Hollywood has been fretting over the death of the movie star for nearly a decade now, and the fear is not unfounded: The golden era when the likes of Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and Denzel Washington could coax audiences to the cinema with sheer name recognition seems to be passing into memory without enough proper successors to take their places. For a while, franchise sequels, which produced a whole new group of leading men and women, appeared set to replace the classic star vehicle. Many of these works, however, are built around familiar characters, not the people portraying them; actors such as 'the Chrises' (Hemsworth, Evans, Pine, and Pratt) have at times struggled to maintain their commercial success outside of the popular intellectual property that launched them. Now the industry is in a bit of a strange no-man's-land. Once-reliable bets, such as established brands and genres, are floundering somewhat, and stars seem to matter less and less. But this moment feels...
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