The Golden Age of Hollywood

Given the ages of the actors playing major roles in the film, the only thing impossible about the latest Mission: Impossible movie is the hairlines.

Of course, the movie is helmed by Tom Cruise, whom one might be tempted to call “ageless.” But he has a quantifiable age: He has circled the sun 61 times. He was born just eleven months after Barack Obama, a president who served two terms and has now been out of office for almost seven years. And yet had you been going on appearance alone, it is only Cruise’s birth certificate that you wouldn’t believe.

But there Cruise is, still karate-chopping bad guys and bedding young women in blockbuster movies every summer. In fact, Cruise marches on in the Mission: Impossible movies while his female love interests are routinely killed off before they develop a single wrinkle. The life expectancy of an onscreen Cruise lover in the MI series is shorter than that of a French soldier in 1916 fighting German chemical weapons at the Somme.

But Cruise gets to keep dancing across the globe, movie camera in tow, because this is what audiences want: old dudes doin’ stuff.

Gone are the days of the young, handsome, up-and-coming movie star. Major motion pictures are now made almost exclusively starring Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. Just peruse the big-ticket films of this summer. For instance, Harrison Ford, age 81, resurrected his role as archaeologist Indiana Jones in a movie in which he might have set out to unearth the oldest and rarest of artifacts: a print of the first Indiana Jones film.

Other big hits this year have starred actors Chris Pratt (44), Vin Diesel (56), Chris Pine (42), Matt Damon (52), Keanu Reeves (58), and Paul Rudd (allegedly 54 but probably closer to 90). The most anticipated film coming out this fall, Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of the book Killers of the Flower Moon, stars Leonardo DiCaprio (48) and Robert DeNiro (79). The youngest male actor you’re likely to see on the screen this year is the “cocaine bear.”

Even the record-setting “Barbenheimer” weekend in July featured actors over 40. Ryan Gosling, who at 42 still manages to have a body-fat percentage in the negative digits, played the male lead in Barbie. And 47-year-old Cillian Murphy glowered his way through Oppenheimer.

And this is a year that hasn’t even seen big movies from middle-age mainstays like Brad Pitt (59), Bradley Cooper (48), The Rock (51), and George Clooney (62).

The only real exception to this rule is wispy 27-year-old Timothée Chalamet, who now seems to score every role that needs a male actor under 30. But why are audiences so insistent on watching actors who should be scheduling their colonoscopies instead of jumping off buildings?

For one, movies are now becoming a luxury item, and it is older people who have the cash to leave their homes and plop down $15 for a ticket to a single film. The Barbie phenomenon aside, younger people seem happy to binge streaming shows on their phones — why pay the same amount for one movie as it costs to subscribe to Netflix for a month?

So now the crowbar that movie studios use to pry people away from their televisions is familiarity. If people are forking over that much cash, they don’t want risk — and safety is found in familiar actors playing the same roles they’ve inhabited for decades. When they go to the theater, viewers now want more of a guarantee that they will be entertained, and Tom Cruise’s 40-year résumé is clearly evidence that he can deliver.

And, of course, that also affects the types of films Hollywood now cranks out, which, in turn, affects who gets hired to star in them. Superhero movies and other long-term blockbuster franchises not only provide familiarity; they provide job security for older actors as well as once-young actors who grow into old actors while playing the roles. Take soon-to-be-40-year-old Chris Hemsworth, who began playing the role of Thor at the age of 27. He and others in the Marvel universe have hogged those roles for almost 15 years, denying younger male actors their chance at mega-stardom.

Perhaps more important, Hollywood no longer makes comedies, which were always the breeding ground for young male talent. When Adam Sandler began making dopey comedies like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, he was in his mid 20s. Eddie Murphy was 21 years old when he starred in 48 Hrs. and 22 when he fronted Trading Places. More recently, teen comedies gave movie careers to Michael Cera and Jonah Hill, who are now 35 and 39, respectively.

But now Hollywood can no longer write funny movies, as studios aren’t willing to put up with the backlash from groups that end up being the butt of the joke. And movies also face competition from social media, where watching videos of drunk guys losing their pants and falling off a boat produce more laughs for free than a $20 million studio comedy.

But the real victims of the geriatrification of male movie stardom aren’t the young male stars like Tom Holland (27) and Austin Butler (31). The victims are regular men in their 40s and 50s, who are now supposed to look and act like their movie counterparts. If, when walking down the street, we are accosted by a mugger, we are expected to protect our companion by unleashing a blizzard of fists and kicks like 71-year-old badass Liam Neeson. In fact, the last violence I perpetrated in my personal life was on a particularly delicious plate of hot wings.

But there is still hope, young guys. Hang in there for the next 50 years and you will get the chance to audition for the best roles. You’ll just have to beat out a computer-animated Harrison Ford.