Why Is Channing Tatum Struggling This Summer 2024?

There was a time, back when American moviegoing first started to emerge from the pre-vaccine year of the pandemic, that Channing Tatum seemed to be one of our last true movie stars. After a series of Steven Soderbergh movies and smaller roles for directors like Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers, Tatum returned to cinemas with a cameo in the first “original”-ish hit of the post-vaccine summer, Free Guy, and co-starred with Sandra Bullock in the hit The Lost City. In between these hits came his truest test as a star in the movie Dog, which he co-directed and starred in mostly alongside a canine co-star, and which made a surprising $61 million domestically. While audiences do love dogs, plenty of highly anticipated sequels and Oscar hopefuls failed to achieve as much.

A few years on, it seems like another Year of Tatum is upon us. He’s starring in a romantic comedy with another star, and an actor-directed movie, and he has a cameo in another Ryan Reynolds-fronted summer blockbuster. However, this time something feels off. Fly Me to the Moon, his star-driven rom-com, completely bombed, and Blink Twice, his dark thriller directed by current romantic partner Zoë Kravitz, seems like it will do modest business at best. Surprisingly, the bright spot is what was expected to be an inside joke: Deadpool & Wolverine finally lets him play Gambit, the Cajun-accented mutant from the X-Men series, a role Tatum had been eyeing for years before Disney’s acquisition of Fox shut it down.

Tatum shines in Deadpool & Wolverine. He clearly enjoys dressing up as Gambit, even poking fun at himself with a mush-mouthed Cajun accent. It’s a classic Tatum performance, drawing on his physicality as a genuinely handsome and tough-looking guy while leaning into his goofy side. This blend fuels his previous roles in 21 Jump Street and Magic Mike. While he’s charming in Fly Me to the Moon, the movie’s gentleness doesn’t allow him to fully showcase his comedic or physical talents.

Then again, Magic Mike’s Last Dance wasn’t particularly successful either, despite featuring a familiar character in a new, old-fashioned storyline. Has the spotlight on Tatum dimmed? Have audiences moved on? Regardless of these questions, Tatum remains well-liked and respected. But perhaps there’s something else to consider, something connected to his role in Deadpool & Wolverine.

Over the past decade, there has been an endless series of cameo-trading among the biggest movie stars. In 2018, Deadpool 2 joked about its inability to afford bigger-name X-Men but still managed cameos from Matt Damon and Brad Pitt. Damon had previously appeared in Thor: Ragnarok. In 2019, the Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw featured extended cameos from Kevin Hart and Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds also appeared in the Chris Evans/Ana de Armas vehicle Ghosted and the Brad Pitt film Bullet Train, while Tatum did Free Guy. Pitt took a small part in The Lost City, and Damon appeared again in the next Thor movie.

Many of these surprise appearances are entertaining, showing a kind of humility while maintaining mystique. It’s a way of avoiding the expectation to star in a TV show. However, they also create a feeling of accessibility more akin to social media than cinema. These cameos resemble social-friendly, TikTok-length bites rather than full-on movie-star performances. Why would a movie with Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum even need Brad Pitt? Isn’t it like having Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese co-direct? Such star-studded cameos can come across as unnecessary, even if they occasionally produce something cool.

It feels particularly diminishing for Tatum to reduce his long-held Gambit dream to a supporting joke in a new Ryan Reynolds project. It’s almost as if the movie suggests that audiences don’t need to seek out Channing Tatum in other films, as big-ticket movies will eventually bring all stars together. With Dog, audiences realized the appeal of simply watching a movie star play a relatable character opposite a dog. This new trend of superstar cameos undermines that specialness, turning big stars into little more than branded cogs.

Source: Decider