Let’s travel back in time for a few minutes: It’s January 2012. Storm Fabienne reaches 178 km/h at the Nebelhorn in the Allgäu. The German audience strolls similarly quickly into a French comedy called Pretty Best Friends. And the actor’s team Taylor Kitsch is probably licking his lips at the hefty bonuses that await at the end of the year.
Kitsch is the next big thing in Hollywood at this point. Two blockbusters with him in the lead role will be released in March and May, and a top-class thriller by director legend Oliver Stone awaits in July. Today, 13 years have passed since Taylor Kitsch disappeared from the cinema. Nevertheless, he is more successful than ever.
The year of Taylor Kitsch became the year of flops
Taylor Kitsch owes his career to hard work – and Peter Berg. Berg gave the occasional model and novice actor the chance of a lifetime when he cast him in the role of football player Tim Riggins on the NBC series Friday Night Lights. In five seasons, Kitsch’s alcoholic underdog from a difficult background became a fan favorite. In between, he shone in a memorable supporting role as Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
The series ended in 2011 and casting agents were lining up at Kitsch. Everything looked like a promotion to the top league of Hollywood, but instead A cascade of financial failures followed.
In March 2012, the nearly $300 million science fiction adaptation John Carter – Between Two Worlds crashed at the box office. Today, John Carter is considered one of the biggest financial failures in cinema historya fact that doesn’t do justice to the fun space adventure or Kitsch’s performance. The blame for the flop is now being blamed on the film’s marketing campaign, but one thing was obvious even back then: Taylor Kitsch is not the movie star face that promises you a mindless time of brilliant entertainment.
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The flops showed what Taylor Kitsch is missing
The quality that male stars like Tom Cruise, Will Smith or, most recently, Glen Powell possess is cheesy. He does not radiate simple, clear messages; his presence is much more confusing and raises questions. That doesn’t mean that some of them are better actors than him. But behind the accusation that Tom Cruise or Dwayne Johnson “always play the same role” lies a talent that is often underestimated.
When you look at a blockbuster movie with trailers and posters full of monsters, you look at Dwayne Johnson and you know what to expect. With Taylor Kitsch, the elusive presence results in shoulder shrugging. The ticket is then purchased for another film.
This observation was repeated two months later with Kitsch discoverer Peter Berg’s Battleship. In the ship-sinking adaptation, Kitsch plays a rebellious Navy lieutenant who rises above himself in the face of an alien invasion; but not enough to make a profit on a budget of over $200 million. The historic flop John Carter was followed by the downfall of Battleshipfollowed by Oliver Stone’s thriller Savages, which delivered more respectable numbers but received poor reviews. The year of Taylor Kitsch had turned into the year that it’s best not to talk about anymore.
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His comeback led Taylor Kitsch to Netflix
Taylor Kitsch’s career as a cinema leading man, i.e. as a star who can carry big films on his own, was effectively over. He has artistically rehabilitated himself in the medium that once brought him fame. The long road back began in Season 2 of HBO’s True Detective. He made bigger waves in 2018 in the factual series Waco on Paramount+, in which he was almost unrecognizable as David Koresh, the charismatic leader of a religious cult. Since then, Kitsch has shone in ensemble roles, such as in the Amazon success The Terminal List, which is primarily promoted through Chris Pratt.
The The constant in Taylor Kitsch’s career, whether it’s a breakthrough, a flop or a comeback, is Peter Berg. He cast the Canadian in Friday Night Lights, Battleship and Lone Survivor. In 2023, Berg directed his first Netflix series. The miniseries Painkiller dealt with the real-life painkiller empire of the Sackler family, which is seen as the driving force behind the opioid crisis in the United States. One of the stars: Taylor Kitsch as a mechanic who becomes addicted after an injury.
Berg explained to the New York Times the moment he saw Taylor Kitsch for the first time back during Friday Night Lights: “And I said, ‘Oh [Schimpfwort]”‘This guy is the right one'”. Kitsch is both vulnerable and stoic: “But what makes him special is that he holds these energies within himself, he doesn’t expose them. He doesn’t work too hard.”
13 years after John Carter, Taylor Kitsch made it to number 1
In their joint series American Primeval, you can take a closer look at what Berg appreciates about Kitsch’s presence. It’s another ensemble series, again with Berg as director. Kitsch plays the taciturn Isaac, at first glance a tough Westerner, but in reality a broken man.
The two of them have received brilliant reviews with their series, far from the criticism from the Battleship era, and at times there were Number 1 in the Netflix charts as a blood-red cherry on top of the series cake. 13 years after John Carter, Taylor Kitsch still isn’t an A-lister who can carry films. Instead, he found his comfort zone. It’s full of sad, broken guys that you can’t turn away from.