Did Michael Keaton kill the 80's action hero

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I've heard in interviews that Sylvester Stallone said that once they put Keaton in a suit with muscles added into it, that was a death nail in his career knowing that an ordinary guy could be put in a suit with muscles and play an action star. Now we know this is questionable because Sly saved his magnum opus for Demolition Man but this seems a fair question to ask, Was he right or wrong in saying Batman was the death of the 80's action star?



Good question.

I'm inclined to disagree, if only because you'd think a power fantasy would benefit more from seeming like an ordinary guy could inhabit those kinds of roles.

I also think it's really easy to look at what happens to be the last example of something and conclude that it's the reason the thing ended, even though maybe it was ending already and something had to be last.



I think people got tired of 80’s action heroes and moved on to 90’s-style action like The Matrix. Kind of like 80’s stadium rock getting replaced by alt rock.

As The Rock and Momoa have shown us, there’s always a place for big beefy action stars.



Yeah disagree as well.
Both Stallone and Arnie carried on the muscles-out thing for years after 1989.

I think the only thing Batman did when it comes to heroes, is maybe change-up the spandex clad superhero to something more akin to the armoured, practical suit that came afterward.

If anything, I'd say it was Die Hard that ended the brainless explosions carried out by the body-building infallible hero on an endless march of victory.
McClane is the everyman, who gets hurt, feels fear, bleeds, and can even be killed.
That being said, the 80s style infallible action hero did make a comeback in the most recent Die Hard sequels where McClane somehow rides on the back of a jet plane, then survives both the crash and the ensuing jet fuel explosion... and can also somehow be thrown by a helicopter through plate glass at 200mph... and suffers nothing but having to ninja-roll his way out of it.



I think people got tired of 80’s action heroes and moved on to 90’s-style action like The Matrix. Kind of like 80’s stadium rock getting replaced by alt rock....
Well said...it's just changing taste over time...and like you also mentioned there's The Rock.



Die Hard was not a deviation from 80s action template. Sorry not going for that. As for The Rock, don't agree with that one either. Never bought him as an industry level star, like Sly and Arnold.



The trick is not minding
Hong Kong did it first, with their heroic blood shed films. Their action films were obviously different, using gun fu style combat, rather than martial arts. These heroes looked nothing like Arnold or Sylvester, but more like Keaton and Willis. That is, less muscles, more agility.

Now, Batman is nothing like heroic bloodshed films, obviously, but Diehard takes a lot of inspiration from it. And it showed actions stars didn’t have to be martial artists (in Hong Kong’s industry) or muscular (in Us industry).

Eventually, the US started to turn back towards martial artists at the end of the 1980’s with JCVD and Seagal, and neither looked particularly muscular, either. Maybe it had more to do with with their emergence then anything else.



JCVD was pretty ripped back in the day. Maybe not so much as Arnold and Sly tho.



The same could be said of Peter Weller (as of Keaton).
He was a skinny guy who got famous as an action hero by wearing a suit. Granted, it was only for two movies (but same for Keaton). And while Robocop was a new franchise compared to the decades-old Batman, he still made quite an impact on 80's cinema.



The 80s offered steroidal-stuffing of human skin with chemically enhanced meat as a new aesthetic. This change was downstream of trends in body building in earlier decades (and the chemicals that made the new mass monsters possible). This was a BIG cultural "blip" that resulted in smaller cultural wave. We are much more advanced now as a culture and are more worried with stuffing implants into our asses to meet the Mix-a-Lot Ratio of big-buttness. Ever since, there has always been a role for the "tank" body, but the dominance faded with our interest in the new curiosity.



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Rock 'The Dwayne' Johnson seems to be doing ok
Eh, that's debatable. He's never really had any iconic characters or classic films of his own compared to the likes of Sly or Arnold (what is his most famous role? Hobbs? Maui from Moana? The guy from Jumanji?) and his tendency to piggyback on existing franchises because he doesn't seem capable of kickstarting one on his own really did hit critical mass with Black Adam, where his attempt to hype himself up as an instantly-classic addition to the DC movies fell apart since the film wasn't good and it under-performed at the box office. No idea where he goes from there, but he's already the same age that Arnold was when he did Batman and Robin so we'll see if he really will do okay after this.

Die Hard was not a deviation from 80s action template. Sorry not going for that. As for The Rock, don't agree with that one either. Never bought him as an industry level star, like Sly and Arnold.
Maybe the bare-bones plot sounds like boilerplate '80s action on paper but the film's actual execution clearly takes great pains to distinguish itself from the likes of Commando. Just try to imagine the exact same film - every line, every shot - but with Schwarzenegger instead of Willis. Maybe it would be fine, but it wouldn't be the classic Die Hard that everyone fell in love with and so much of that is because it puts a comparatively ordinary person at the heart of things instead of an impossibly cut bodybuilder (to say nothing of the difference in acting ranges).
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Eh, that's debatable. He's never really had any iconic characters or classic films of his own compared to the likes of Sly or Arnold (what is his most famous role? Hobbs? Maui from Moana? The guy from Jumanji?)
The statement from the OP was "once they put Keaton in a suit with muscles added into it, that was a death nail in (Stallone's) career".

Dwayne Johnson has a massed a huge fortune in Hollywood. I'd say he's had a pretty good career, rendering Stallone's point absolutely invalid.



The same could be said of Peter Weller (as of Keaton).
He was a skinny guy who got famous as an action hero by wearing a suit. Granted, it was only for two movies (but same for Keaton). And while Robocop was a new franchise compared to the decades-old Batman, he still made quite an impact on 80's cinema.
To be honest though they needed a skinny actor in the RoboCop suit because initially they wanted Arnie, but Rob Bottin told them there was no way on earth they could build a suit for someone as big as Arnie and not have it look like the Pillsbury Doughboy.
Plus, Weller had martial arts training and worked with mime artist Moni Yakim.

This was why Verhoeven and Arnie teamed up on Total Recall instead (at Arnie's request)... and why Ironside was cast in Total Recall as well because he was another actor that Verhoeven had considered for the role of RoboCop, but again, Ironside was too large framed for a clunky suit.



You ready? You look ready.
Rock 'The Dwayne' Johnson seems to be doing ok
He might be doing ok financially, but his acting and role choices leaves a lot to be desired. Dude kinda has a messiah complex and it shows.



He might be doing ok financially, but his acting and role choices leaves a lot to be desired. Dude kinda has a messiah complex and it shows.
That's the point though isn't it. The guy landed huge films that make billions because of his physique. If Dwayne Johnson had the same acting skills but the physique of a twig, he'd have no career. Rendering Stallone's point invalid.



That's the point though isn't it. The guy landed huge films that make billions because of his physique. If Dwayne Johnson had the same acting skills but the physique of a twig, he'd have no career. Rendering Stallone's point invalid.
To be honest, the 80s were not a jacked as Stallone remembers. Harrison Ford was one of the leading action stars. Mel Gibson was an action star. Kurt Russell was an action star. Eddie Murphy was an action star. The 80s were certainly interested in muscular hypertrophy (Mark Hamil once joke that Luke was on steroids when he saw one of his figurines) and that interest has decreased a bit, but the 80s (in terms of the battle of the bulge was dominated by a handful of super-jacked dudes, and really only two at the tippy-top (Arnold and Sly).



The Rock was not just hired for his figure, but for his following. He is not an actor the Broadway sense of the word, but he is charismatic. He has an accessible ethnicity. Just as SNL has been an entry point for comedians into film, pro-wrestling has been an entry point for giants like The Rock and John "The Manchurian Apologist" Cena.




The Rock was not just hired for his figure, but for his following. He is not an actor the Broadway sense of the word, but he is charismatic. He has an accessible ethnicity. Just as SNL has been an entry point for comedians into film, pro-wrestling has been an entry point for giants like The Rock and John "The Manchurian Apologist" Cena.
I'll take your word for it, as I've never seen a film with either in and don't even know who John Cena is.



You have to have a stage presence to be a WWE guy, The Rock has always had a kind of charm that translates well into the kinds of roles he plays. If anything, I’m surprised more of those guys haven’t jumped from wrestling to cheesy action movies.