Luis Prada
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Daniel Dockery
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You've probably figured out that the people who hold the top positions in our world sometimes aren't the ones who deserve it. But oddly enough, this extends to movies. You'd be shocked by how often a lead character only has that job because they happen to be the face on the poster. In fact, lots of times you'd get a better, clearer story if the star was reduced to a side character ... or even cut entirely. For example ...
The leads in every Jurassic Park movie have been scientists whose love and curiosity for dinosaurs does not extend to cramming them in a zoo to have popcorn thrown at them by tourists. That's how it's supposed to work -- the protagonist in a story represents the crux of the central conflict. And then we get Chris Pratt's Owen Grady in the Jurassic World films.
He's a bad boy Velociraptor trainer who is only crucial to the story because he is played by Chris Pratt. Make no mistake, if it was anyone but Pratt, America's Cool Older Brother, the executives at Universal would've probably had his character be disemboweled in Act 2. By the logic that these films operate on, his basic character type -- glib, arrogant, macho -- is that of a villain. They didn't even give the character any kind of an expert background. ("What, and make him some kind of nerd?") They just say he was in the Navy before he trained raptors. That's it. Not "He was in the Navy and trained a deadly squadron of throat-slitting commando dolphins." He's just been on a boat before.
What's worse, all of his one-dimensional swashbuckling and wisecracking detracts from the arc of the female lead, Bryce Dallas Howard's Claire. Unlike Pratt, she plays a character with actual growth, going from a heartless executive to practically starting her own dinosaur PETA within 24 hours. The Big Bad of the series has always been greedy unethical corporate executives, so why not center the movie on the development of one who learns the error of her ways?
"Yeah, that's great, kid," says a studio exec, chomping on a cigar. "Listen: How about instead, and stay with me here, the Dinosaur Whisperer starts a dinosaur motorcycle gang? Your thing may be good storytelling, but mine will look badass on the poster. Which means I win."
Universal Pictures
As I write this, Arnold Schwarzenegger, at the age of 70, is filming his sixth Terminator movie in 35 years. That's how little confidence the studio has in this franchise working without him. A septuagenarian is going to be starring in a franchise in which his presence stopped making sense after the second movie (or if we're talking strict plot logic, the first).
His continued involvement would work if the Terminator movies were telling a story about a formerly ruthless killing machine (literally in this case) coming to terms with its violent past as it grows old and weary, like in Logan or the newest God Of War game. Instead, they're trying to hold the inevitability of age at bay while coming up with plot Band-Aids to explain it away. It's all just an elaborate way to obscure the truth about Schwarzenegger's involvement in the series. The T-800 is narratively useless and only there for brand recognition.
Look, I get that he was the star. Find another one. Within the structure of the story, John Connor, Sarah Connor, and Kyle Reese are the definitive protagonists. They propel the plots. They're the ones who should have the emotional growth. They're the ones who have something at stake. Schwarzenegger's Terminator is a glorified homicidal C-3PO. He is a talking gun. He only joins the good guys in the second film because he was programmed to. With another firmware upgrade, he'd have smashed John Connor's skull like a pumpkin. That's not a character arc.
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