In the last few years (ever since “Top Gun: Maverick”), Tom Cruise has often been hailed as The Last Movie Star. He’s certainly the gold standard, though it might be appropriate to add Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts to that category too. All three feel like The Last Movie Stars — though what I’m really saying, of course, is that they’re the last movie stars to come out of the monoculture. That’s why all three are monostars. It still feels like any one of them, in the right light, can own the screen and own the world. That’s baked into the karma of their presence. It’s what drives their larger-than-life quality.
\n\nAt the same time, it would be silly and backward to look at Tom and Brad and Julia and declare that the movie-star thing ends with them. Something ends with them. A certain kind of stardom. But that doesn’t mean that the movie star has gone away. They’re still being minted as we speak. Movie stars will probably never be as big as they used to be, but a new kind of star is rising from the ashes of our fragmented, niche-driven, post-romantic, postmodern world. And there is no…
Original source: https://variety.com/v/tv/