New Action Stars: who will carry the mantle when the legends are gone?

Once Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Reeves, Cruise and Statham are done with the genre, who will be the new action stars?

Up on Variety about a year ago, there was an interesting interview with the German distributor of the Expendables and John Wick movies. Fred Kogel, who runs Leonine Studios, noted that all the top action heroes now, Keanu Reeves, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise, and Harrison Ford, are the same ones we had in the eighties and nineties. But with Stallone and Ford in their late seventies, who will be the new action stars when the icons are done with the genre? Liam Neeson’s action career can’t go on forever, and Bruce Willis has, sadly, had to retire. For his part, Kogel doesn’t believe distributors and studios have done enough to build up a new crop of action heroes, noting that for the older stars, there was “a great deal of identification with the type of the actor, with the physicality of the actor so that you could relate to that.” With CGI-laden superhero movies, Kogel believes that kind of identification is gone. “I think it’s on us to build up new stars again, with the physicality, with the looks and with the sympathetic, great-acting factor – you need that. It’s in our own hands.”

He has a point. Of the iconic action heroes he mentions, Keanu Reeves is the youngest by a long shot, being 59. With him looking to retire John Wick, will Reeves continue in the genre? It’s hard to say. If you look at Expend4bles, the movie is built around Jason Statham, who’s 56 and theoretically could keep doing action movies for decades, with him recently having a hit with The Beekeeper. However, for me, part of the issue with Statham is that his characters aren’t vulnerable enough. He falls into the same trap Steven Seagal did, where his martial arts battles became ludicrously one-sided (although Beekeeper was admittedly great). One of the things people love about John Wick is his emotional vulnerability, and he always takes his licks. Newbies Jake Gyllenhaal and Dev Patel did pretty well earlier this year with the Road House remake and Monkey Man, but will either double down? Gyllenhaal is already set to do a Road House sequel, and hopefully Patel will get another shot at the genre, even if Monkey Man‘s box office take was modest.

In some ways, modern audiences have maybe forgotten what action really is. It’s interesting to note that last year, Rachel Zegler took home a People’s Choice Award for Best Movie Action Star of the year, which raised some eyebrows among action fans. Is The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes really an action movie? The fact that an audience voted this way over the more traditional action of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, John Wick: Chapter 4, or even Gal Gadot’s physically gruelling Heart of Stone says a lot. Audiences are used to fantasy now and CGI. To them THAT is action.

So, who does that leave? There’s Dwayne Johnson, but, like Statham, it feels like audiences are growing a bit weary of the fact that he plays the same character repeatedly. Note the recent failure of Red One. Indeed, Johnson himself seems to realize this, with him opting to make the terrific-sounding The Smashing Machine with Benny Safdie. If you go back to Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Reeves and Ford, you’ll note that while they each had multiple franchises, you’d never mistake one character for another. Rocky and Rambo are entirely different, like The Terminator and Conan, or Indiana Jones and Han Solo (or Jack Ryan). The same thing goes with Neo and John Wick. But is there a huge difference between Johnson’s Luke Hobbs (from the Fast & Furious series) and the characters he played in Red Notice or Red One? Heck, even the titles are similar. There’s still Tom Cruise, and arguably, he’s the most iconic of everyone, given that he does his own stunts, but at 61, how long will he be able to keep punishing himself physically? The silver lining for Cruise is that Top Gun: Maverick, which didn’t have any major physical action scenes, was his highest-grossing movie ever, so maybe he’s not as reliant on stunts as people seem to think. With him signing a new mega-deal with Warner Bros, it seems Cruise has many years to go on his career, even if fans are hoping he might dip back into drama and the types of movies he led in the nineties.

One interesting up-and-comer is Ryan Gosling, who dipped into the genre with The Gray Man last year, but The Fall Guy was a big enough flop that I feel like he will avoid the genre going forward. There’s also Chris Hemsworth, who has the Extraction franchise going and, of the Marvel heroes, feels most likely to remain an action hero once he’s done in the MCU. Michael B. Jordan, Henry Cavill, and John David Washington have potential in the genre, and Charlize Theron has become iconic in her own right, but can they all anchor global franchises the way the old-timers did? Theron’s Atomic Blonde was only a minor box office success, but then again, so was the first John Wick. Maybe they should give that character another shot? Another guy who seems like a natural for the genre is Zac Efron, whose The Iron Claw shows he has box office muscle, a great actor, and a physique that puts many action heroes to shame. Yet, the next movies in the pipeline for Efron seem to be returning him to comedic territory, with him attached to a remake of Three Men and a Baby for Disney. John Cena also has some potential, but his recent solo actioner, Freelance, barely made a blip, and Jackie Chan’s Cena team-up movie Hidden Strike had a hell of a time escaping onto Netflix.

And what about new female action stars? One of the ones everyone is excited about is Ana de Armas in Ballerina, but that got pushed back a year. One person to maybe consider is Kristen Stewart. Yeah, I know. The Charlie’s Angels reboot sucked (she agrees) but when you see her in Love Lies Bleeding you might be surprised at how badass she can be. She was actually a terrific Ripley-esque heroine in the underrated Underwater. Maybe she can take a shot at the genre? Another one people like is Samara Weaving, who was really cool in an obscure actioner called Guns Akimbo. Scarlett Johansson has had some strong action moments in her career, but with her Black Widow days behind her, we’ll have to wait and see if she has any further interest in action films.

One thing worth noting is that audiences seem to prefer an older action hero – with them appreciating a certain degree of world-weariness. To note, Bob Odenkirk seems to be the most promising modern action star, and he’s in his sixties. Next year will be a big one for him, with both Nobody 2 and Normal on the way. Another guy who’s about to give the genre a shot in a big way is the great Ke Huy Quan, who has Love Hurts on the way (and also has a history as a stunt choreographer, meaning he’s more than up to the physical demands).

Returning to Kogel’s comments, perhaps studios need to bank on actors with mixed box office track records, as you never know when the right vehicle might boost someone unexpectedly. Let’s not forget that before John Wick, Keanu Reeves was flirting with DTV material. As Kogel says in the interview, “See ‘John Wick.’ ‘John Wick’ really created a completely new kind of action genre. Who would have known 10 or 12 years ago, after ‘Matrix,’ that Keanu could pull it off again with his most successful franchise?” Maybe enough hasn’t been done to sell someone like Scott Adkins or Idris Elba as major action movie stars.

Who do you think will be the next great action hero? Where is the new Bruce Lee? The next Arnold Schwarzenegger? And where does Vin Diesel fit into this conversation? Let us know in the comments.