Yeah, directors and to some extent, even writers now are getting more clout for media than actors are. It has been a trend for at least 10+ years now tho. It seems that people are starting to either find out or perceive that even the greatest actor is only as good as how the role is written/written for them and who's directing them.
Superstar actors are starting to die out. Somewhat even literally as well, since the top tier actors are aging out, doing less work in some cases, retiring, etc and there haven't been too many replacement superstar level actors to come up in their stead (this is even doubly so for action star actors and triply so for martial arts actors, as they seem to be very much dying breed now; like where are the new Tony Jaa's/Jet-li's/Donnie Yen's and there's never been an icon on the level of Swarzneggar and Stallone since. At best, maybe The Rock could count and Jason Statam or Keanu Reeves' John Wick, but still, not quite the same and even all of these are starting to age out and whatnot). Just a few here and there have that high level star power. And even still, the aforementioned role/directors are often needed for them to truly shine. In this note...it's not quite WATTBA anymore.
