Of Bratpackers and Top Gunners

Today I saw a twenty-plus year old chestnut screen on HBO, the sequel to the 1988 sleeper hit Young Guns, titled, simply enough, Young Guns II and starring Emilio Estevez as the infamous Billy the Kid with several other rising stars of the era such as Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips as his co-stars. I was reminded of my youth, then, and of a lot of the actors I grew up with from the 80s through the 90s, and wondered where a lot of them are. Many young actors from the 80s have managed to endure. Sutherland has certainly left his mark on Hollywood, if not necessarily with his body of work on the big screen (which is already fairly considerable) then certainly with television hits such as 24 and more recently Touch. Charlie Sheen, brother of Estevez and 80s staple since the breakout success of Oliver Stone's Platoon, was, up until his bizarre meltdown a year or two ago the highest paid actor in television for his work on Two and a Half Men, and of course Tom Cruise, whose career was made by Tony Scott's Top Gun in 1986, apart from a brief dip in his career a few years back, has remained easily one of the most bankable movie stars in the world. So a lot of kids/ young actors from the 80s have done pretty well for themselves. But then, what happened to the other guys? Anthony Edwards, known to Gen Xers (I wonder if anyone even remembers that term anymore) mainly as Top Gun's doomed Goose, had a bit of a career boost throughout much of the 90s as Dr. Mark Greene on television's ER, sporting a few more wrinkles and a lot less hair. It's not so much a mystery what happened to him as it is a disappointment that he kind of dropped out of circulation after that show, which arguably launched the career of his co-star, George Clooney. Val Kilmer, who post-Top Gun donned Batman's cowl for Batman Forever in 1995 and who was on the big screen as recently as 2005's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang together with Robert Downey, Jr. That film wasn't a box-office hit but it was apparently well-enough regarded that it seems to have landed Black the directing gig for the next Iron Man movie, and I for one couldn't help but wonder why Kilmer didn't really stay in the game after that. He's kind of let himself go; the last time I saw him he was as fat as Santa Claus, though that could have just been some method acting I wasn't aware of at the time. Meg Ryan, whose appearance in Top Gun was limited, went on to basically be America's sweetheart all throughout the nineties, so her fall from grace was particularly saddening if I may be honest. I hate the double standard of audiences that has allowed Russell Crowe to rebound from his tryst with Ryan eleven years ago but which seems to have all but destroyed her image. I wish Ryan would enjoy a breakout hit, one that more than a handful of people actually watch. She's not exactly awards-caliber talent (though she did try her hand at drama, albeit unsuccessfully), but even in her later efforts, in my humble opinion, she still remains eminently watchable. In terms of looks it must be said she's aged pretty well, so at least she's got that going for her. The fate of the Brat Packers, a cadre of young actors whose heyday was in the 1980s with John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club and Joel Schumacher's St. Elmo's Fire, is a little harder to lament considering that neither of these films (nor any other of the Brat Pack films) was quite the pop-culture phenomenon that Top Gun was, and considering that many of them have worked quite steadily like Rob Lowe featuring prominently in Brothers and Sisters and Judd Nelson. Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy have pretty much fallen by the wayside, with Ringwald in particular registering a notable cameo in Not Another Teen Movie which was a sendup of just about every teen movie done in the last twenty years, including the ones in which she appeared...and little else. Estevez himself has, after his success in the 80s and 90s, pretty much settled into the background. Perhaps it's preferable to going nuts like his brother did, but I still wish he'd show up every now and then, especially considering his dad Martin Sheen (Ramon Estevez in real life) has been keeping pretty busy. Sheen will be showing up as a reincarnated Uncle Ben in July's reboot The Amazing Spider-Man. All things considered, given that he's pushing fifty Estevez could actually play that role, or roles like it, by now. For me, to see all of these actors I grew up with fade away until they show up in an E! special or on some reality show sometimes makes me wonder if they wouldn't have been somehow better off going out in a blaze of glory a la Heath Ledger. I suppose that, as is the case with rock bands, not every act can transcend more than one or two generations, but it would have been nice to see at least a few more of these guys go the distance.