譯/李京倫
好萊塢巨星抱團正流行
Last December, Netflix began streaming "Don't Look Up," a big-budget satire starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Tyler Perry, Ariana Grande, Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett and Timothée Chalamet.
去年12月，Netflix開始播放高預算諷刺劇「千萬別抬頭」，主演者包括李奧納多迪卡皮歐、珍妮佛勞倫斯、泰勒派瑞、亞莉安娜、喬納希爾、梅莉史翠普、凱特布蘭琪和提摩西夏勒梅。
One star playing Spider-Man? How quaint. "Spider-Man: No Way Home," has three A-listers in Spidey spandex: Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire. About 43% of opening-weekend viewers in the United States cited the cast as the reason they bought tickets, according to PostTrak surveys.
由單一明星飾演蜘蛛人？還真老派。「蜘蛛人：無家日」有三位A咖穿上蜘蛛人緊身衣：湯姆霍蘭德、安德魯加菲爾德和陶比麥奎爾。根據PostTrak調查，美國上映首周末觀眾約有43%說是衝著卡司買票進場。
"Someday, someone will decide to make one movie with two Batmans — oh, wait, it's happening," Terry Press, one of Hollywood's top marketers, said with signature dryness. She was referring to "The Flash," a superhero movie from Warner Bros. that is scheduled for late this year; Ben Affleck's Batman will appear alongside Michael Keaton's Batman.
好萊塢頂尖行銷專家之一特麗．普瑞斯以招牌的冷嘲口吻說：「總有一天，會有人決定製作一部有兩個蝙蝠俠的電影——噢等等，已經有了。」她說的是華納兄弟超級英雄電影「閃電俠」，定2022年近年底時上映，班艾佛列克飾演的蝙蝠俠將與米高基頓飾演的蝙蝠俠同台。
Taken one film at a time, star amassment is nothing new. "Grand Hotel" (1932), "Thousands Cheer" (1943), and the entire "Ocean's 11" franchise come to mind, not to mention Marvel's recent "Avengers" movies.
一部電影眾星雲集並非新鮮事，1932年「大飯店」、1943年「千萬喝采」和整個「瞞天過海」系列電影都是，更不用說漫威最近的「復仇者聯盟」電影。
All of a sudden, though, they are everywhere.
不過突然間，這種電影到處都是。
Why?
怎會這樣？
"Stars matter — always have, always will — and Hollywood retreats to them, leans harder on them, when it gets nervous about a wandering audience," said Jeanine Basinger, a film scholar and the author of Hollywood histories such as "The Star Machine," which examines the old studio system.
電影學者珍妮．貝辛格說：「明星很重要，一向如此，未來也將如此，而當好萊塢擔心抓不住觀眾時，就當明星是避風港，更倚賴他們。」貝辛格著有數本好萊塢歷史書，如檢視傳統片廠體系的「明星機器」。
Basinger, who founded Wesleyan University's film studies department, noted that individual star power has faded. Studios have become fixated on intellectual property — preexisting franchises and characters.
創辦美國衛斯理大學電影學系的貝辛格提到，個別明星對觀眾的吸引力消退，電影公司變得異常迷戀智慧財產權，也就是既有的系列電影和角色。
"In the old days, movie stars were the brands," she said. "They reached the whole audience. Not a slice of the audience. Everybody. But that all fell apart. Now, it's about adding up niches."
她說：「以往，電影明星就是品牌，能吸引所有觀眾。不是一小部分觀眾，而是每個人。只是那個年代過去了。現在要做的是增加利基。」
And don't forget Hollywood's favorite game: Follow the leader. "The Avengers: Endgame," which packed its cast with Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Chadwick Boseman, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Olsen and a dozen other boldface names, became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time in 2019.
而且別忘了好萊塢最愛玩的就是一窩蜂。「復仇者聯盟：終局之戰」演出陣容滿是大咖，包括小勞勃道尼、唐奇鐸、克里斯漢斯沃、史嘉蕾喬韓森、查德威克鮑斯曼、傑瑞米雷納、保羅路德、伊莉莎白歐森和另外12位明星，2019年上映後成為影史最賣座電影之一。
"It's trendy at the moment," Tim Palen, a producer and former studio marketing chief, said of what he called an "all skate" approach to casting. "Not new but certainly symptomatic of the battle for attention that's raging."
曾是片廠行銷主管、現為製片的帕倫說，這種「全員上陣」的卡司安排「就是現在的流行，並不新，但確實反映爭奪注意力之戰正如火如荼進行中」。
