I'm trying to think of any movie that truly moved the needle in terms of how certain genres are defined more than John Wick. You could point to the Marvel movies defining superhero flicks, I suppose, but I really think that pace was set with 2002's Spider-Man. Wick is a far more recent example of a genre-defining film. Even its bad entries are decent.
As such, it's difficult for other action movies to meet the quality that Wick provides. The moment Keanu Reeves shows up limping with a gun in his hand, you sit back and cram that popcorn in your mouth for a good solid hour-and-a-half with your brain turned off and confidence in your expectations being met rather high.
It's because of this that I feel bad for Jason Statham, who is your stereotypical action hero actor. Despite Statham being a fun guy to watch on screen, his acting style isn't exactly geared for anything deeper than growling clever lines with a Cockney accent before beating the holy hell out of faceless bad guys one, two, and three. Again, not to say Stathem isn't a welcome sight on screen, but I'm not pre-ordering tickets for his movie like I am with Reeves.
His new film, A Working Man, is pretty formulaic. I'll let the Critical Drinker tell you all about it, as I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on it personally.
Warning: coarse language
I trust Drinker's opinion quite a bit as I've rarely disagreed with him, so going off of what he's telling me, it's... a Statham movie. Not bad, not game-changing. It's an okay film that you won't necessarily regret stuffing yourself with popcorn and soda to, but you could miss it and not regret that either. It's only made more middling by the fact that John Wick films exist.
And yet, despite all of that... more people are showing up to watch a standard Statham movie than they did to watch Disney's latest live-action remake.
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, A Working Man has surpassed Disney's Snow White in box office earnings already:
Middle America is taking charge of the box office, where David Ayer’s blue-collar drama A Working Man beat Snow White in a surprise upset with a better-than-expected domestic opening of $15.2 million from 3,262 theaters.
Snow White took in $14.2 million from 4,200 locations, a steep decline of 66 percent as the live-action update continues be dogged by poor word-of-mouth and controversial headlines over its titular star, Rachel Zegler. The film’s domestic tally throughout Sunday is a muted $66.8 million domestically and $143.1 million globally.
THR seems to place the blame on "middle America" for Statham's flick taking the lead against a major Disney release, as if this was us striking back against Disney. It's not. The blow we struck against Disney was not going to see it... Although, I went and saw it, so you don't have to.
Don't let the data get by you. A Working Man was in almost a thousand fewer theaters than Snow White, and it still creamed it.
There are a lot of factors at play here, of course. Rachel Zegler is an insufferable person who drove audiences away long before the movie ever came out. Moreover, Disney's habit of making subpar live-action remakes of its far superior classics from the past was played out from the beginning.
But I think it's interesting that the movie that blew it away was something Disney would be horrified to display with their name on it. People showed up in greater numbers to see a masculine figure do masculine things on screen. It wasn't even a blockbuster film; it was just your standard action fare, and people still handed over their cash to watch it over a Disney flick.
I think it's pretty clear, at this point, what people want, and it's not the feminist nonsense modern cinema made the mistake of becoming subject to. They want masculine men kicking ass and taking names.
I can only imagine how this horrifies many in Hollywood, but the truth is that this is just how things are. They can try to recreate society all they want, but humanity knows itself deep down, and masculine men doing action-hero things will always be fun to watch for men and women... although for different reasons.
If Hollywood needed a heading after Snow White... there it is.
