Despite the blunt title above and criticism going into this article, my love for the films of Liam Neeson is boundless. During recovery for a recent surgery, I took the day to watch some action films starring everyone's favorite Irish action hero to get things going in the right direction. Mostly focusing on the post-Taken career boost such as Non-Stop, Unknown, The Grey etc., 8 hours of kicking ass across various cities was a good way to pick up an otherwise unpleasant day.
Once I was healed up and of clear mind and body, I began thinking back to the movies and found a unusual trend among the movies involving the romantic leads. In the films I viewed, none of the women involved were Liam Neeson's characters were close to his age, with a fair number of them being decades younger.
At first, I thought this was a coincident, so i started not only into the actor's filmography, and found he has yet to have a romantic interest close to his age since his late career resurgence in 2008.
In films such as "A Million Ways to Die in the West," "Unknown," and "Third Person," the romantic interests are all in their 30's in love with the now 64-year-old Neeson. Even "Taken" falls prey to this with the casting of Famke Janssen, an actress 13 years younger than Liam Neeson.
A few years ago, a similar discovery was posted on Vulture, highlighting age differences between actors, but I feel that they scratched the surface. While most of the actors used in this article were fellow A-Listers, all actors used in the study were white, with the exclusion of Denzel Washington. The age gap issues transcends the racial bounds with actors of color such as Will Smith, Jackie Chan and Antonio Banderas having the same age gap with their love interests as they progress into middle age.
In this current system, Hollywood perpetuates the ideas of toxic masculinity by constantly depicting older men as essentially cradle robbing their romantic interests. By creating this illusion that old men can win the young twenty-something lover, they devalue the actresses to simply accessories to make the older actor look more manly because apparently that can be achieved with an age appropriate lead.
Aside from the age discrimination, one must highlight the clear sexism when an older actress finds herself pursuing a younger man in films. In films such as "Don Jon," "Y Tu Mama Tambien," and "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," where the leading woman is seeking the affection of a younger man, the older woman-young male relationship is some form of coping mechanism.
This desire for a younger male lover to give them youth acts as this weird form of misogyny, arguing that only when a female is broken can she have younger affection. Unfortunately more often than not, this mentality permeates the film where this trope is feature while middle aged men bed young women while gaining the benefit of being a more rounded character.
While this might seem like a fickle issue, this pervasive misogyny affects women's roles across the spectrum of film. Believing that women are only valued for their age of that they need to be broken only to be put back together by a young lover limits the public perspective of female characters.
Hollywood as a whole must see that women can do anything that men can do in film. They can be franchise heroes, independent award winners, action stars, and everything under the rainbow, so let's demand that the films reflect that. To start it, they just give Julianne Moore a young lover and don't call attention to it, because they aren't doing it with Liam Neeson, and the public doesn't seem to mind.
