Gerard Butler looks like somebody's scared grandfather

It's now been two weeks since I've been out to the movies, and since I haven't found much of interest on the streamers either, it's been eight days since I posted a review to ReelGood. That'll probably change in the next few days as I try to make it out to see Top Gun: Maverick.

As I was checking showtimes, I found this action craptacular playing in local cinemas. (Sorry, I should not make snap judgments ... ha.)

Is it just me, or does Gerard Butler look like ... well, you've read the title of this post.

Butler is only 52, which is plenty old to be a grandfather, but a lot younger than some other actors who still make credible appearances in action movies. He's not even married, so if he is a grandfather, it would be of the illegitimate persuasion.

This, then, must just be a really unflattering photo.

The sunken eyes, the gaunt and elderly cheek bones and jaw ... he looks more like someone who is making a break from the nursing home, his pockets filled with individually wrapped biscuits, than a man who will "stop at nothing to get her back" -- which describes just about every action movie ever made where somebody's wife or daughter is kidnapped. 

I was hoping to get a quick peek to see if that's the plot of this particular movie, but Last Seen Alive does not even have its own Wikipedia page yet. The film is listed on Butler's filmography, but it has no link. It's rather a miracle, I'd think, that it is even playing in cinemas, seeing as how a straight-to-Redbox fate seems far more likely.

Go after her, Grandpa. And let's hope, in your frail and haunted condition, this is not the last time we see you alive. 

The reigning king of shit

Is there any greater guarantee that a movie will be terrible than the fact that Gerard Butler is in it?

I was confronted by this realization yesterday standing in front of a Hoyts kiosk, about to rent Gods of Egypt, knowing it would be terrible but hoping that the terribleness would transcend. It's not the first time I've had this realization, but it was the most convincing, as Gerard Butler's mug was also staring out at me from advertisements for London Has Fallen.

Now, I haven't seen London Has Fallen. Assuming it's terrible is not fair. But I feel like it is a safe assumption nonetheless. And having now seen Gods of Egypt, I have evidence to support those assumptions of terribleness.

I've actually ranted about Butler on this blog before. But while that was a "what went wrong?" post, and was a full three-and-a-half years ago, it's time for both and update and for something more directly damning of this man.

Gerard Butler has either the worst agent or the best. Worst because of the types of roles he's getting him. Best because he's still getting him roles at all.

Because I wrote about Butler's terrible career back in December of 2012, and fully covered off everything to that point, let's focus just on the years since then, shall we?

It's not as many movies as you think, as Butler actually took 2015 off (or at least did not have any movies that happened to be timed for release that year). At least he hasn't gone the "six movies a year" route of Nic Cage yet.

But in his very next movie after Playing for Keeps, the news peg for my last post, he made the execrable Movie 43. Now granted, that omnibus movie had about 30 other stars who should have known better (most notably Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet), but Butler deserves a special dose of the blame as his killer leprechaun is what I think of when I remind myself why that movie is so bad.

Then he made Olympus Has Fallen, another movie I am assuming to be terrible (for some reason I've seen none of the "Has Fallen" movies, nor White House Down), and How to Train Your Dragon 2, again providing the exception to the Butler Rule of Shit when only his voice is present.

Which brings us to our two 2016 movies.

The intervening years don't offer any newly compelling evidence of why he is so bad, but they also don't provide any offsetting evidence of him pulling himself out of a career-long tailspin. Now I guess I'm starting to get angry about it. I guess you shouldn't have had two sub-par schlockfests in the Hoyts kiosk at the same time, Gerard.

At least he hasn't made a lame romantic comedy since then. That's something.

And how bad is Gods of Egypt? So bad that the internet has already done a plenty good job delineating it, and I don't need to go repeating the things others have already said so well. Besides, I don't want to be confused for one of the "diseased vultures pecking at the bones of a dying carcass" -- which was the way director Alex Proyas described the critics who hated Gods of Egypt.

Besides, I'm not here today to launch into a diatribe about Gods of Egypt. Today, I've got my sights focused squarely on Butler.

Even the titles of his upcoming releases suggest the end is not in sight. Without clicking on their links on IMDB to see if any reputable talent is involved, I'm instinctively wary of Hunter Killer, Den of Thieves, The Headhunter's Calling and Geostorm.

I'm not wary because of their titles, though they don't help.

I'm wary because of Butler.

At least after that he's got another respite from his Rule of Shit with How to Train Your Dragon 3.

Is this really what Gerard Butler wanted?

Gerard Butler was a person of substance at one point. I'm sure of it.

In fact, the way I first learned his name was watching Joel Schumacher's 2004 adaptation of Phantom of the Opera. Back then I guess they didn't understand the potential appeal of Butler's face, because it spent the whole movie concealed under the phantom's mask. And there may be no character in cinema who takes himself more seriously and has less of a sense of humor than that titular phantom.

But since then? It seems like Butler is trying to emulate the career of Matthew McConaughey more than the career of Hugh Jackman, which should seem the model for a tough, handsome, charming guy who can also sing.

Then again, maybe not even that, as McConaughey has tried to remake himself in the past year with a number of daring roles, while Butler is still stuck in that Playing for Keeps phase that McConaughey has been trying to shrug off.

Playing for Keeps may be a fine movie, but just one look at this poster tells me it it's what I have referred to in the past as "this year's Nancy Meyers movie." (See here for a fuller discussion of this phenomenon.) That poster is not a poster, really. It's a poster template. If you have a romantic comedy with heart that you're releasing during the holiday season, just swap out the title and the head shots of your cast, and blammo, you're ready to go with the next one. In fact, note how similar this poster is to the one for How Do You Know?, which was the inspiration for the linked post about Nancy Meyers. Even down to the stars appearing in squares with different-colored backgrounds.

Also, that title? It's quintessentially bland, and interchangeable with any number of other titles in this genre.

It seems all too easy these days for Butler to take a role like this.

Most people first became aware of Butler from 300, when his iconic shouting and sculpted pecs seemed to destine him for a career comprised of logical offshoots of this film. So I suppose it's to his credit that he hasn't been quite that predictable. I only wish it was good unpredictable rather than bad unpredictable.

Butler's next prominent film was the one that I believe set him off on the wrong track. He made the truly bizarre romantic drama P.S. I Love You, which went back and forth between sickeningly sweet and oddly depressing, as it features a grieving woman (Hilary Swank) going on this intricate gauntlet of self-actualization tasks set up by her dead husband (Butler) while he was dying of cancer. The tone of this movie is all over the place, including a ten-minute argument at the beginning of the movie that's the only scene we actually see between Butler and Swank while he's still alive. Then the rest of this movie is this syrupy succession of cheesy life lessons punctuated by strangely misplaced jokes. I hated it.

In 2008 Butler made at least one good decision, Nim's Island, a kids movie with a ton of heart. I don't know whether RocknRolla was a good decision or not, because I didn't see it. But at least it wasn't a squishy romantic movie.

But 2009 saw him come out with The Ugly Truth, which is the very worst kind of romantic comedy -- a Katherine Heigl romantic comedy. I will grudgingly admit that I liked the first half of the movie, before it went into a tailspin in the second. He finished off 2009 with two truly abysmal movies that both featured the physical Butler, Gamer and Law Abiding Citizen.

In 2010 he was back to a light and fluffy romantic comedy in the form of The Bounty Hunter, which I will also admit had its share of enjoyable moments (while being mediocre at best overall). That year he also provided a voice for How to Train Your Dragon (his voice being one of his most distinctive assets). The following year brought Machine Gun Preacher and Coriolanus (neither of which I've seen, but at least Coriolanus is Shakespeare), and his only other film since then was October's Chasing Mavericks.

Now that I've performed a career recap that you could have easily gotten on IMDB (which is, in fact, where I did get it), I realize that I'm really only talking about four movies when I complain about Butler's tendency toward undemanding romantic dramas/comedies: P.S. I Love You, The Ugly Truth, The Bounty Hunter and now Playing for Keeps. But that's three more than Jackman has made (Kate & Leopold), though still fewer than McConaughey.

Okay okay, Jackman also made Someone Like You in the same year as Kate & Leopold. But this was only one year after Jackman made his splash in X-Men, and it's fair to say he was just taking the opportunities that came to him, glad to be a Hollywood commodity. Butler should be past that phase now.

But maybe the person I should be blaming is Butler's agent. Butler's agent hasn't gotten him a hit in any of the movies Butler has selected since 300, except for How To Train Your Dragon, though the success of that film can hardly be attributed to Butler in any meaningful way. 

But maybe I really just shouldn't be comparing Butler to someone like Hugh Jackman. Yeah, both men can sing, but Butler hasn't done it since Phantom, so it hardly seems like that was the way he intended his career to go. And it's hard to compare anyone to one of the breakout stars of the past decade, which I think we can say Jackman is.

I suppose if Butler just ends up as a Scottish McConaughey, there are worse careers he could have.

And that means that sometime in 2017 or 2018, we should expect to see him start playing the roles that McConaughey has been playing in 2012.

"So that's how they ..."

Movies can do an excellent job explaining the tabloids.

If you're like me, you see in the tabloids that Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler are dating, and you think, "Huh. Wonder how they met? Was it at a convention for actors who can't buy a hit?"

Then you start seeing advertisements for movies like The Bounty Hunter, and you think, "Ohhhhh, so that's how they started dating."

Sure, if I'd read the actual story in the tabloids -- at least the first one that broke the dating rumors -- it would probably mention "on the set of The Bounty Hunter." Or if I actively sought out news about which projects have just started shooting, in the trades or entertainment websites, I might have known they were working together on a movie. But I waste (shameful use of the word "waste") enough of the rest of my time on movie-related things, so I generally wait to be surprised by all the dumb little romantic comedies coming out, just like the rest of the public.

And The Bounty Hunter isn't my only recent "Ohhhhh" moment. When my wife and I saw Valentine's Day (see here for the circumstances of that shameful viewing), I had the great mystery solved of how the two Taylors started dating. Shoehorned briefly into the movie just to put teenage asses in the seats -- and I mean they have less than no plot in this movie -- Taylor Lautner and Taylor Swift have a couple scenes that involve them making out pretty heavily. Now, actors of all ages seem to fall in love while working on movies together, so it must be even more confusing to pretend kiss for people who are actually still hormone-crazy teenagers.

In both of the examples above, it didn't last. All the principles in question are probably seeing other people by now. Let's just hope it's not too awkward when the natural period of gestation passes between filming and theatrical release, and you have to sit next to these people on press junkets for four to six weeks to promote the film. (Talk about ex-games.) That was the benefit for those of us who struck up romances during the high school musical -- when the show ended, the only way you had to interact with that person was passing them in the hallway.

(Okay, correct that last paragraph. I've read different things in different places about Aniston and Butler, now that I'm actually researching it. In some places, Aniston denies she and Butler are dating, which means they probably are; in others, they were starting a relationship but Butler cheated on her, and now he's banned from her circle of friends. Since this information is so necessarily ever-changing, based almost exclusively on unreliable gossip, and since it's better for the point of this post that they're no longer an item, I'm going with that from here on out.)

Of course, sometimes they do last. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are still going (not so) strong, five years after the completion of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I don't remember in that instance whether the arrival of the movie explained their relationship, or whether the relationship didn't go public until after the movie. Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas are still married, 15 years after Two Much was not enough for them -- and that movie wouldn't be known by anybody if it hadn't been the place where they fell in love. And then there's Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, who were married in February of 1958 after working together on The Long, Hot Summer, and had a 50-year marriage that ended only with his death.

More often, though, they're like Gerard and Jennifer. As unlucky in love as they're unlucky at the movies.