiting hits did.
“There’s nothing wrong with ‘Expendables’ that couldn’t have been improved by a decent script,” lamented critic-of- a-certain-age Leonard Maltin. “I was as ready to enjoy it as anyone, and was greatly disappointed.”
