The Same Actors Are Hogging All The Big Franchises, And It Needs To Stop

We  all love Chris Pratt.

You know him from playing lovable doofus Andy Dwyer on Parks and Recreation and voicing the role of lovable doofus Emmet in The Lego Movie (2014). He’s currently on screen playing lovable doofus Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). Whether he plays a lovable doofus in Jurassic World (2015) remains to be seen. I guess if an actor is going to mine the same character traits repeatedly like Pratt has, then at least he’s great at it.

But we have a bigger problem. It makes sense that Hollywood wants to cast him in so many movies; he’s funny and charming, and has everyone swooning — even very heterosexual men. But he is part of an epidemic in Hollywood. An epidemic of lazy short-sightedness that is seeing the same people cast in every potential franchise they have on offer. We all love Chris Pratt, but he — and lot of other Hollywood actors — might be getting a bit too greedy.

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Six Degrees of Franchise Bacon

In Guardians of the Galaxy, the latest superhero instalment from mega-franchise Marvel, Pratt stars alongside Vin Diesel, who we all know from the Fast and the Furious (2001-2015) and Riddick (2000, 2004, 2013) franchises, and who will return as super-agent Xander Cage in a xXx (2002) sequel. Alongside Pratt and Diesel is Zoe Saldana, who you may recognise from the rebooted Star Trek (2009, 2013) franchise and who you may not recognise (since she was blue) from the soon-to-be-expanded Avatar (2009) franchise.

Her co-star in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) was Benedict Cumberbatch, who has been in The Hobbit series (2012-2014), was heavily rumoured to have been cast in the new Star Wars sequel as well as Marvel’s “Doctor Strange”, and stars as Detective Holmes in BBC’s Sherlock. Speaking of Sherlock, Robert Downey Jr has his own film franchise as that character, to sit alongside his role as Iron Man in its three films (2008, 2010, 2013) and The Avengers (2012).

Meanwhile, Downey’s Marvel buddy Chris Hemsworth has played Thor in two solo films (2011, 2013) and The Avengers, appeared in the aforementioned Star Trek movies, and was recently announced as the star of a prequel to Snow White and The Huntsman (2012) minus Kristen Stewart’s Snow White. Maybe she preferred to keep The Twilight Saga (2008-2012) as her only saga for the time being.

This is madness. Hollywood has to stop casting the same actors in all of their franchises. For starters, it’s lazy math – “If you like Celebrity X in Franchise Y then you’ll love them in Franchise Z, right?” Hardly. If it were then everybody’s favourite Wolverine, Hugh Jackman, would have a Van Helsing (2004) franchise to go alongside his seven X-Men (2000-2014) films.

Most importantly though, the studios are weakening their own stock. Audiences get tired of celebrities awfully quick these days — the Jennifer Lawrence backlash can attest to that — and somebody like Chris Pratt could get perilously close to over-exposure if all he does is accept roles in high-profile franchises. Actors like Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Will Smith, and Brad Pitt have kept their careers relatively strong for decades with only one genuine franchise each, although that’s not for a lack of trying in this new age of endless sequels and spin-offs.

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Old Dogs, Old Tricks

Of course, let’s not kid ourselves. This sort of reckless franchise-hogging has been around for ages. Harrison Ford is probably the most famous for it, having starred in the two most popular film trilogies of all time: Star Wars (1977-1983) and Indiana Jones (1981-1989). Still, despite his fine acting chops – he was Oscar-nominated for Witness (1985) – he has been forced to spend the final act of his career reliving former glories like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII (2016), as well as taking a role in The Expendables 3 (2014) which has become a haven for former action franchise megastars like Sylvester Stallone (Rocky and Rambo), Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator, Conan, Batman & Robin), Dolph Lundgren (Universal Soldier), and now Mel Gibson (Lethal Weapon, Mad Max).

This sort of willy-nilly scoffing of any franchise that comes their way doesn’t work out for every actor. After Avatar, Sam Worthington really should have shown the world that he can actually act, which he’s done excellently before in Somersault (2004) and Gettin’ Square (2003), but instead chose Terminator: Salvation (2009) and Clash of the Titans (2010), both of which were savaged by critics and generally rejected by audiences as trash.

He now spends his time in bad direct-to-DVD fare like Sabotage (2014) as he waits for James Cameron’s blue-skinned sequels. And after the cinematic abomination that was Daredevil (2003), people still aren’t quite ready to accept Ben Affleck as the caped crusader in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016).

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It’s Enough to Make You Go Crazy

Elsewhere, the workload expected of Jennifer Lawrence for both The Hunger Games (2012-2015) franchise and the X-Men prequel franchise (2011, 2014) was apparently so demanding that her Silver Linings Playbook (2012) and American Hustle (2013) director David O. Russell equated it to “twelve years of slavery”. And the strain put on Chris Evans from the failed Fantastic Four franchise (2005, 2007) and now the never-ending Captain America (2011, 2014) and Avengers films has made him want to step away from acting altogether when his contract is up –which isn’t until next decade.

The problem of franchise-hopping is no better typified then Ryan Reynolds, who has had so many franchise prospects flop – Blade Trinity (2004), Green Lantern (2011), RIPD (2013), Turbo (2013), and “Deadpool”, which never even got off the ground – that he’s now attempting arthouse mea culpa with The Captive (2014) and Woman in Gold (2015).

He must look at Aaron Taylor-Johnson with envy, as the handsome 24-year-old now has Kick-Ass (2010, 2013), Godzilla (2014), and The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) on his own franchise-hungry resume. And quite frankly, Jeremy Renner has had so many wannabe franchises thrown at him like Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), The Avengers (2012), The Bourne Legacy (2012), and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) that I’m surprised he found the time to also make American Hustle (2013) and The Immigrant (2014).

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A Round Peg in a Round Hole

It really is Chris Pratt’s good fortune that he chose as wisely as he did. The roles he has taken appear tailor-made for him rather than being a square peg being shoved in a round hole (like, say, Shia LeBeouf in Indiana Jones or Jessica Alba in Fantastic Four). The Lego Movie and especially Guardians of the Galaxy heavily riff on the goofy persona that Pratt had cultivated for seven seasons on Amy Poehler’s small-town sitcom, with the films playing fast and loose with the nostalgia that his prime audience of twenty and thirty-somethings indulge in every day on Buzzfeed and YouTube. This is something the upcoming Jurassic Park (1994) sequel, as well as the rumoured big screen adaptation of David Hasselhoff’s Knight Rider TV series from the 1980s that Pratt is attached to, are sure to exploit too.

Hollywood is filled with actors who aren’t getting their chance in a blockbuster because conservative minds all think alike. Do we really need to see the same actor in so many different multi-film franchises? I know this is a hard business and you need to make bank wherever you can, but the world can turn their back on you just as quickly as they fell for you and your heaving, newly-muscular chest. It would be good for Chris Pratt to take a few more roles like Moneyball (2011), Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Her (2013) now that he’s a bona fide superstar. Or just take a break and let us miss him a bit between big movies. We don’t need another Orlando Bloom.

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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer from Melbourne who is currently based in New York City. He also works as an editor and a film festival programmer while tweeting too much @glenndunks.

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Guardians of the Galaxy is screening now.