Netflix has been trying to make big-budget action movies happen for a while now, but they keep coming up with ones that are…not very good. But while sometimes critics hate them and fans love them, Gal Gadot’s new starring vehicle, Heart of Stone, hasn’t really pleased anyone.
Heart of Stone, which stars Gadot and Fifty Shades of Gray star Jamie Dornan, was supposed to be a Mission Impossible-type launch of a new franchise. It is Netflix’s #1 movie right now, but it has a 30% on Rotten Tomatoes with a hefty 105 critic reviews, and its audience score has also dipped to a rotten 58%
This marks the second time Gadot has starred in a critically lambasted, big-budget blockbuster, the first being Red Notice which had a 37%, which also starred The Rock and Ryan Reynolds. Gadot’s career has been very odd lately, her character being resurrected in the Fast and Furious series, somehow, and recent drama where she says Wonder Woman 3 is happening, but industry sources say that’s not true. Also Margot Robbie says she was almost cast as Barbie?
This keeps happening with Netflix blockbusters. The Gray Man, starring a powerhouse trio of Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans and Ana De Armas, has a 45% (though another 90% audience score). Netflix does not really care about critical acclaim, however, just viewing minutes. As such, Red Notice was promised a sequel, and they said that The Gray Man was the launch of “The Gray Man Universe.”
The Gray Man
Netflix is not the only streaming service striking out with big budget action. Worse than any of these is probably Amazon’s Citadel, which cost $300 million, went through extensive reshoots and ended up as a series that felt like it was written by AI. An entire universe was mapped out around the series, but it barely charted on most-watched lists. 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, a poor 64% audience score. The would-be franchise may be dead.
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Netflix does not miss every time. I’d consider it’s most successful action franchise to be Extraction. The first has a decent 67% and the second an even better 80%, which audience scores increasing both times. In a non-Thor role, Chris Hemsworth excels in something that feels at least somewhat akin to John Wick, if he was a soldier rather than an assassin. Really great action choreography.
But most of these projects have not panned out, and we’ll see if promised sequels and “Gray Man Universes” ever actually arrive. As for Heart of Stone? No sequels, no universes talked about yet.
