It’s getting so that every new blockbuster franchise movie seems to
star somebody named Chris, and I for one am starting to feel my head
spin. Chris Evans, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt: suddenly everyone has these
utterly forgettable and bland Anglo-Saxon names that all merge for me
into a blur of befuddled non-recognition. Some of them look as if they
had success hardwired into their genes by virtue of parentage and
who-you-know. The satisfying thing is that the best of them came from
nothing whatsoever, with no indication anywhere in his background that
movie stardom was in his future.
I first remember Chris Evans as the memorably dickish and callous lead in Not Another Teen Movie, the one outing in that franchise that rewarded a second viewing. His career trajectory since then – and
it’s been 13 long years – was fuzzy and indistinct to me until the first Captain America movie, and the connection between Marvel’s latest superhero and that exploding toilet in NATM kind of blew my mind… wait, him? Then, worldwide fame assured, he suddenly announced, King Joffrey style, that he was ready to retire from acting altogether when his new franchise wrapped. To which I can hear you saying scornfully, “Yeah, nice work if you can quit it.”
Chris Pine you can usually spot because of his upsetting, blue-eyed Village Of The Damned glare. He’s the son and grandson of Hollywood actors and power players and we all know that the way to get famous these days is to be born into it. And Pine, like Evans, looks as though he was born in a lab and bred for stardom in some satanic back room at one of the big talent agencies.
Chris Pratt, refreshingly, looks like he was discovered waiting tables. And he was, at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company franchise in Hawaii, by actor Rae Dawn Chong, which at least has the ring of Lana Turner at the counter of Schwab’s Pharmacy. Of the three, he’s the last one you’d pick for movie stardom. For starters, he was Nolte-ishly burly tending to fat, and the core of his appeal is a doe-eyed innocence, easily amped up to the phosphorescent dimness of Parks And Recreation’s Andy Dwyer, but it’s not necessarily built for toughness.
Shows what I know: next time we saw him he was one of the Navy SEALs in Zero Dark Thirty, then a slow-witted baseball player in Moneyball. A return to sweetness in The Lego Movie seemed like natural preparation for his role in Guardians Of The Galaxy, which calls on his funny and tough-guy sides (with a light side-order of Pine’s Shatner-esque assholeishness). And his ridiculously sculpted new physique, once so Michelin Man doughy, is now a ridiculous retort to the Moneyball casting agent who once told him he was too fat. Too fat, too stupid… hah. I like that he’s too normal. That is new.
I first remember Chris Evans as the memorably dickish and callous lead in Not Another Teen Movie, the one outing in that franchise that rewarded a second viewing. His career trajectory since then – and
it’s been 13 long years – was fuzzy and indistinct to me until the first Captain America movie, and the connection between Marvel’s latest superhero and that exploding toilet in NATM kind of blew my mind… wait, him? Then, worldwide fame assured, he suddenly announced, King Joffrey style, that he was ready to retire from acting altogether when his new franchise wrapped. To which I can hear you saying scornfully, “Yeah, nice work if you can quit it.”
Chris Pine you can usually spot because of his upsetting, blue-eyed Village Of The Damned glare. He’s the son and grandson of Hollywood actors and power players and we all know that the way to get famous these days is to be born into it. And Pine, like Evans, looks as though he was born in a lab and bred for stardom in some satanic back room at one of the big talent agencies.
Chris Pratt, refreshingly, looks like he was discovered waiting tables. And he was, at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company franchise in Hawaii, by actor Rae Dawn Chong, which at least has the ring of Lana Turner at the counter of Schwab’s Pharmacy. Of the three, he’s the last one you’d pick for movie stardom. For starters, he was Nolte-ishly burly tending to fat, and the core of his appeal is a doe-eyed innocence, easily amped up to the phosphorescent dimness of Parks And Recreation’s Andy Dwyer, but it’s not necessarily built for toughness.
Shows what I know: next time we saw him he was one of the Navy SEALs in Zero Dark Thirty, then a slow-witted baseball player in Moneyball. A return to sweetness in The Lego Movie seemed like natural preparation for his role in Guardians Of The Galaxy, which calls on his funny and tough-guy sides (with a light side-order of Pine’s Shatner-esque assholeishness). And his ridiculously sculpted new physique, once so Michelin Man doughy, is now a ridiculous retort to the Moneyball casting agent who once told him he was too fat. Too fat, too stupid… hah. I like that he’s too normal. That is new.
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