Robert Pattinson
From teen heartthrob to Hollywood superstar
Today marks the release of my number 1 most anticipated release of the year with Mickey 17. This movie also happens to star my favorite male actor, and second favorite actor (Emma Stone, you’re still numero uno) as the star of not 1, but 18 characters. That of course being Mr. Robert Pattinson, who has had one of the more strange careers throughout Hollywood the past 20 years. From being a teen heartthrob who had millions upon millions of girls showing up to his Twilight movies, to becoming a rebel and getting the “film bros” respect, to now kinda living in as Hannah Montana would say, the best of both worlds.
Most actors, even the biggest a-list stars have a ton of small, borderline extra roles on their filmography before getting that big break. Not Robert Pattinson as his first credited on screen appearance was in Harry Potter, how is that for coming out of the gate. While he certainly isn’t playing Harry, Hermione, or another Potter heavyweight, he does play a pretty central part to Goblet of Fire story. That was in 2005 and from there he didn’t really do much of anything until 2008, when he nagged the leading male role in Twilight.
I have had a few concussions over the years so my memory isn’t the greatest, but it is still good enough to remember being in middle school and all the girls at my school arguing over Team Edward (Pattinson) or Team Jacob (Taylor Lautner). Quality of the film series could be argued for days, but what can’t be argued is that the movies were highly successful films and launched Pattinson, Lautner, and leading lady Kristen Stewart into the stratosphere. Stewart was easily the most established of the three going into the series, but coming out of it, they were all probably atop most studios casting wish list.
Pattinson and Stewart for that matter each starred in some bigger studio fare movies during the rein of the Twilight saga. Another thing that professionally Pattinson and the rest of the cast had to deal with, was kind of being called shitty actors. Critics were ready to pick apart the performances and overall quality of the Twilight movies, and both leading men from the series, Pattinson and Lautner were pretty much universally declared bad actors. I think you see this happen a decent amount for these young actors who star in commercially successful but critically panned franchises. It also unfortunately I think gets these younger actors to resent these franchises they were apart of. I’m thinking about the likes of Shia LaBeouf, Hayden Christensen, Orlando Bloom, and a few others.
From that point, I really think you see these younger actors go one of two ways. The first is kind of the stay in the studio system, making big movies and capitalizing on the box office success that your movies have had. Orlando Bloom did this, where in a post Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings world, he tried to stay in business as an A-list star. The problem that I think he and others run into with this, is that once they have one bomb, studios are just ready to cast them aside, since Hollywood is such a what have you done for me lately business. And if you have performances, even in huge a-list projects that are, let’s say polarizing, and then some bombs post those a-list projects, you aren’t necessarily going to be able to fund a movie on your name alone.
The second option is where we saw Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart for that matter both go. And that was that they got kind of weird with it, while also trying to focus on working with auteur directors with distinct visions. In the first few years post Twilight, Pattinson would work with well respected directors like David Cronenberg, David Michǒd, Werner Herzog, James Gray, and Claire Denis. These are movies with modest size budgets at best, and a place where Pattinson, Stewart or whoever could really go and just work on their craft, and what kind of actor they want to be. It is less about making money and having a studio tell you what to wear, what to eat, or even who to date. And much more about finding some work that an actor would just find meaningful and exciting. Now people like Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have the distinct advantage when choosing this path coming post Twilight where money isn’t really a huge concern after the checks they were cashing making those.
But I think during this 5 year period or so for both, more so Pattinson, as Stewart had that background of critically acclaimed work prior to Twilight, but they began to be thought of in a different light. I think the moment where it really changed for Pattinson was with the Safdie brothers breakout film Good Time. That movie, although still an indie like the movies he had been doing, really broke out from just the indie audience, to a more wider general audience. Not on the same level that went to see him in Twilight, but I remember that being the first movie I saw of Robert Pattinson in this new era of career choices that made me go, damn this guy is a really good and interesting actor. A few years after that he kind of repeated the indie level, somewhat mainstream success with the film, The Lighthouse. Which is a much, much weirder film than Good Time, but once again got people going, ok, Robert Pattinson is actually a really good actor. Both of these movies Pattinson was working with younger filmmakers as well, which is certainly risky yes. But I think something valuable of working with people like this is their enthusiasm to make movies. Look at The Safdie’s, they totally re-invigorated Adam Sandlers career and outlook on projects post Uncut Gems.
The Lighthouse came out in 2019 at the Cannes film festival, where two more interesting things happened to Pattinson around the same time period. First he got the co-lead part in Christopher Nolan’s movie Tenet at the time, and then maybe it was the Nolan touch, but landed the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman. It doesn’t get much more dude culture than a Nolan movie and Batman, so all the barstool type guys who I’m sure were more than happy to shit on him 10 years prior for Twilight, were now guys who probably had Robert Pattinson posters hanging in their gym locker. So he was able to turn the haters into fans, which is impressive. They say the number one movie star quality for male actors is someone who girls wanna be with, and guys wanna be.
Tenet came out during the Covid pandemic, so it’s tough to say how it plays out in a non-Covid world, but at least to date is probably Nolan’s least successful movie. But it is still the chance to work with Christopher Nolan, which any person the planet should do without hesitation if asked. Also on that set Pattinson gave Nolan the idea to make Oppenheimer so that is pretty cool. They must’ve really gotten along too, as Pattinson was recently cast in Nolan’s next movie, The Odyssey.
As for Batman, I would say The Batman was a very well received movie, maybe not the heights of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, but a good start to his portrayal of the caped crusader. A little bit of a bummer that they still have not started shooting the second movie yet, especially since the first came out over three years ago now. But that is another thing that he still has to fall back on.
Of course, starring in Christopher Nolan movies and one of the biggest franchises out there hasn’t deterred Pattinson from starring in auteur driven cinema. This year he has movies coming out with Bong Joon-ho and Lynne Ramsey. Ramsey’s is more independent so the pressure isn’t really on for that to perform financially but the same couldn’t be said for Mickey 17 and his collaboration with Bong. The rumored cost for the movie is anywhere in between 80-150 million dollars before P&A. So the pressure is going to be on for Robert Pattinson to prove his star power and get this thing to at least break even for Warner Brothers. I am certainly excited to see the movie, but I have a hard time imagining it gets there, but at least from a quality standpoint, the movie appears to be a win (currently at 89% on Rotten Tomatoes). But as opposed to someone like Orlando Bloom who we looked at above, if it does fail, Pattinson has a track record of well received movies and performances to fall back on. So someone like the next Safdie brothers or Robert Eggers isn’t going to hesitate to call.
Not sure when I will be able to do one of these articles for Kristen Stewart, but since she is so connected to Pattinson career, I want to point out that in the past few years she scored her first Oscar nomination and is set to make her directorial debut, amongst other cool achievements. So it is cool to see them both succeed because as discussed Rob is one of my favorite actors but so is Kristen. But the main point of this article was just to explore the right way to build a career when you are so young, and so on top of the world. I think conventional wisdom would be to stay on top of the mountain as long as you can, but sometimes you gotta take a step or two backwards in order to take more steps forward. It feels weird calling getting to work with someone like David Cronenberg (which they both did) a step backwards, but to the general public, I am sure in the mid to late 2010’s it was like “where is Robert Pattinson”.
But now Pattinson stands as one of the go to actors of his generation. Taylor Lautner seems to have a podcast and a pretty cool life, but the two actors certainly seemed to go in opposite directions post Twilight. It all really is a game of luck I guess, because maybe there is a world where Grown Ups 2 is the movie of the 2010’s and it kick starts Lautner post Twilight career, but I would say if I was advising a younger actor I would say go the way of Pattinson or Stewart. It might not make you a lot of money, but guess what? No kids in their 20’s have a lot of money, they are all in college just having a good time and trying to get by. It will be interesting to see what the kids from Stranger Things decide to do post Stranger Things when it wraps at the end of the year.
It isn’t just young actors either, as a bunch of actors just saw a huge career bump from Oscar wins and nominations. The same exercise could be done and look at good and bad post Oscar career choicesWhat will be the projects they decide to do post critically acclaimed role? If you are still reading to this point, THANK YOU! Who is a young actor who you were most surprised with their work post young superstardom? And if you go see Mickey 17, let me know down below what your thoughts were. Until next time!!