Entertainment Geekly: Suddenly every movie franchise is about aging and dying.
Wasnt all bad, right?
Some of it was… pretty good?
Credit: Everett Collection; Lucasfilm
Han Solo,Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Time takes everybody out.
Rocky Balboa,Creed
I feel young.
Middle-aged Captain Kirk,Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
Dude, Im 35 years old.
If it hasnt happened already, it aint gonna happen.
One of the biggest critical-commercial successes of 2015 is about a 69-year-old widower who never sees his son.
Both movies are seventh in franchises older than Tom Hardy.
Everyone was young once.
When we met Han Solo, he was youthful and wild.
When we met Rocky Balboa, he had a brilliant career ahead of him.
Now theyre old, dying, dead.
Time takes everybody out.
Star Wars: The Force AwakensandCreedarent just about their aging stars.
Han and Rocky both meet surrogate children, played by attractive actors with the brightest possible futures.
(Rocky and Hanneedsurrogate children; their actual spawn wont speak to them.)
The central drama of both movies gets bifurcated along generational lines.
You could argue the real protagonists are Rey and Adonis on their journey towards self-realization.
But Han and Rockys journeys aim in stranger, more unsettling, less rah-rah direction.
Lots of people have pointed out howCreedturns Rocky into Mickey, howForce Awakensmakes Han the new Obi-Wan.
But we didnt have six movies demonstrating the ravages of time on Mickeys face.
And we didnt meet Young Obi-Wan Kenobi until long, long, long after we met Dead Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Han Solo and Rocky Balboa were never tragic figures, but thats how they feel inForce AwakensandCreed.
Their lives have not gone as planned.
Even if they did, surely this wasnt the plan.
Rocky is a Heavyweight Champion many times over.
Now, he spends his lonely mornings reading the newspaper to dead loved ones.
Han Solo saved the universe.
Now, hes running weird smuggling con games on the outer fringe of the galaxy.
They both stare Death in the face.
Does it matter if they survive?
Nobody does, in the end.
There have always been movie franchises.
Now, there are more movie franchises.
Lots of people point to the James Bond series as the model and the goal.
What studiowouldntwant a franchise that gets bigger when it turns 50?
Have you seen the first sixStar Trekmovies?
Are they still remotely essential viewing for everyone?
As actual standalone Movie movies, theyre a mixed bag.
Forced to choose, Id rankFirst Contactand the first AbramsStar Trekahead of almost all of them.
Almost, becauseWrath of Khanis the game-changer.
Maybe old is the wrong word.
William Shatner was in his early 50s, and the original script supposedly declares that Kirk is 49.
But Kirk feels old.
The movie starts with his birthday; Dr. McCoy gives him reading glasses.
How do I feel?
TheStar Trekfranchise was, weirdly, only 16 years old whenKhancame out.
(It turns 50 this year.)
But fromKhanonwards, the subtext of every story about Kirk changes radically.
When you watch the original series, hes a cool guy with a spaceship.
InWrath of Khan, hes a middle-aged man with a son who barely knows him.
That movie is terrible, but it has one of the all-time-greatStar Trekmoments.
Kirk inGenerations= Han Solo inForce Awakens= Rocky inCreed.
Weve always seen actors grow old onscreen.
Something new is happening, I think, in this weird and frustrating franchise moment.
But John Wayne inThe Shootistisnt literally the same character he played inStagecoach.
This isnt true of every franchise character.
TheMission: Impossiblemovies have gotten better as Tom Cruises Ethan Hunt has become a less real-human character.
(In the third movie, he has a wife.
By the fifth movie, someone calls him the Living Manifestation of Destiny.)
Its an infantile story arc for Daniel Craig, at 47 already hitting late-middle-age for Bond actors.)
The Bond movies only ever bring up Bonds age as a kind of meta-commentary on the franchise itself.
The first time we met Pierce Brosnan, M called him a sexist, misogynist dinosaur.
That dinosaur immediately saved the world.
Hes old, not obsolete.
InCreed, Sylvester Stallone mostly willingly submits himself and his most beloved character to the ravages of time.
It wants to believe that the Arnold archetype can live forever, can only get better.
Compare that toForce Awakens, which loves Han Solo so much that it has to kill him.
Actors age in strange ways.
Better than normal people: make-up, skincare, good lighting.
Or worse: unforgiving close-ups, ravages of a life lived hard, faces overlifted.
Usually, they pretend otherwise.
But you cant really pretend, when youre making a sixth sequel, that yourcharacterhasnt aged.
Age was, apparently, already part of the story ofFurious Sevenwhen the movie started filming.
Tragic circumstance refocusedFurious Sevenfurther in that direction.
By which I mean:Furious Sevenis a movie starring a dead man.
His death is never mentioned in the movie and his characterdoesntdie.
But the final sequence of the movie makes no sense in the context of the film.
Dominic Toretto races Brian OConner one last time, while Vin Diesel reads a final message to Paul Walker.
Its moving, I think.
I cried the first three times I saw it.
Even the weird and obvious CGI feels appropriate: It takes you out of the movie with apurpose.
It almost feels wrong to analyze that moment as craft, or art, or entertainment.
Yet it is all those things anda high-grossing entertainment, at that.
ReleasingFurious Sevencould have felt like a betrayal, or a larcenous cash-in.
I dont know anyone who felt like that.
It strikes me as more of a celebration: a post-religious kind of collective global wake.
And Im not sure any of these movies workjustbecause weve seen the characters age.
(Hell,Im not sureanythingworksabout Han Solo inForce Awakens.)
But it is a uniquely new experience.
you’re able to point to Paul Newmans Fast Eddie, aging fromThe HustlertoThe Color of Money.
You could argue that the central special effect of theHarry Potterfranchise was Time.
Im talking a lot about dudes, but this isntjusta guy thing.
Jamie Lee Curtis inHalloween H20feels like a shockingly accurate all-grown-up variation of a teenaged Final Girl.
There will soon be anotherBridget Jonesmovie.
Meanwhile, beyond the edge of reason, I find myself pining for anotherSex and the City.
The sequel had legendary problems, with What If They Went To Abu Dhabi?
being the most obvious and least offensive.
But the core origin myth ofSex and the Cityis positively postlapsarian.
(What happens when youre old enough to stop believing in romantic fairy tales?)
CantSex and the Cityhave its own Ryan Coogler?
Does Amy Schumer dream of directing?
Jennifer Lawrence prefers to age herself upwards, which makesThe Hunger Gamesfranchise a wildly successful outlier in her filmography.
Theyre more like the James Bond movies: Batman and Spider-Man dont grow old, they get replaced.
Ben Affleck is playing an older Batman, the same way Christian Bale was older inDark Knight Rises.
Who knows about this new movie?
InDark Knight Rises, Batman was only old so he could prove he wasnt obsolete.
What makesCreedwork is that Rockyisobsolete.
Ninjas, too, but theres an unmistakable darkening mood along the margins.
Again, Im willing to accept the argument that these movies find that mood by accident.
That note of melancholy pervades our franchises now, even the most lighthearted, even the most escapist.
Like, yeesh:Magic Mike XXL.
My agents got me doing YouTube videos now, man, Ken says, groaning.
He has a plan, kind of: Send my head shot around.
Hope for the best.
Theres a casting director comes around the club every now and then.
Ken isnt worried, not really.
Im still pretty, he says.
Look at these guys, says Mike, gesturing to their pals.
TheMagic Mikeguys are, like, 35.
But theyre in a sequel.
Theyve all become Kirk inWrath of Khan.
Maybe, in the end, we all become Kirk inWrath of Khan.
