What's the deal with...Owen Wilson being sidelined

What's the deal with...will be a series of post dealing with an aspect of pop culture (or life in general) that is perplexing me. I will try and analyze what the cause is and what a possible solution might be. This first post is dedicated to Mr. Owen Wilson.

His eyes pierce the soul

When I was in the sixth grade I saw a movie called Shanghai Knights. A year later I saw a film called Behind Enemy Lines. For a long time these were two of my favorite movies for one reason: Owen Wilson. he was and still is one of my favorite actors. Owen Wilson , Jason Statham, and Paul Rudd are my triumvirate of see in anything movie actors. I don't care how bad  critics trash a movie they appear in, I will go see it. But Owen Wilson is my number one.

After behind enemy lines, I watched his career continue to grow with a blockbuster role in Wedding Crashers. Soon after I discovered the films of Wes Anderson, and the pivotal roles he plays in those films. He is the all American sidekick, a man who lead any film as long as he has the right cast around him.

So it was distressing to me when I began to see the trailers for Wilson's new film Hall Pass that prominently featured Jason Sudeikis, and barely featured Wilson at all. Don't get me wrong, I think Sudeikis is hilarious, and I'm glad to see him getting a shot at a prominent role in a feature film. But I began to worry about what people thought was wrong with Owen Wilson, especially if he was, as I understood it, supposed to be the main character of the film. But I couldn't think of any specific reason that the studio would want to shy away from focusing the marketing around Wilson, I wrote it off as a fluke.

That is until I saw the new trailer for Cars 2, Pixar's latest endeavor. The new spot which aired during the Daytona 500 on Sunday, again puts Owen Wilson (Lightning MacQueen) in the background, instead choosing to focus on Michael Caine (in a new role as a British Intelligence...car...) and Larry the Cable Guy's Tow Mater. Again I found myself wondering why? What was it about Owen Wilson that was forcing him out of the spotlight of films that he was clearly the star of?

I started to back track and look at Wilson's filmography starting with Marley & Me, the first film he made after his suicide attempt. From there his film's leading up to Hall Pass were: Night at the Museum 2, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Marmaduke,  Marmaduke, How Do You Know, and Little Fockers. Night at the Museum 2 and Little Fockers both raked in a lot of cash at the box office, but Wilson was playing second fiddle to Ben Stiller in those films. In Fantastic Mr. Fox he has a minute voice role (although one involving some of the best lines in the film). Marmaduke was a critical and commercial failure as was How Do You Know. To find the last blockbuster hit Wilson was the star of you would have to go back to the first Cars, and to find the last live action film he was the star of that was a box office smash, you need to go all the way back to 2005 and Wedding Crashers.

Now we have an answer, since his suicide attempt in 2007 Wilson's stock in Hollywood has slowly been on the decline. Like the rest of the Frat-pack he's going to need to figure out how to adapt in Hollywood as he continues to age. At least I can take solace in the fact that he'll always have Wes Anderson.