GlimmerMan said:
It appears to me that the author of the article is as big a fan as some of us are, but he is simply pointing out a couple of things that his less blinkered fans already know - he needs to lose a bit of weight and start making cool movies again. Think about it - would Seagal ever be seen wearing a green vest like the one he wore in Under Siege in his current condition?! Of course he wouldn't. No - if he ever does get round to doing Under Siege 3, he will probably wear a weightlifters belt and a long, flowing leather jacket over a colourful tailor made shirt.
Or that suit he wore in Under Seige 2, that never got torn or a speck of dust on it despite his clambering about on the outside of a moving train more than half a dozen times.
If the author of the article had said anything new on the subject, I might be inclined to take his comments under more consideration. But, in fact, all he was doing was regurgitating a zillion other articles which have said much the same thing. And his true colours where shown in his yearning for Kelly LeBrock - he wants the clock to have stopped in 1990.
So the question is, who is the less blinkered fan - the one who wants things to be the way they were, or the fan who accepts things the way they are? Is the true fan the one who spews forth "bring back the good old days! Let's see him exactly as he was in Out For Justice, even though he's 52 years old now compared to 39 years old then!" Is the blinkered fan the one who accepts that time has marched on, that Steven isn't ever again going to be the svelte ass-kicking superhero of Above the Law, and doesn't expect him to be? But, who would still like to see him do his own fight scenes nonetheless, regardless of age or condition?
While I've got my own reasons for wanting to see him in a sleeveless t-shirt again (I am one of those awful girl fans, remember? Pardon me for a moment, I'm having a fit of the vapours. <fans self vigorously>), I've had to accept that this is likely never going to happen. I'm just grateful he's making any movies at all. So does that make me a true un-blinkered fan or a blinkered fan?
And about his weight (ye gods, not again): I spent an interesting couple of hours last night reading numerous reviews of Exit Wounds. It was most illuminating. I'm not surprised he didn't keep his weight down in subsequent movies. Nearly every single review I came across in last night's batch (about 40+) slammed him for how much he weighed in Exit Wounds, even though he had clearly lost weight and was as much in "fighting trim" as he had been in Under Seige/US2 and given the fact he was 49 years old when he made the film. (He was in fact starting to get paunchy even in Under Seige, in case anyone hadn't noticed.) One article even suggested he was something like 20 stone (that's 280 pounds for you who are not British) in EW (which kind of made me wonder if they'd even seen the movie, but that's the subject of another thread for another day).
The point is, he had lost weight, as fan-boy critic Joshua of the foregoing article and as the plethora of the unblinkered fans and other critics demanded. He was in much better shape than he had been for a long time. And STILL the critics fried him for his weight. Was it because he was maybe 10 or 15 pounds shy of perfection? Perhaps. But mostly, I think it was because they were indignant that he did exactly what the critics and his fans wanted him to do - to lose weight - and instead of being grateful that he did lose weight, they attacked him *because* he lost weight (and some of the movie critics were, in fact, his fans).
Damned if he does; and damned if he doesn't.
Except that he does obviously care about his appearance on-screen, since he goes to such ridiculous lengths to conceal what can't be concealed. If he weren't so self-conscious about it, I'm certain we'd see more of him doing his thing himself. And if he hadn't been so self-conscious about his weight, if he had adopted an "I don't care what they think, I'm still going to do my own fighting" attitude, I think the critics, who would likely still have grumbled about his weight, wouldn't have faulted him for it as much if he'd brought them the goods his ownself.
So we come back to the fan that wants Steven to be 39 years old forever, versus the fan that just wants to see him in action, regardless. Would he be better if he lost weight? Maybe. Would it make any difference to the critics here and now if he did? Based on what I read last night, none whatever.
My plea, as a fan (female, 'tis true, but also an action hero fan) would be to say, "Steven, get over it. Stop hiding behind filing cabinets and in well-tailored jackets. Just do the work." And after he surprises everyone by doing just that, maybe, just maybe, the critics and the fans will get what they want.