So is Angelina Jolie finally over? The buck toothed big lipped actress has been dominating the entertainment industry for years, despite not really having delivered any major box office wins for quite sometime. In fact the last thing she was really successful in was Tomb Raider. Since then she's stunk up Clint Eastwood's The Changeling, tormented the life out of Brad Pitt until he began looking like the forth member of ZZ Top, and has done some successful cartoon voice over work such as Kung Fu Panda (she currently signed on to reprise her work in the up coming sequel). Oh yeah, and she has inspired inexhaustible sympathy for Jennifer Aniston.oh schmuck! bumbling idiot out does sexy bad ass
With the results from her latest (and lastest?) outing Salt in, it doesn't look good. Salt opened in the #2 spot trailing Leo DiCaprio's Inception. Inception dropped about 35% in box office returns from it's opening to it's second week but still managed to handily beat Salt by about 15 mill. Worse still, in Salt's second week out it was beaten down to 3rd place by Steve Carrell's Schmuck. Jolie was always prompted as the world's #1 movie star. Yet she's failed to deliver the kind of game changing performances from some one expected to carry a film.
Back in the old days Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson were Hollywood's top game changers, who could turn a decent film with a mediocre script into a no 1 with blockbuster box office returns. So far Jolie has failed to deliver like that. That means her career might be on the bubble, and she might not make it onto next years A List. To get front row center at the award show circuit every year you have to do something more than show up with Brad Pitt and a mystery bump in your belly!
The fact is that with an opening of 30 mill, or whatever Salt pulled in, the producers might have gotten as good results from the more affordable Milla Jovovich. Jovovich has managed to get #1 openings for most of her main films. A few of the Resident Evils had opening day results superior to Salt (one of them opened to 48 mill I believe). Even Ultraviolet took the #1 spot on it's opening weekend, & that was a film that even Milla fans described as 'shitty' (Which I thought was harsh. It was no worse a movie than the recent A Team.).
It's not really Jolie's fault. She's a case of the Peter Principle applied to show business. She was Hollywood's #1 supporting actress back in her Girl Interrupted & Gone in 60 Seconds days. She was good at it too. Given a strong cast and a good script she could add that little extra fire to make the project really memorable. Let's face it though, Jolie is at best a hood ornament, or a spark plug in the machine. She's not the main drive component that a Cruise, or a Gibson, was.
Yet Hollywood seemed to have bought into the sex sells theory and assumed that Jolie's magic vagina would pour out golden eggs until it finally dried up sometime int he distant future. They also narrowly defined her as an actress. They seemed to think she was only capable of playing sexy bad asses or sexy head cases. As a top supporting actress Jolie has the versatility to play a greater range of roles; maybe even romantic comedies. I could easily see her as the crazy vengeful ex, or the crazy clingy girlfriend. Why she might have even played the crazy lonely single girl looking fortrue love, or at least Mr Right! Those were chances she probably didn't get offered, since Hollywood seemed more interested in typecasting her out of a career.
So the powers that be are probably re accessing Jolie's bankability right now. She's got three more movies in the bag, but about three in development. Development means that they are less likely to ever get made as Jolie's star wanes. In comparison her nemesis Jennifer Aniston has 3 in the bag, and at least 5 in development.
It would be premature to say that the final credits are rolling on Jolie's career as a cartoonish over the top sex siren. She could probably tack another good 5 or 10 years onto her career. That would require some serious reassessment, and serious readjustment. For one thing she'd have to go back to what she does best - supporting roles. She'd also have to line up some serious projects. Then she'd have to have a strong cast to work with. Maybe even a sequel to Mr & Mrs Smith might put a little creditability back into her resume (though the idea of and rough and run down looking Pitt & Jolie reprising those roles after almost ten years of babies, tabloid rumors, etc might be more self parody then genuine sequel - along the lines of "what do two sex killers do after hitting middle age and getting worn out with each other? Did they burn out or can the turn the fizzle back into sizzle?"). Let's face it, even on the sex sells basis Jolie can't be expected to carry a movie by herself. Sex doesn't exist in isolation - by definition it needs something to play off of.
Milla: Get A Tomb Raider Performance at Resident Evil Prices!
