Eyebrows were raised when a scathing article published by The New Yorker completely and utterly took the Marvel Cinematic Universe to task, going so far as to claim that the majority of the franchise’s biggest stars don’t have very successful or relevant careers outside the superhero saga.
As harsh at is sounds, it also wouldn’t be unfair to say that it’s largely been proven completely true in a lot of cases, based on nothing but the facts. Robert Downey Jr. has appeared in just three non-MCU movies in the last decade, with The Judge flopping and Dolittle losing upwards of $100 million.
Tom Holland has been on a terrible streak of critical failures in the last few years, while Chris Hemsworth has seen Blackhat, In the Heart of the Sea, The Hunstman: Winter’s War, Bad Times at the El Royale, and Ghostbusters all lose money in theaters. Knives Out was a rare success for Chris Evans – with the actor’s most recent starring role in Lightyear ultimately costing its director his job – with Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit ironically proving to be Scarlett Johansson’s only profitable big screen enterprise since 2016.
However, there is one who stands out from the pack, and it’s deliciously ironic that he’s proven to be a wildly polarizing presence among the fandom: Chris Pratt. All three Jurassic World entries earned upwards of a billion, The LEGO Movie and its sequel netted a combined haul of almost $670 million on total production costs of around $150 million, The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the second highest-grossing animated feature ever made, maligned sci-fi Passengers exceeded $300 million in ticket sales, while even Pixar’s Onward brought in $142 million before the pandemic axed its big screen run after less than two weeks.
Suffice to say, there is hope for the MCU’s biggest names to thrive outside of their comfort zones, but only if they read from the Chris Pratt playbook.
Published: Jun 6, 2023 02:43 am