When Movie Stars Become Brands

early on in the 2021 Netflix movie Red notice Nolan Booth played by Ryan Reynolds returns to his luxurious home in Bali and in a closeup pours himself a glass of Aviation American gin for the rest of the scene the bottle of Aviation is featured prominently with the label facing the camera in case you're not aware Aviation Jin is co-owned by Ryan Reynolds himself he promotes it regularly on his social media accounts his YouTube channel and in his reality documentary TV show Welcome to rexam where a bottle of Aviation gin is one of the very first images we see in the first episode back in red notice a few minutes after the aviation gin Cameo there's a scene where John Hartley played by Dwayne Johnson goes to a bar and the bartender pours him in a luxurious closeup a glass of teramana tequila the liquor brand founded by Dwayne Johnson in 2020 and at this point in the movie I started wondering am I just watching a commercial look movie stars have been doing brand Partnerships for decades Lauren ball and Highpoint coffee Katherine Zeta Jones and T-Mobile Morpheus from The Matrix and Kia automobiles but what Johnson and Reynolds are doing feels different over the past seven or eight years their acting careers and business business ventures have become so deeply entwined that now they're essentially one and the same so much of their public presence is devoted to being spokesman for their companies that their movies end up just feeling like an extension of that reynolds's on-screen Persona in mint mobile commercials has become indistinguishable from his characters in movies like red notice and so that movie doesn't just feel like a commercial for jyn or tequila brands but but a commercial for the personal brands of Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds in our previous episode we spent a lot of time discussing the death of the movie star how in the 21st Century movie stars once figures whose names could get movies green lit and attract audiences to show up have ceased to matter like they used to replaced by characters and franchises so in our last video we featured a recent survey of movie goers who were asked which actors were the biggest draw to get them to go see a movie in theaters and in the top 20 almost all of them had been Stars since the ' 80s or '90s only a small handful came from the 21st century and among that handful were Dwayne Johnson and Ryan Reynolds these two guys have reached the ranks of a select few in Hollywood I'm talking about Tom Cruz Leonardo DiCaprio or Denzel Washington where their names alone can get an original big budget movie greenlit they might appear in franchises but unlike say Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth their non-franchise movies are hits as well they've reached a place that most actors dream of where they can be selective about their projects and work with the very best in the business and yet they're not doing that both Johnson and Reynolds are talented performers who have given good performances in good interesting movies whether as Coke addicted Evangelical murderous bodybuilders or manipulative gambling addicts but over the past decade they have stopped taking any of those roles they flattened their onscreen personas into the same repeatable formula every time in a string of movies that seem almost scientifically engineered to evaporate from memory as you're still watching them the only directors they work with are C tier Yes Men guaranteed to never make an interesting creative choice or challenge them in any way outside of Deadpool or Black Adam I defy anyone to name a single character either of these guys has played and no free guy is not the character's name these days movie stars are in short supply and if you ask me these guys are wasting a precious opportunity so what's the deal I mean look the answer is probably just money but I think there's a little more Nuance to it than that so let's get into it it's time to rock Reynolds and Roll come on Patrick roll the title [Music] [Applause] sequence [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello and welcome back to the show I'm Patrick Willams and today we'll be talking about and joining me today is my new co-host nobl the content gobler sure the content gobbler thanks Patrick it's an honor to be working with you now shall we dig into all the delicious content you have in store for us we actually don't use that word here but it's the perfect word to describe all that tasty entertainment out there can we cut Dave what's the deal why do I need a co-host all of a sudden and why have all things does it need to be Nobles the content gobbler his name makes no sense Nobles gobbles up all the content Yum Yum Yum what doesn't make sense about that look you've been making all these videos lately that are like AI is destroying content and Cinema is being murder and it's a real [ __ ] bummer man brought in novels to liven things up and look look it's working this guy's the life of the party the last time this channel had a lovable sidekick audience engagement was off the charts and we made a killing on merch wait do you mean the coconut he almost committed dimensional genus side and worse he's the reason that I can't show my channel to anyone without a 45-minute explanation yeah that season went a little off the rails but we're pretty sure that's not going to happen again hey Tera can you make sure that Noel isn't evil thanks and he keeps calling everything content I just made a whole episode about how much I hate that word I don't know man his focus group test scores are off the charts everybody loves this guy hey try it out for one episode and if you're still not happy if you still don't like him I promise you I'll talk you into another one fine um Patrick we have a problem the camera keeps shifting focus and I'm getting this weird error message mind if I take a look I'm a bit of a Gearhead myself voila it's fixed thanks Noel always happy to lend a hand all right we're ready to go isn't it great having novels around yeah sure let's just jump back in it's Goblin time baby if we want to understand how we got to this current situation with Johnson and Reynolds first we need to go back to the beginning to learn how we got here here so let's start with Reynolds since his career is simpler but first we have to do a deep dive into reynolds's Big Break set in a bustling Boston Pizzeria two guys a girl and a pizza place was a comical look at post-graduation life in the 9s it had fun fresh characters wacky situations and just the right amount of romance now that's a spicy Pizza Pie hey Nobles um I know I never say this but we've got to move a little bit faster okay so Ryan reynolds's early career is defined by two projects that sitcom that Nobles just mentioned which ran for three seasons on ABC and then shortly after that ended the Rony College comedy National Lampoons Van Wilder here Reynolds quickly established more or less the screen Persona he would have for the next 20 years an effortlessly cool guy confidently breezing through the movie who doesn't seem to take anything seriously including the movie itself delivering a Rapidfire stream of snarky onliners in other words the popular guy as Glenn Weldon described the Persona in his review of the atom project this is a National Lampoon College comedy like Animal House updated for the 21st century except now instead of following an underdog slob like John balushi it's about a guy who looked looks like a member of Omega Theta Pi the villains from Animal House he's hot and in shape and lusted after by every female character since Reynolds is a conventionally handsome actor who had starred in a hit comedy Hollywood immediately started slotting him into various types of movies to see what worked there were action movies like blade Trinity or smoke and Aces horror movies like the remake of The Amityville Horror romantic comedies like definitely maybe eventually as every actor in his position does he had his run at being a superhero twice and both times famously did not work out and so for about a decade and a half Reynolds was a famous actor but he wasn't a movie star occasionally he had a role that fit him well and was in a good movie like Adventure Land but often he ended up in mediocre or bad projects that coasted on his signature smug brand land of Comedy or slaughtered him into generic action roles and then there's Deadpool the Merc with the mouth uh-huh Jimmy chongas Nobles can can we continue okay so we all know the story here Reynolds was cast as Wade Wilson AKA Deadpool an X-Men Origins Wolverine a Dreadful movie but one where pretty much everyone acknowledged that yeah this is the ideal role for him unfortunately that movie was made by stupid people who decided that after his initial few scenes the character would have his mouth stitched shut and then just covered in makeup so he was unrecognizable as any version of Deadpool and then mostly played by a stunt man instead of Reynolds but despite this terrible experience Reynolds loved the character and getting a faithful adaptation made became his passion project Reynolds and director Tim Miller made a test reel for for a faithful R-rated Deadpool movie that a couple years later very conveniently got leaked online and I have a few theories on how it could have happened let's go to the conspiracy board no Nobles we did that in the last episode not again so anyway that test reel went viral fans freaked out and fox immediately green lit the movie when it was released in 2016 Deadpool became the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time so Reynolds had finally broken through and found his defining character he was now officially a proper movie star who could make whatever movies he wanted and what he apparently wanted were a lot of movies that were very similar to Deadpool action comedies where he portrayed snarky badasses who without quite breaking the fourth wall never seemed to take their situations very seriously movies like the hitman's body body guard free guy six underground red notice hitman's wife's bodyguard like just look at his cameo in hobsen Shaw where basically every line sounds like it's a punchline to a snarky joke how long's it been 6 months time flies when we're part what is your skin care regimen because you look like a young Shirley Temple go go go go go go remember when he was Pikachu yeah and he had a little hat yeah H I love that fuzzy little guy okay whatever if you ask someone to do a Ryan Reynolds impression chances are no one will be able to mimic what he sounded like pre 2016 as in pre- Deadpool but now post Deadpool it's one of the easiest ones to do what I really want is almond milk but it's important that they're free range almonds not you know milked against their will that voice just pitched up and sarcastic that's just the Ryan Reynolds voice now in every everything but Deadpool didn't just change his onscreen Persona its influence extended to his social media and business ventures as well see Fox didn't give Deadpool a huge marketing budget so Reynolds kind of took charge of selling the movie he borrowed a costume from the shoot and made various viral videos himself and obviously it paid off the movie made a ton of money and launched a franchise the marketing for Deadpool got so much attention that Reynolds actually launched an advertising arm of his production company maximum effort which applies the Deadpool approach to marketing other brands as well as reynolds's other movies so all those ads for mint mobile and Aviation gin those are all thanks to Deadpool boy those mint mobile commercials sure are straight knee slappers so now at the peak of his career as one of Western Cinema's most bankable movie stars Reynolds could be choosy about his projects and work with the very best in his field and he has chosen as his primary recurring collaborator sha Levy the director of night of the museum the Steve Martin Pink Panther remake and the internship and he's also a producer on Stranger Things I don't know man look Levy has now directed Reynolds in three projects free guy the Adam project and the most coveted of all the upcoming Deadpool 3 okay and now let's move on to Dwayne Johnson The Rock The Great One The People's Champion the most electrifying man in sports entertainment or DJ as his friends call him yes him so there's a whole generation of movie goers out there to whom Dwayne Johnson is primarily just a movie star and credit where credits do he spent years working hard to become one of Hollywood's biggest names but there's a little bit more to that name that hasn't appeared on movie posters in a while since he began dropping it around 2010 yes folks it is time to discuss the Rock and that means diving into a topic that people have been dying for me to discuss ever since my friend and co-writer San forced me to watch some of it last year professional wrestling you see in the late 1990s wrestling was one of the biggest things in America it was crass and violent and to most 12-year-old boys that was the coolest thing in the world now even though I was one of the few 12-year-old boys who didn't watch it I was still aware of two names in particular Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock Austin retired in 2003 right when The Rock was making the jump to Hollywood so if you're wondering why wrestling hasn't been as popular since then those are two reasons why the rock that we know today the smooth likable tequila salesman was not the rock who initially made the jump to Hollywood that rock was a Brash smack talking anti-hero who got the audience on his side by insulting them you are all unintelligent pieces of trailer park trash which is absolutely the last thing he would ever do today but if you look into it a little further or ask any wrestling fan a really interesting picture starts to emerge of a guy whose identity has always been in flux but has kind of come full circle when he first started out the rock was Rocky mayva after his dad Rocky Johnson and his maternal grandfather the high chief Peter mayia build as the first ever third generation wrestler he was sold as an instant star before he'd really had a chance to prove himself and he was given the role of a baby face or a good guy traditionally something like this would have worked in wrestling just look at Hulk Hogan in the80s but this was 1996 when everything was starting to get edgy and extreme it was the dawn of the Attitude Era and the crowds did not want to be told who to cheer for they wanted to boo the good guys and cheer the bad guys and so they rejected Rocky mayaa and started chanting things like die Rock die which Johnson talks about as having had a pretty adverse effect on his mental health the rocky mayaa experiment didn't work and so Johnson made his first hard pivot by shortening his name to just the Rock and joining a villainous black power group based on the Nation of Islam known as the nation of domination the '90s were a weird time The Rock was a full-on bad guy now rejecting the crowds who had rejected him but finally people started to take notice once a guy who bounced around in tassel and gave big toothy Smiles this was a man with the edge that people were looking for and so he leaned into it and he eventually became a Hollywood douchebag who would show up and Pelt the crowd with insults and they loved it you should know your role and shut your mouth here was a guy who is exactly the kind of villain they could cheer for charismatic quick witted always cooking something that smelled good and he was a good actor too and him being a good actor is clearly part of what got Hollywood's attention because by 2002 he had already made his film debut in the Blockbuster The Mummy Returns which led to his own spin-off movie The Scorpion King for which he became the highest paid firsttime lead actor in Hollywood history and the more roles he got well the less time he clearly had for wrestling the month after he fought in Stone Cold's retirement match he leaned even harder into his douchy Hollywood Persona so that people would hate him and then a month later he was gone as a full-time wrestler only making sporadic guest appearances from then on with his movie career off to a solid start Johnson did exactly what any huge musclebound action guy with Limited film acting experience should do he modeled his career on Arnold Schwarzenegger the two of them actually made this explicit in the opening scene of the 2003 movie The Rundown Schwarzenegger appears in a brief Cameo walking past Johnson and saying the message was clear Arnold was passing the torch here was our next great action star wow and so over the next several years Johnson made a bunch of action movies then in 2007 again following the Schwarzenegger Playbook he made some family movies that paired him on screen with kids the problem though was that outside of the rundown and his small role in The Other Guys most of these movies weren't very good like Reynolds at the same time he was famous but he wasn't really a movie star yet by 2010 he had dropped the Rock from his name and built a screen Persona that was the complete opposite of who he was in the wrestling ring here he might sometimes be a stoic inspiring hero delivering sappy emotional monologues or a big cuddly tough guy learning to get along with kids but he was always the good guy in 2011 Johnson returned to wrestling to guest host WrestleMania the purpose of which was actually to set up a match between him and another guy you might have heard of John Cena for the following years WrestleMania in 2012 which was build as a once in a-lifetime bout between major Titans the rock would still be gone most of the year but this time there was a return date and a constant social media back and forth between the two superstars and when The Rock did show back up well things got a little bit real Dwayne Johnson is a self-centered egotistical see-through son of a [ __ ] see this was before Cena had made the move to Hollywood as well and though he's since apologized for it he had a real life grudge against The Rock who was a Hollywood hot shot just dropping back in to steal the spotlight from the people putting in the work 24/7 some of their promos got heated and even went off script with Cena embarrassing The Rock in front of a live crowd it's obviously hard to psychoanalyze this moment from a distance but this seems to be the moment where Johnson fully internalized the difference between Hollywood and the WWE just look at him the week after that promo Battle For the First Time The Rock seems at a loss for words in Hollywood he could have complete control over his image but here as the crowd mockingly chant Tooth Fairy at him it's like die Rocky die all over again in a Vanity Fair profile from a couple years ago Johnson mentions that around this time he got his agents at CIA together for a meeting where he proposed that his acting career needed a reboot he specifically named Will Smith and George Clooney as the guys whose careers he wanted to emulate in 2012 he launched his production company seven bucks Productions so he could have more control over his projects and extend his brand to television hosting various reality competition shows but the move that really mattered was in 2011 when he joined the cast of The Fast and Furious franchise with the fifth installment Fast Five after a decade of trying to carve out a movie career where he's always the star always the good guy here he tried something different instead of top build here he was the and in the credits instead of the good guy he was the antagonist the heel the hard ass law man trying to take down the heroes stay the [ __ ] out of my way in other words he brought in a bit of The Rock and as we all know it paid off Fast Five which is a modern Masterpiece and one of the best action movies of the century doubled the box office take of the series previous installment it got the best reviews in the series history and soon Johnson was hosting Saturday Night Live and declaring himself to be franchise Viagra around this time he also gave the best performance of his career in Michael Bay's black comedy Pain and Gain playing an unhinged bodybuilder who gets addicted to cocaine and in one scene barbecues severed human hands Jesus Christ himself has blessed me with many gifts one of them is knocking someone the [ __ ] out but he would quickly move far away from roles like that in fact in the past decade he has barely ever even acknowledged that he's in pain and gain as as he continued with the fast series with each movie outperforming The Last Johnson was finally able to leverage that success into his own starring Vehicles as the producer and star he was now the primary oour on these movies and so he would primarily work with the same collection of directors people like Brad pton or Ross and Marshall Thurber who I'm sure are perfectly nice guys but they aren't exactly being called Visionary film film makers by anyone and now that Johnson had control he was able to make big budget movies that projected a more heroic image he finally found success by being a baby face not a heel I don't get what the problem is plenty of movie stars have played the same type of character over and over Carrie Grant John Wayne Borat you don't need to fix what ain't broken well there's more to it than that see there's another big factor in this conversation which is like the reason that we're making this episode and that these guys are not just actors anymore see now acting is only a part of their careers over the past decade both Johnson and Reynolds have used the clout and attention from their acting careers to launch several business ventures they both started the traditional way founding their own production companies to develop movie and TV projects Johnson as we already mentioned started seven bucks production C in 2012 and Reynolds founded maximum effort in 2018 maximum effort but then things escalated the path for this was actually paved by George Clooney who Dwayne Johnson name checked as one of the guys he wanted to model his career on in 2013 Clooney co-founded his tequila company casamigos and 4 years later sold it for nearly a billion dollar in an interview Clooney explained his motivation behind getting into business so I made a decision very early on to just work for backend and take the least amount of money so all the money would go on the screen and gamble on the movie being good if it's good maybe you make some money if not in doing so I decided that I'd have to focus on other forms of business I'd have to have a way to to make sure and ensure that I could make a living if this didn't work out so in other words Clooney got into business to be able to take more creative risk on quality movies like tomorrow land not exactly like leatherheads sort of monuments men now you're just naming random movies please stop anyway what's notable here especially in comparison to our main subjects today is that George Clooney has no social media presence he appears in only three videos on the casamigos YouTube channel and that's it he's not out there being a spokesman Shilling for his company that energy he reserves for Nespresso commercials so a year after the news broke about Clooney's huge casamigos payday Ryan Reynolds bought in and became a co-owner of Aviation American chin in 2019 Reynolds became co-owner of mintmobile in 2020 Reynolds along with Rob meleny bought the rexam AFC football club a process which they turned into a documentary TV series for FX in 2021 reynolds's company maximum effort marketing the one he founded after Deadpool blew up was acquired by Mountain and Reynolds is now their Chief creative officer the best representation that I found for reynolds's current ERA is this commercial while he's endorsing a Samsung TV he inserts additional commercials for his own movie and his own liquor company and then makes a joke about how ridiculous it is that he's doing this okay and now over to Johnson starting in 2013 he launched and hosted multiple reality competition shows like the hero wakeup call and the Titan games he's had multiple brand Partnerships including an especially successful one with under arour then in 2020 he purchased the XFL Football League the league which once begged the question how do we make the world's most dangerous game more extreme Rock says he's all Psych about the XFL the XFL was originally the brainchild of Vince McMahon and had already failed twice over but at this point The Rock was bigger and more successful than wrestling itself that same year Johnson launched both zoa energy drinks and teramana tequila in an interview with CNN he specifically brought up Clooney's company to point out how he's out selling them in the Netflix documentary series Arnold Arnold TR sagger explains how he took a similar approach to Clooney early in his career his mentor helped him get into real estate so that he would have that to rely on financially and could focus on making good movies instead of taking bad paycheck jobs now this is purely speculation on my part but maybe there's a chance that Arnold gave George Clooney that advice on the set of Batman and Robin that would be fun now the irony here is that unlike Clooney and Schwarzenegger it doesn't seem like Reynolds and Johnson got into business so that they could take artistic risks instead it seems like the businesses have become the priority and as those have grown their movie work has become increasingly safe and forgettable somehow Schwarzenegger the bodybuilder who could barely speak English was more interested in making good movies than these guys are and that's why portfolio diversification pays off kids sure it's easy to forget that earlier in their careers both Johnson and Reynolds took on a variety of interesting and challenging roles like Reynolds made buried the movie that's essentially a one-man show with him buried underground in a coffin for 95 minutes or as I like to call it lock in a box wow Emma with Nobles constantly interrupting I kind of forgot you were here I I love it really takes the pressure off of me and I just live for the spotlight yeah I can tell so Reynolds made buried which was a real serious acting Challenge and he subverted his natural charm to play complicated characters in Adventureland and Mississippi grind Johnson played a gay bodyguard in be cool he lampooned his Persona in the other guys he did a straight drama in grid iron gang I mean Jesus Christ the guy made Southland Tales one of the most unhinged movies of the century and of course as we already mentioned he is terrific in pain and gain and Fast Five in performances that make fantastic use of both his physical presence and natural Charisma so the great big question here is why won't these guys make movies like those anymore and why do they keep making such bad movies instead I actually like Skyscraper nobl shut up over the past six or seven years Johnson and Reynolds have narrowed their movie roles into nearly identical personas that they keep across all their movies ensuring brand consistency they're like a McDonald's Double Cheeseburger it never changes the majority of America loves it and if it's the lead in a major movie you can probably skip it this flattening of their movie roles began around the time they started their transition into business Moguls when you see Ryan Reynolds in a movie he's not really any different than Ryan Reynolds in a mint mobile commercial are on welcome to rexam Brand consistency is key reynolds's movies even quote his other movies superhero Landing superhero Landing if you look at Dwayne Johnson's social media and YouTube the businesses and movies completely overlap here's teramana in red notice here's a video promoting jungle cruise that is really about Johnson and Emily Blunt drinking teramana here he is discussing Black Adam while drinking zoa energy here he is rapping in a music video and then drinking teramana the new Dwayne Johnson Persona goes something like this stoic heroic responsible men often former military like in skyscraper Rampage and San Andreas he usually a family man trying to rescue his family like San Andreas and skyscraper or in Black Adam fighting to honor the legacy of his dead family while also rescuing his new surrogate family for a guy who started his career as the heir to Schwarzenegger he surprisingly rarely touches guns on screen anymore in skyscraper his character actually has a vow to never use guns again and very importantly there is zero sexual ity which is honestly kind of shocking for a guy who looks like that but as huge and jacked as charismatic as he is he is absolutely 100% never horny if there is a romantic interest there is zero sexual tension and they really feel more like friends he rarely even kisses anyone on screen and when he does it is often obscured by the back of a head or like in Hobson Shaw everyone just looks extremely uncomfortable like sixth graders playing spin the bottle and then other times like in Rampage he will just turn down women who are interested in him because he has no apparent interest in the opposite sex in the fast series you can actually see his character evolve away from the original hardass antagonistic Hobs from movie to movie his voice changes he spends more time smiling and cracking jokes until by his fourth appearance he is just the same guy as in all his other movies a lovable single dad with an adorable daughter just here to bring in two [ __ ] whose names hit my desk or some wannabe tough guy prick who beat a man half to death with a socket wrench and a lot of time at Taytay concerts Tay Taylor Swift in Hobs and Shaw his spin-off movie he even loses the goatee so now he just looks exactly like every other Dwayne Johnson character over the years there has been much speculation about whether or not Johnson will eventually run for president of the United States speculation that really ignited with the release of his recently cancelled semi-autobiographical sitcom young Rock the single camera sitcom followed young Dwayne or dwey as they call him in three different timelines before he was famous showing him interacting with various classic wrestlers navigating domestic troubles and getting jacked you know sitcom stuff this was sort of aimed at creating entertainment out of a cleancut mythology and the framing device was actually Johnson himself sometime in the near future telling all these stories on his campaign Trail as he runs for president tongue and cheek jab our statement of intent we may never know for sure but what's clear is the image he wants to create for himself is shockingly similar to someone running for political office including his Rags to Riches pull yourself up by your bootstrap story The American Dream he's a clean friendly hardworking person with simple relatable morals and someone you'd like to have a beer with but only on cheat days when he can afford the calories and here's a picture of one of the Rock's big cookie cheat T would you look at how big those cookies are they're so big now that's soft warm chocolate chip content and now this image extends to all his movies as well if you look at his news screen Persona he's representing all the values a political candidate would want to project he's a family man he supports troops and Veterans but avoids using guns he supports people with disabilities he cares about animals he's a strong leader who can take responsibility and most importantly zero sex ever but recently despite Netflix claiming that red notice is the most popular movie of all time or some other insane thing that I don't believe for a second it seems like audiences aren't as excited about Johnson's new brand of blandness as they used to be jungle Cru was a flop and Black Adam a movie he literally spent a decade hyping up did not end up changing the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe at least not in the way he'd hoped in the end it turned out that the movie was mostly an excuse to boost his own brand by teeing up a movie where he would fight super Superman the movie equivalent of returning to WrestleMania a decade earlier to fight John Cena and so coming off of these failures Johnson pivoted earlier this year he put aside his long-standing beef with Vin Diesel and retreated back to the main Fast and Furious franchise around the same time he also announced that he would be spearheading a liveaction remake of Moana in which he will reprise his role as Maui who he voiced in the original animated film and when the actor stri put him on the sidelines for a bit he made a random appearance at a WWE show in Colorado he is a guy who has plenty of fallbacks but those fallbacks always seem to be whatever is comfortable and familiar when new territory doesn't work out with so many of his recent movies he's trying to be a good guy Against All Odds even if it means playing a dimensionless baby face he's come all the way back to being Rocky mava only this time there's no live crowd to hurt him the way wrestling fans once did as Kyle Buchanan put it in a piece for vulture in 2018 Johnson has the power to get nearly any movie made yet the movies he's making seem like parody posters that would be hung up if he strolled through a season of Entourage he's one of the few stars getting original movies made and yet every one of those movies feels like a watered down version of some beloved film from a couple decades ago skyscraper is Die Hard San Andreas and Rampage are Roland Emerick disaster movies jungle Cru is the mummy meets Pirates of the Caribbean even Black Adam turns out to basically just be Terminator 2 right down to the teen boy teaching the Unstoppable killing machine to say catchphrases over time Johnson's Persona has become like a tech CEO mixed with a motivational speaker like look at this video that I am obsessed with two words Black Adam guys your Global reaction and response to our world premiere trailer of black adom yesterday was staggering staggering 98% positive review and reaction there are so many weird things about this the way he describes movies as properties I've launched some big properties in my career from Jungle Cruise Jumanji Hobs and Shaw you know what this property means to me deep down here I'm so passionate about this property and talks about disruption it's ushering a new era in the DC Universe with excitement with disruption with vision with strategy in this Instagram post about his upcoming Amazon movie red one he calls it a Christmas franchise film and I'm sorry Dwayne but you cannot just announce that an original movie is also a franchise film that's not how franchises work announcing a franchise before anyone has seen the first movie is how we got the dark univers Universe Johnson and Reynolds have collaborated multiple times most notably in red notice but Reynolds also has an extended cameo in Hobs and Shaw and Johnson has a voice cameo in freey similarly Johnson has collaborated several times with Kevin Hart in Central Intelligence two Jumanji movies and Hart's Cameo and Hobs and Shaw a lot of cameos in that movie I don't think it's a coincidence that these are also the actors who are most focused on being entrepreneurs Hart actually might have more companies and endorsement deals than anybody else these cameos and co-starring roles really feel more like strategic brand Partnerships than anything else okay Patrick so after all this criticizing what do you think these guys should be doing I say double down and make more businesses Rock Reynolds president and VP double bill first of all Nobles no second of all Reynolds can't be vice president president because as we all know he was born in Canada just please stop interrupting and let me get through the rest of the episode look I watched a lot of movies for this and again despite all my criticisms I do think that both of these guys are talented and they have given performances that I think are really good so here's my pitch for what I think these enormously successful astoundingly wealthy actors should be doing instead Dwayne Johnson needs to go back to doing what he did right at the start of his career following the Schwarzenegger blueprint in terms of screen presence there is no one closer to him than Arnold and unlike Arnold Dwayne Johnson is a native English speaker with a greater acting range he already has a huge Advantage what Schwarzenegger was great at was identifying quality and talent and just trying to make great movies he start in James Cameron's first movie and John mcan's second and he would reteam with both of those guys who are two of the best action filmmakers of all time both Cameron and McAn subverted His Image in different ways Cameron made him a monster then an unlikely Ally and then the lead in romantic comedy McAn made him the Final Girl in a slasher movie and then did a meta commentary on his entire filmography and when Arnold made a comedy he teamed up with Ivan wman director of Ghostbusters when Dwayne Johnson made a comedy he teamed up with the director of We're the Millers like come on man you got to aim higher than that it's not that I think Johnson needs to make R-rated movies with guns although it would be nice to have the rock in a real proper action movie again he just needs to make something that actually feels visceral he is an astounding physical presence he looks super human but all his recent movies Place him in front of a green screen and Surround him with endless CGI goop his physical presence means nothing when he's already in a cartoon to take advantage of his natural attributes we need to see him in real locations and real action again like Arnold his impossible physical appearance is way more effective when framed against reality instead of CGI jungles and explosions and seriously just take some chances play a vill or something look you know who played villains and made R-rated movies and killed people on screen and still became an elected politician that's right Arnold Schwarzenegger Ryan Reynolds despite being a more traditional actor is oddly tougher to figure out than Johnson in terms of who he resembles it's easy to say like Robert Downey Jr with his fast talking quipp but he lacks Downey's fragility and POS you could compare him to' 80s comedy stars like Bill Murray or Chevy Chase but he's too pretty and too self-satisfied Chevy Chase had similarly waspy Vibes but he undercut that by falling down all the time and Bill Murray has a weirdo Blue Collar charm that Reynolds can never reach because he just feels too much like a yepy frat boy even in his late 40s his greatest success Deadpool is built off of being a guy who doesn't care who knows he's in a movie and that this is all silly and nothing matters but there are also two key components that make Deadpool work that many of his other projects lack number one he's ugly Deadpool is covered in horrible Burns and so they Unpretty Reynolds and number two he's low status he's annoying and every other character in the movies hates him see the element that is usually reynolds's biggest issue but can be weaponized by the right filmmakers is that he inherently seems in insincere I know these are actors and their job is to play a role but actors are also human beings who come with inherent attributes that are just part of their General Vibe as people and with Reynolds he almost always comes off as a guy who can't be trusted because he doesn't really care that much he uses this to his Advantage as a spokesperson for mint mobile and Aviation gin where he's self-deprecating and has a general Vibe of isn't it weird that I own this company and here doing this buy it if you want I don't really care but in his movies it can be hard to care when the guy on screen doesn't seem to this is what broke six underground for me in a Michael Bay movie you need a lead who believes in the insanity of this world not someone looking around raising an eyebrow at it his best roles by far are Mississippi grind and Adventure Land where he's playing guys who Coast on their charm and Charisma and good looks and are revealed to be dishonest people who are pretty hollow inside and pretty shitty to those who get to know them it also means that he's a guy who you want to see put in tough situations where his charma can't get him out you want to see this guy struggle and so in Buried are no joke The Proposal he's surprisingly effective since he has to drop the smirk he plays frustration surprisingly well to prepare for this video I watched every single episode of the show Welcome to rexam and until 14 episodes in I could not tell if Reynolds genuinely cared or not every time there was another setback with the team I just expected him to go you know never mind I'm out I don't like this I do have to say the show is actually pretty good despite the occasional nagging feeling that this is maybe just branded content but one of the more satisf in developments over the course of the show is watching Reynolds gradually start to care in episode 7 of season 2 when he's almost reduced to tears watching the team play a match it's shocking to see him display this level of sincerity and vulnerability on screen and so after that whole diagnosis what should Reynolds do just do what like Tom Cruz did back in the 90s you're at this point now is the time to link up with exciting directors just go to your favorite filmmakers and say hey use me however you want but of course if he plays an unlikable character that might damage the brand consistency and hurt mint Mobile sales so alas that's probably off the table look I acknowledge that I am suggesting these guys should conform to an old-fashioned kind of movie stardom because at the end of the day I just have to admit I don't give a [ __ ] about mint mobile or teramana tequila I have zero interest in how much money they make from these companies I just want some of our last real movie stars to use that stardom to make some good movies but Patrick isn't it just that these guys saw where things were going that they're just the new kind of movie star yes novels I was getting to that God even when you're posing a decent question you're still stepping on my toes so yes maybe these guys saw the gradual collapse of Cinema coming and streaming eating everything and they decided hey what if we could be the first of a new breed the true 21st century celebrity a cross between actor and influencer and entrepreneur where a new movie will also promote their liquor brand and their marketing company will produce funny Instagram videos promoting both everything feeds into each other and these guys make hundreds of Millions ions of dollars look they seem to be happy their lives seem exhausting especially Johnson's but they seem to like what they're doing like Reynolds seems genuinely excited to be making funny TV commercials but still I just cannot imagine that 20 years from now these guys are going to look back proudly at Red notice or Rampage are hit man's wife's bodyguard but also in 20 years they'll both probably like own their own private countries so whatever they're fine maybe I'm just old-fashioned and out of touch and of course there is one other possibility that I have to mention one that I think is truly the case with some actors like John Travolta or Tom Holland maybe they just have bad taste like genuinely maybe they just happen to like bad movies and so the bad movies they're making is the stuff they would want to watch anyway it's possible Dwayne The Rock Johnson and Ryan RIPD Reynolds having bad taste but they're so darn funny no who cares what does them being funny have to do with anything well Patrick you yourself said they spent years cultivating their personas like a Master Chef working on their ultimate recipe maybe you just don't like the recipe you know not everyone has the same taste are you implying that I have bad taste no that's not what I was saying my God I hate this you spent this entire episode constantly cutting me off with bad opinions and undering all the points I've been trying to make well I just you just what oh no we better cut I spent 4 years studying Cinema studies at Oberland College in Ohio what kind of credentials do you have well I double majored in Classics and Behavioral Sciences at Brown and I have a master's in comparative literature from Colombia that seems impossible I didn't mean for you to get so upset I'm just trying to give the audience some laughs oopsies [ __ ] [Music] this Dave I'm done what's up Patrick I am slammed today Dave I swear to God if I have to work with that little turd for another minute I'm going to light him on Fire come on cisc and Eber argued all the time and they had one of the most popular shows and successful marriages in Hollywood cisin Ebert weren't married well not legally look the point is we got to get this guy off the show there must be another option so the reason we added Noels in the first place was to increase audience engagement if we were to give the audience something else to be excited about we wouldn't need novels anymore here's my pitch no no absolutely not I swore years ago never to do this again does a man's word mean nothing to you Dave nothing I have a better idea interesting how about [Music] hey guys what's this game we're playing it's fun hey naos can you give us like 5 minutes we're trying to negotiate something here of course hey Dave we still on for bowling tonight oh dude of course I'll see you there that guy can [Music] roll this is my final offer [ __ ] you I'll do [Music] it yes it's true the finale for the current season is coming next month and we made a huge 1960 Style TV holiday special it's got songs it's got special guests it's got shocking revelations and yes it has the thing that I swore I would never do again a video essay about Star Wars are we in it U yeah of course you guys are all right yeah okay you can move on look this has been a crazy year for the videos we went to India uh we had Mission impassible we made multiple featurelength videos we have a muppet in the cast now and this is like the culmination of all of that this might be and probably is the craziest thing that we've done all year and it's premiering in December exclusively on nebula so if you haven't join nebula now is the time because we wouldn't have been able to make this otherwise they gave us the budget to hire a set designer and build this big set which you will be seeing soon and if you use the link in the description to sign up it helps fund future projects like this because the point of nebula is to make the big ambitious stuff that we can't make on YouTube and available for a limited time only because it's the week of Black Friday we have lifetime memberships back again so you can sign up once and never have to pay again you're just set for life and the thing about lifetime memberships is that they go directly into funding new nebula Originals including the short film that I will be making next year so that's all for now the holiday special is coming I'm so excited about it we shot it last month and it's looking amazing can't wait for you all to see it and uh that's all hope you're having a lovely Thanksgiving [Music] bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Patrick (H) Willems

Views: 584,085

Keywords: patrick willems, patrickhwillems, patrick h willems

Id: j_6bscCG7OA

Length: 59min 25sec (3565 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 25 2023