{"id":1138916,"date":"2026-08-09T02:41:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T02:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1138916\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T02:41:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T02:41:19","slug":"the-classic-1997-blockbuster-too-cartoonish-for-robert-redford-to-star-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1138916\/","title":{"rendered":"The classic 1997 blockbuster too cartoonish for Robert Redford to star in"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robert<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Paramount Pictures<\/p>\n

Sat 8 August 2026 21:45, UK <\/p>\n

There\u2019s often a clear distinction between an actor and a movie star, and as desperate as Robert Redford<\/a> was to be taken seriously as the former, through no fault of his own, he was pigeonholed as the latter.<\/p>\n

For his entire career, all he wanted to do was make the movies he wanted to make, and more often than not, those movies weren\u2019t big-budget, mainstream pictures designed to make a killing at the box office. There were a couple of those, but Redford was more focused on challenging himself as a performer.<\/p>\n

However, because he was really, ridiculously good-looking, carried himself like a superstar, and possessed a natural charm and screen presence that no amount of acting lessons can teach<\/a>, he was anointed as a heartthrob, sex symbol, and one of the \u2018New Hollywood\u2019 era\u2019s most desirable figures.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t best pleased about that, although first-world problems don\u2019t come much worse than being too damned handsome for your own good. Unlike most of his peers, Redford resisted the lure of the easy paydays, franchise gigs, and mindless blockbusters, even if there were a couple of exceptions along the way.<\/p>\n

Indecent Proposal was one of them, and that was a deliberate, calculated move<\/a>. Spy Game was another, but Tony Scott\u2019s thriller at least had some meat on its bones. He even joined Marvel, with the Academy Award-winning director sharing that the driving force behind his appearances in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Avengers: Endgame was that he wanted to see what all the fuss was about.<\/p>\n

At no point in his professional life did Redford ever play a conventional action hero, nor did he ever take top billing in a straightforward, gung-ho action flick. He brought down a White House incumbent in All the President\u2019s Men, but he never embodied the commander-in-chief himself. He could have, had he not turned down Wolfgang Petersen\u2019s Air Force One.<\/p>\n

One of the biggest hits of 1997, and one of the decade\u2019s most purely enjoyable actioners, Harrison Ford publicly thanked Kevin Costner<\/a> for the chance to play James Marshall, with the latter opting to tank his career with The Postman, while the former got the chance to tell Gary Oldman to get off his plane.<\/p>\n

Further reading: Cutting Room Floor<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, what\u2019s less well-known is that Redford rejected it first. Why? According to the man himself, \u201cIt felt like it was approaching a cartoon,\u201d and that wasn\u2019t what interested him. It absolutely was approaching a cartoon, but what else do you expect from a movie about an ass-kicking president who takes down a terrorist cell mid-flight?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou either bring the audience in, or you go out and hammer them in the face to get their attention,\u201d he explained. \u201cThat seems to be the general state of things. That\u2019s just not as appealing to me.\u201d Redford was a man of principle, but his and Costner\u2019s loss was undoubtedly Ford\u2019s gain, with Air Force One becoming the most successful non-Star Wars or Indiana Jones film he\u2019d ever been in, and one of the best.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Paramount Pictures Sat 8 August 2026 21:45, UK There\u2019s often a clear distinction between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1138917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3935],"tags":[191985,56736,129051,77,36544,3943,40347,16,15,309672],"class_list":["post-1138916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-1990s","tag-56736","tag-action-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-harrison-ford","tag-movies","tag-robert-redford","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wolfgang-petersen"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117063246813436066","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1138917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}