It was somewhat painful to basically shut this blog down for two months as I was unable to watch anything new in theaters (and I have no interest in anything on Netflix, before anyone brings that up). I had earlier posted, pre-coronavirus about how I was sure that I would not be watching as many movies in 2020 as I did last year, but apparently I didn't even know the half of it.
This post has been brewing in my mind since I first saw the trailer for the upcoming Christopher Nolan film
Tenet during the middle of our soon-to-end lockdown. The second trailer dropped, and I thought: I HAVE to write this post. The killing of George Floyd has raised a much more important conversation about racism, but since we're on the topic of representation, I figured this might still have some relevance in its own way.
To be direct,
Tenet looks amazing. I'm sure I have nothing to say that hasn't already been exclaimed in dozens of "reaction" videos on Youtube. The first trailer gave us a great tease as to what to look forward to, and the second trailer, while showing some pretty intense action sequences, also answered a few of the main questions that the first trailer provoked, most prominent of which being: what the heck is this movie even about?
Some people have been happy to note that this is the first time Christopher Nolan has cast an African-American in the lead of any of his movies, and in this case it happens to be his most ambitious, most expensive original movie to date.
I'm happy because more than just being a first for Nolan, this marks a first for the endangered species known as the original blockbuster movie.
It's the very first time in history that a big-budget, action science-fiction extravaganza NOT based on any preexisting intellectual property, NOT part of some huge franchise effort and directed by a top-flight director at the very top of his game, has featured in the lead role an African-American actor who is NOT a known box-office draw. In short, Nolan cast a black man in his movie for the simple reason that he believes the actor, John David Washington is right for the part, NOT because he is guaranteed to put more fannies in the currently empty seats at movie theaters.
Before anyone asserts that I'm making too big a deal of this and tries to cite big movies from the 1970s (the dawn of the blockbuster), 1980s, 1990s, 2000s or 2010s, let me save you the trouble as I have already given this quite a bit of thought. I'm going to list a series of action blockbusters starring black male leads and explain why they aren't anywhere near the milestone that
Tenet is. I'll name them in chronological order.
1)
Nighthawks (1981) - Billy Dee Williams played second fiddle to white Slyvester Stallone's police detective, and didn't even figure in the film's climax.
2)
48 Hours (1982) - Eddie Murphy co-starred in this with an older, more established white actor Nick Nolte.
3)
Beverly Hills Cop (1984) - Eddie Murphy, already a bit of a draw thanks to the success of
48 Hours, was only brought on board after white actors Mickey Rourke and Stallone passed on the role.
4)
The Golden Child (1986) - Eddie Murphy was already established as a box-office draw. Also, the director Michael Ritchie, while well-regarded, was not an A-lister.
5)
Lethal Weapon (1987) - Danny Glover spent the first of four films being sometimes co-lead and frequent second fiddle to Mel Gibson.
6)
Rising Sun (1993) - Wesley Snipes was a co-lead with Sean Connery in this Michael Crichton adaptation.
7)
Bad Boys (1995) - This was a relatively low-budget movie made by a then-fledgling Michael Bay. Will Smith had some clout as a television star and the success of this movie cemented it.
8)
Crimson Tide (1995) - Denzel Washington (
Tenet star John David Washington's dad) was an established star with an Oscar under his belt and a previous box-office hit,
The Pelican Brief, in which he had co-starred with Julia Roberts. Also this film was co-anchored by
French Connection star Gene Hackman. This would be the first of many action films that Washington and director Tony Scott of
Top Gun fame would do together.
9)
Se7en (1995) - Morgan Freeman was co-lead with then white-hot (pun intended) "it boy" Brad Pitt.
10)
Independence Day (1996) - Will Smith was part of a large ensemble cast that included Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum. Also, he already had some box-office clout following the success of
Bad Boys.
11)
Kiss the Girls (1997) - Morgan Freeman co-starred with Ashley Judd in this movie directed by young, relatively new director Gary Fleder.
12)
Men in Black (1997) - Again, Will Smith, by this time, already had some degree of box-office clout, and even then this film was co-anchored by
The Fugitive's Tommy Lee Jones, who got higher billing.
13)
Blade (1998) - The first ever Marvel-based movie to succeed, starring Wesley Snipes as the lead in a film directed by someone who had only ever directed music videos before that and whose most notable career achievement, arguably, is killing Sean Connery's career along with his own.
14)
Enemy of the State (1998...LOVE this movie by the way) - Will Smith was an established star at this point, and this was actually a role Tom Cruise, who had worked with Tony Scott in
Top Gun and
Days of Thunder refused.
15)
The Bone Collector (1999) - Denzel Washington starred as a paraplegic police investigator opposite up-and-comer Angelina Jolie.
16)
Training Day (2001) - More a drama than an action movie, this movie, for which Washington won his first leading-role Oscar, was directed by a then-young African-American Antoine Fuqua and actually featured Washington as the bad guy opposite white Ethan Hawke's rookie cop.
17)
Man on Fire (2004) - This was the second collaboration between certified box-office star Washington and Tony Scott.
18)
I, Robot (2004) - Again, Will Smith was already an established star, and a lot better-known than the director of the film Alex Proyas.
19)
I Am Legend (2007) - Will Smith was such a star he could even sell a movie where his co-star for most of the running time was a German Shepherd. He was and still is far, far better known than the director of the film.
20)
American Gangster (2007) - In this film which is more drama than action movie, Ridley Scott directed Denzel Washington opposite Russell Crowe.
21)
Hancock (2008) - Will Smith did the superhero thing without having to pay Marvel or DC any royalties. It was directed by the respected, but not exactly renowned Peter Berg.
22)
Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) - Scott and Washington collaborated again, this time bringing on board John Travolta as the antagonist.
23)
Unstoppable (2010) - This was another Scott/Washington collaboration, this time with up-and-comer (and white) Chris Pine.
24)
Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) - Dwayne Johnson (more often identified as Samoan than African-American, but who is definitely black) starred in the first of many hand-me-down franchise movies with b-list directors. B-LIST.
25)
Safe House (2012) - Established star Denzel Washington shared the screen with the younger (and white) Ryan Reynolds.
26)
Django Unchained (2012) - Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx played a freed slave who went on a killing spree in the antebellum South with the help of his (white) benefector played by Christoph Waltz in a film directed by Quentin Tarantino the highest profile director on this list.
27)
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) - Dwayne Johnson continued his franchise-inheriting tradition. Again, no A-list director in sight.
28)
After (shudder)
Earth (2013) - This was the film that almost killed Will Smith's career, directed by a then-over-the-hill M. Night Shyamalan.
29)
The Equalizer (2014) - Washington reunited with Fuqua for the first time since
Training Day.
30)
San Andreas (2015) - Dwayne Johnson sold a non-franchise movie, but without an A-list director or, appparently, much of a plot.
31)
Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015) - Disney's marketing department fooled everyone into thinking that the black ex-stormtooper Finn, played by John Boyega, was the lead of the movie. Spoiler alert: he wasn't.
32)
Suicide Squad (2016) - Will Smith's stock as an action star had dropped a bit, so he signed up for something connected to existing IP.
33)
The Magnificent Seven (2016) - Denzel Washington teamed up with Antoine Fuqua yet again, this time with an ensemble of actors that included Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke for a remake of the old Western starring Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen.
34)
Black Panther (2018) - Chadwick Boseman's Wakandan hero was part of the enormous Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the film was helmed by an up-and-coming African-American director, Ryan Coogler.
35)
Hobbes and Shaw (2019) - Dwayne Johnson, part of the
Fast and Furious ensemble since 2011, finally got his own spinoff movie, which he had to share with white Jason Statham, who actually started out as an antagonist in the series.
Now, tell me, how many of those action movies were directed by heavy-hitters of any of those eras like Steven Spielberg, Tobe Hooper, Ivan Reitman, Andrew Davis, Jan de Bont, James Cameron, John McTiernan, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, the Wachowski siblings, Stephen Soderbergh or Robert Zemeckis? How many of them featured a lone black actor as a lead? How many of them carried a budget of over $100 million or (gasp) $200 million? If I were to cut out the movies that didn't feature a black actor paired with a white one, including the most recent
Hobbs and Shaw, my list would basically be chopped in half. If I were to be really strict about my criteria, and revert to "original IP action film directed by a firmly established, A-list director with a relatively unknown black actor in the SOLE lead role" like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, that list would pretty much vanish.
Arguably (for me) the most notable figure here is Steven Spielberg, whose so-far unparalleled career success spans five decades and numerous blockbusters, who, for all his clout, has never directed a commercial action blockbuster with an African-American male in the lead role. He actually executive-produced the
Men in Black movies, but for some reason has never gotten around to directing an action film with an African-American as a lead. Even his most recent film,
Ready Player One, featured a white lead with a number of persons of color as his sidekicks in an awkward throwback to the 80s. I would honestly have figured that before anyone else, he would have broken that unfortunate streak.
Prior to
Black Panther grossing $1.3 billion at the global box-office the conventional wisdom was that action movies with African-American or otherwise black leads were strictly for niche audiences and didn't sell outside of the U.S. Spielberg is the kind of director who could have given a middle finger to that conventional wisdom, but has basically passed up the chance. For five decades. Is he a racist? No, I don't believe that for a second, nor do I claim to know what his thought process for choosing projects or actors is, but I will say this: of all the A-list directors I've named, he was the one I figured most likely to upset that status quo, and I was disappointed that he never did.
So let's get back to Nolan.
If there has ever been an heir apparent to Steven Spielberg's empire as a filmmaker it's Christopher Nolan, who first captivated audiences with his take on Batman in his
Dark Knight trilogy, but who has since established himself as equally, if not even more adept at producing fantastic original content, as he showed with films like
Inception and
Dunkirk, and to a lesser extent
Interstellar. Because he is able to produce both exhilarating and thought-provoking blockbusters without searing violence, he is far more accessible than Quentin Tarantino, whose revenge fantasy
Django Unchained with Jamie Foxx in the lead role is the closest any big-name director has come to making a movie like
Tenet, but which in my opinion still misses the mark as it misses quite a few of the criteria I mentioned.
Such is Nolan's influence and cultural footprint that the movies he makes, which come out every three or four years, are considered events just by virtue of having his name on them. He is now the main selling point of any movie he directs, like Spielberg once was, and he can choose whomever he wants to star as the lead in his movies. In the past, this has meant having "the pick of the litter" in terms of leading actors, like Leonardo diCarpio in
Inception and Matthew McConaughey in
Interstellar. Dunkirk showed, however, that he could sell a movie without any big names in the cast.
Given the critique, though, that he tended to put white people in leading roles, I personally never imagined him capable of putting a relatively unknown African-American actor in the lead role of his most expensive original film to date. Sure, Washington may be of distinguished parentage, but he's never anchored a big movie by himself and at the time of his casting his only major film credit was Spike Lee's
BlacKkKlansman. If anything, Washington's
BlacKkKlansman co-star, the Oscar-nominated Adam Driver, who also happened to be the breakout star of the new
Star Wars trilogy, would have seemed a more likely candidate for Nolan to cast as the lead, or even Washington's
Tenet co-star Robert Pattinson, who snagged the coveted Batman role yet, who, by the trailers, appears very much to be playing a supporting character in
Tenet.
Nolan's act of casting Washington basically takes the "conventional wisdom" and gives it a $200 million kick out the window. Was it inspired by the success of
Black Panther? Maybe, but that's not important. What's important is that arguably the most influential filmmaker of this generation has declared in no uncertain terms that he's willing to bet $200 million of a studio's money on a film that isn't based on a popular preexisting property with a person of color in the lead role, and given that both he and studio Warner Brothers have determined that this film will keep its theatrical release date even WITH the coronavirus pandemic now ongoing, they have basically doubled this film's ultimate cultural importance.
It's worth pointing out that the call for more representation in film, which has often derisively been described as the call to go "woke," eventually came about when people of color, whether black, yellow, red or anything other than white, realized after years of watching movies, that almost all of their larger-than-life, big screen heroes were mostly Caucasian males. This was exacerbated by the unfortunate fact of whitewashing (which is a whole other post in and of itself). It has admittedly metamorphosed into something a bit unwieldy, and has spawned some really unfortunate, rather hateful quips like "get woke, go broke" but at its heart it's simply a reaction to the fact that for decades, casting in movies has been grossly lopsided in favor of one race and one gender. Who knows, maybe if casting decisions like Nolan's had been made long ago by the likes of Spielberg and John McTiernan in the 80s and 90s, maybe we never would even have gotten turkeys like 2019's
Charlie's Angels, because people wouldn't have felt the need to push back so hard. Here's the thing; every race on earth deserves to have their own heroes on film.
I am under no delusion that John David Washington's casting in
Tenet will bring an end to the killing of black men by white cops or any other blatant or subtle form of racism.
Black Panther, with all its hundreds of millions and its Oscars, certainly didn't stop George Floyd from being murdered in the street, just as
Beverly Hills Cop did nothing to stop Rodney King from being beaten to a pulp.
The thing is, though, since they were first introduced over a hundred years ago, movies have formed part of our collective narrative as living beings. They reflect our cultural mores, and sometimes even shape them. Even as they mirror the meaner aspects of who we are, they are often aspirational, and the best of these stories can really stay with us. Now, especially, that the market for movies has really opened up with wider global releases and streaming platforms that make movies available to a much, much wider audience, it matters more than ever that movies speaking to a truly global audience reflect what that audience actually looks like. Considering how many people all around the world are able to watch Hollywood movies nowadays, having white male protagonists at the center of most of these stories just doesn't make sense anymore.
This was one thing I really liked about
Yesterday, a flawed but fun film that featured an Englishman of Indian descent in the lead role without batting an eyelid or making a big stink about his interracial romance with a white girl. It's a pity it had its share of problems that were completely unrelated to this casting, but at least they got that bit right.
Tenet stands to be a bigger deal than
Yesterday, as a major tentpole by the era's single most influential director. As unlikely as it sounds, it could herald a very significant change for the better in the way we tell our stories, and in a day and age starved for good news, that is a good thing.
