Movie stardom is incredibly hard to achieve and even harder to maintain. Once an actor finds that breakthrough role, they are immediately challenged to give their fans what they want and also, depending on their level of ambition, to take on roles that will hopefully expand their range. (or at the very least will keep them from getting stuck in a creative rut). Some actors correctly recognize that their audience does not ask much for the difference (John Wayne is a perfect example of this), while others are determined to throw curveballs here and there (as Sylvester Stallone unwisely did with ill-received comedies like "Rhinestone" and "Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot"). Mess with expectations too much, and fans will stop trusting you to deliver.

Wayne and Stallone at least had a good movie routine to fall back on as needed to please their audience. Meanwhile, star like Ryan Gosling it has to be picture by picture because he made his way through the reviews before he connected commercially. For those of us who didn't know Gosling as the mouse guardian on The All New Mickey Mouse Club, he exploded out of nowhere in 2001 with his fiery portrayal of a Jewish skinhead in Henry Bean's The Believer. His first taste of Hollywood stardom arrived three years later when he heated up the nation's multiplexes opposite Rachel McAdams in The Notebook. From there, Gosling remained a critical favorite by taking on wildly different characters (think the gap between "Lars and the Real Girl" and "Drive"), while his more commercial efforts ("Gangster Squad" and "Pretty Boys") came up short at the box office.

After receiving a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his winningly goofy performance as Ken Greta Gerwig's mega-blockbuster Barbie. it seemed that Gosling had finally threaded that needle of commercial and critical adoration. Surely, from this point on, it could pay off. Not exactly. Or, actually, maybe. It all depends on how the industry wants to read The Fall Guy's late popularity.

According to FlixPatrol"The Fall Guy" is currently the most-watched movie on Amazon Prime Video since it debuted there last week. This puts it above two other box office players in Red One and The Creator and more conventionally successful films like The Equalizer 2 and A Quiet Place: Day One.

While "The Fall Guy" wasn't a commercial wipeout with its $181 million worldwide, it must have lost Universal a significant amount of money due to a budget estimated to be somewhere in the $125 million to $150 million range. Although critics generally liked the film (/Filmmaker Jacob Hall loved it), moviegoers just didn't flock to theaters for the action comedy that kicked off the 2024 summer movie season. Whether this is due to most viewers being unfamiliar with the television series it was based on ("The Fall Guy" ended its network run in 1986) or simply not in the mood for a stunt movie (in which case, shame on them), those box office numbers don't lie.

On the plus side, people who actually saw The Fall Guy enjoyed it theatrically (it got an A-Cinemascore), and there's no reason to believe it played any differently at home. I'm still shocked that it didn't initially work, but maybe mainstream audiences only turn up when Gosling plays a romantic lead or an incredibly handsome himbo. It's a bizarre place for one of the sexiest movie stars working today to find herself.