While the complete absence of gay men in action films for the longest time is understandable, though disappointing, from a historical perspective, the period for understanding ended decades ago. There’s no excuse for such a dearth of gay men across the action genre in the year 2023.
The lack of gay action stars through the '70s and '80s should come as no surprise, considering gay people were classified as having a “psychiatric disorder” by the American Psychiatric Association from 1952-1973 (at which point "gay" was downgraded to mere "sexual orientation disturbance." Progress!). That’s right, up until the year after John Waters’ Pink Flamingos came out the concept of “gay” was still considered a brain trouble. There were certainly gay icons and heroes in the real world sense before being gay was given the stamp of sanity in early ‘70s (Waters’ himself surely earned that designation), but nothing when it comes to onscreen man of action kind of representation.
The '90s, which finally saw some gay acceptance/tolerance become mainstream, appeared to get things moving in the right direction. There were gay guys all over the place when compared to the kind of screen time previously available. Lots of sassy best friend roles, alternatively heartwarming or tragic coming out stories, and exclusively tragic tales covering the horrors of AIDS. Another decade gone, still no gay men of action. But the new millennium surely had to bring with it at least one garish, over the top Die Hard on Gay Cruise that’d be looked back on as very problematic one day. It’s been a quarter-century since that decade ended, however, and there’s still not a single action movie with a gay lead.
Gay Automatically Means Non-Lead
Representation on film or TV (also books and wherever else) matters to people hoping to see a world where they exist. Not only exist, actually, but are the leads of their own journeys. Scroll through the action movie selections on a streaming service, pick any, and just about everyone gets a turn at kicking the ass of a room of random goons. All ages and races, lesbians and bisexual women, but still not even just some half-assed and cliché Aaron Eckhart man-on-the-run flick where the only real difference is that he’s been framed for the murder of his husband, instead of his wife? Sure, there are examples of gay supporting characters in action movies, but they either bite the dust before credits roll, need to be rescued, or, if they’re lucky, get to putter around in the background and say something clever. The Old Guard, Omar on The Wire, Sulu in Star Trek, Spartacus, some Arrow-verse stuff, Alien: Covenant, and recent Oscar nominee Brian Tyree Henry as about 1/10th of Eternals’ sprawling cast all fall into one of the previously mentioned categories. There are several others to choose from, too, but the gist is clear — gay guys don’t get to be the hero. They can be many things in an action movie, maybe even the fey and queer-coded villain, but so far no luck on being last man standing who gets the eye candy clad in a strategically torn shirt and tight pants.
A big part of the issue has to be that straight men are typically a huge portion of action movie ticket buyers and studios are simply wary of scaring people off. It might not even necessarily be the audiences themselves at this point, but more an instance where studio brass refuse to accept that times have changed enough for a gay man to save the day. For guidance on how to finally break this seal, just look to ParaNorman. A stop-motion kid’s movie from a decade ago (an extremely worthwhile and timeless stop-motion film for all ages from a decade ago, to be more accurate) might not seem an apt jumping off point, but it’s a solid plan. There’s a fairly standard dumb jock character throughout ParaNorman who is only revealed to be gay in the last few minutes, and not in any way where he’s the joke of the situation. It's basically a state of fact that more so results in a situational laugh at another character’s incorrect assumptions. It wouldn’t be difficult at all to contrive a circumstance where some Jason Statham-esque badass pummels his way through 90 minutes of opponents before going home to his loving husband or popping into a gay bar. By that point, if these hypothetical filmmakers are any good at their jobs, the audience would be sold on his action hero chops to the point that even the most reluctant viewer would come around on the idea that gay guys can save the plane from terrorists, too.
Closer To A Gay Hero, But Still Not Quite
Stuff like Glass Onion and Our Flag Means Death have done well at utilizing the eventual reveal approach, the former by waiting until the sequel to slip in a quick scene of gay domesticity and the latter by letting the audience assume they’re watching just another case of queer-baiting before actually having Steed (Rhys Darby) and Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) profess their feelings for one another and kiss. The only problem with these two examples, unfortunately, is that neither of these are in the action genre. That’s no criticism of either, because they’re great at being what they are, but what they are isn’t terribly action-oriented. John Wick would have been the perfect coming out, frankly, as after watching Keanu Reeves be an otherworldly killing machine there’s no way anyone watching would have stormed out of the theater upon finding out he was mourning a deceased husband.
Once upon a time, studios were wary of all things gay because turning away possible ticket buyers was the number one no-no, it probably still is, except that world is kind of over. Sure, Bros was a big dud upon release, but romantic comedies are a dying genre at the box office right now and, in all likelihood, selling Bros as Important Required Viewing (as opposed to a funny movie to enjoy with friends) did nobody any favors. There’s an audience for everything and this age of countless streaming services should, in theory, be an easy enough time to get a gay action hero on screen. So, whoever’s in charge of this kind of thing, make a gay action hero happen before 2023 ends as yet another year no different from each one that came before.