Opinion | A Glen Powell summer in review
Graphic Credit: Braylan Enscoe
Movie stars are few and far between. There are necessary qualities one must bear to qualify. It is not enough to just have a naturally compelling on-screen quality, elusive, yet immediately felt, which already is so rare to have or muster. The sense that even when you’re seeing someone on-screen for the first time, it feels like they’ve been doing this for years and they’ll be doing it for years to come; that there was some predestined bond between them and the lens, as sure as the link between sunshine and a flower in bloom, as peanut butter and jelly.
Sure, it helps to have some taste to aid you in finding that next story, that next filmmaker to work with, but additionally, and perhaps most crucially, one must be hungry. And when I say hungry, I don’t mean trying to nail down the lead part in a Star Wars show but throwing yourself off a cliff to market your latest feature like your name’s Tom Cruise. This was a “Brat” summer, or so I’m told, but this was also a summer that acted as something of a coronation for our next great movie star in a confused movie landscape. Between facing tornadoes in “Twisters,” navigating a web of personalities in “Hit Man” and shotgunning beers at a Luke Combs concert with his co-stars, this was a Glen Powell summer — and to that, I say, about time.
In the days of old Hollywood, the major studios didn’t survive without the big names they had under contract —your Charlie Chaplins, your Katherine Hepburns…The last time I recall someone having a year like Powell has had — that moment where a star is born — was 2012, which cemented Channing Tatum and Jennifer Lawrence as big names. They each starred in three films and, within that wave of buzz, felt like they were here to stay. That year, Tatum had a comedy hit, “Magic Mike,” and a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. Lawrence had the first of four Hunger Games films under her belt, a soft horror hit and a Best Actress Academy Award, becoming one of the youngest Best Actress winners of all time. In fairness, in the time between that summer of 2012 and the present day, there was a pandemic that briefly took movie theaters out of commission, a cornucopia of streaming services sprouted, Marvel movies fully took root as the center of moviegoing and audience habits and tastes shifted. Just look at how movies led by Tatum and Lawrence have fared in the last two summers — far below that of their hits over a decade prior.
But as this summer of Powell proved, maybe audience tastes haven’t changed as much as one might think. People still want movie stars to anchor the narrative they go out to see or stream at home. Somewhere along the way between pumping out content on streaming services and ill-advised cinematic universes, studios just got scared and genuinely forgot to platform their stars. They got too good at selling toys and touting subscription numbers when the key to giving someone the star treatment is right there. In that same year where Tatum and Lawrence triumphed, Powell starred in one of the year’s greatest hits, the conclusion of one of the greatest trilogies of all time:“The Dark Knight Rises”…as ‘Trader #1,’ who just as quickly as he’s introduced is kidnapped by Bane and not seen again. That year, he also featured in a movie called “Stuck in Love,” credited as ‘Good Looking Frat Guy,’ and was in not one but two episodes of “NCIS.” Not exactly a slam dunk year.
Powell faced a conflict not far off from the one his character Gary Johnson faces in this summer’s “Hit Man”: how do you become more than you are and be the person you feel you’re supposed to be? How do you go from ‘Good Looking Frat Guy’ to someone remembered for far more than that? I feel like Powell’s roles have embodied this aim. In the back-to-basics disaster film delight that is “Twisters,” he presents himself initially as Tyler Owens, the obnoxious internet personality known as “The Tornado Wrangler.” He wins over Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) by shedding that exterior and empathizing with her traumatic experience with a tornado years earlier and professing his own passion for the feats of nature with which they’re preoccupied. Perhaps that is his great on-screen quality: his ability to flip the switch. To be this supernova of charisma and then become vulnerable, become human.
That flipping of the switch is nowhere more present than in Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man,” which he produced and wrote with Linklater, jumping off from a “Texas Monthly” article they both read years before. In the film, Powell and Linklater “flip the switch” by taking the oddity that is Gary Johnson, a professor who aided local law enforcement by pretending to be a hitman, and turning it into a noir-infused rom-com, equal parts quirky and thrilling. Within the movie, Powell puts on multiple hitman personas, all of whom his character crafts down to the finest detail. It’s when he meets the love of his life through his arrangement with the police department while being the deeply charismatic Ron, who’s too cool for school and too good to be true (because he is), that he gets in deep.
A meet-cute over a murder plot, the movie’s really good — go watch it! Powell has been able to win audiences over with such ease because, in many of his films, he’s trying to win over his co-stars and show them the totality of who he is rather than the first impression. In “Top Gun: Maverick,” how does the absurdly self-assured Hangman lose the ego, come back down to earth and perform a truly selfless act, in what is still one of the great movie moments of the 2020s (“This is your savior speaking”)? With “Anyone But You” (winning over Sydney Sweeney) and “Devotion” (winning over his fellow wingman once again), there’s a pattern. Showing the people around him and, by extension, audiences that there’s more to him than they previously thought.
One of the things that separates Powell from most movie stars is how active he seems in the development phase of the movies he’s a part of. Beyond his work on “Hit Man,” he got studio Black Label Media to option the book that would become “Devotion,” a story of friendship amidst the Korean War between pilots and came on board as a producer. He’ll be performing the same producer/writer double duty on his next project, “Chad Powers,” a TV show where he’ll be playing a disgraced quarterback who disguises himself as the titular character to reclaim his glory on the field (reclaiming glory via charm and defying reputation, not to mention some disguises a la “Hit Man,” sounds like a Powell project). A new study recently stated that only one-tenth of films released in theaters or on streaming between 2022 and 2026 were developed within the major studios, so it’s no wonder that to make a name for yourself here and now, one would have to have a knack for developing things on their own. Part of what makes Powell so easy to root for is knowing that he has so thoroughly put the time and work in to get to this moment of cultural ubiquity. In the span of a decade, Powell’s on-screen persona has gone from a ‘that guy’ to ‘the guy.
Inherently, it’s a movie’s job to make you invest, whether it be in a character, an idea or a world. A movie star faces a task even more daunting: they have to assist in that process of earning investment every time, no matter the character or the world, but the star and their stardom are their own idea. They must both mold that idea with every project they work on, in addition to finding how to subvert that image in ways both big (Tom Cruise in “Tropic Thunder”) and small (Tom Cruise in “Collateral”) to keep people coming back and to keep them invested. As a fan of the guy’s work, it’s very gratifying to see more and more people continuing to come back to see Powell’s name on the marquee, but more than that, Powell is bringing back the kinds of movies that felt like they’d lost their place in the movie landscape. “Twisters,” “Anyone But You” and the genres they’ve resurrected may not be rife with substance, but it is nevertheless a relief to have them back in the zeitgeist.
Something that I think will ensure Powell’s endurance on the big screen is his willingness to take chances. Most stars, after having the summer Powell had, would have “Twister 3” (or “Twist3rs,” “Twisterss,” “Twister³,” take your pick) and whatever the next Top Gun looks like ready to go. On the horizon for Powell, however, is a courtroom drama (“Monsanto”) with Laura Dern and Anthony Mackie, a remake of an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick (“The Running Man”) directed by Edgar Wright and a revenge thriller (“Huntington”) from A24. Will I see all of these? Yes, but they’re not sure things. They will all be tests of Powell’s star power and whether or not this enthusiasm for Powell (Glenthusiasm, if you will) can last more than a summer. Powell isn’t the only promising star to emerge in the last few years, but he’s certainly the first to have this outsized cultural impact. He’s on top of the world, and he’s still hungry. To me, that’s a damn movie star. One can only hope this is one of many Glen Powell summers to come.
