“It was definitely a lesson”: the movie Chris Pratt was surprised to see flop
Anyone who bet on lovable schlub Andy Dwyer from Parks and Recreation becoming an A-list superstar and one of Hollywood’s most bankable leading men fully deserved their winnings. Chris Pratt transformed from a sitcom favourite to an in-demand action hero almost overnight.
The actor was almost a decade into his career before he even touched down in Pawnee, and not to sound too harsh, but his career was fairly unremarkable at that point. He’d played some bit-parts in various movies and TV shows, but it wasn’t until Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy released in 2014 that the rocket was strapped to his back.
Director James Gunn admitted he was unsure if Pratt was the right candidate to play Star-Lord at first, which also presented a fascinating alternate reality potentially unfolding after the filmmaker admitted It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s Glenn Howerton was his second choice. Since then, though, Pratt hasn’t looked back.
In addition to his signature superhero franchise, his contributions to the Avengers crossovers, the Jurassic World trilogy, and The Super Mario Bros Movie have given him six billion-dollar hits, with The Magnificent Seven remake and The Lego Movie making him a fixture of profitable productions.
On paper, partnering him up with another hugely popular star for an ambitious sci-fi romance looked like a sure-fire hit, and even though it wasn’t a bomb in the fiscal sense, the response to Passengers was apathetic at best. Adele tried to warn Jennifer Lawrence against it, but when she decided not to heed that advice, she and Pratt ended up shouldering the burden of a very damp and disappointing squip.
When Pratt was questioned on whether the response came as a surprise by Variety, he wasted no time answering in the affirmative. “Yeah, it did. It really did. I was really caught off-guard by that. It was definitely a lesson,” he admitted. “I personally think the movie is very good, I’m very proud of it.”
He was firmly in the minority in that regard, with nobody involved in the making of Passengers thinking it was creepy and stalkerish in the slightest that Pratt’s character would rouse Lawrence’s out of induced hibernation for the sole reason he thought she was hot. In effect, he basically robs her of the chance to enjoy a long-lasting life on the bountiful habitat the passengers of the title are heading for, all because he was lonely and decided that waking up the most attractive person on board was worth his time.
If anything, it would work better as the basis for a nail-biting psychological thriller where he stalks her through the vast nothingness of the ship after taking it upon himself to basically ruin her shot at a new life, but instead, Passengers was happy to tug at the heartstrings and miss by a mile.
