For "Star Lord" Chris Pratt, The Battle of Tomorrow is another beginning.
Despite this start bug is too much, the slot points are full.
It was initially sold to Amazon by Paramount Pictures for $200 million under the influence of the epidemic, abandoning the theatrical box office and moving to a streaming platform, but still in exchange for the 2.4 million American household ratings claimed by the US media, and did not affect its schedule of sequel plans.
In other words, we may have witnessed the birth of the third IP on Star-Lord.
In the future, Chris Pratt will continue to move, and "Jurassic World 3" and "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" will follow next year. He has also expanded his production business, with his personal studio, Invisible Productions, already investing in the film Saigon Bodyguard, in which he co-starred with Wu Jing, and his independent comedy Black Belt, which is scheduled to be released within the next two years.
It can be said that Chris Pratt is the most typical representative of the Hollywood star system in this era, but he is also a special one among many A-list male stars.
His roles are often naïve comics, grounded funny characters, while his tough appearance also gives him the tough guy gene of the end of the last century, and he switches between the two modes freely, or merges them into one.
Today we're going to talk about Chris Pratt, a Hollywood star with a mix of humor and heroism.
1. Comedy and Hero – Chris Pratt's American Dream
Chris Pratt is a scumbag. He graduated from high school and dropped out after only one semester of acting classes at a community college, and still has only a high school degree.
He was a small man who grew up in Washington and spent his childhood in a remodeled room. He worked as a salesman in the mall and as a waiter in a restaurant.
Chris Pratt was once a fat man, and in the early stages of his acting career, he always ran the dragon suit with an image of more than two hundred pounds, playing a funny and witty little supporting role.
In 2009, he married Anna Farris, who was married by drama, which was also the year that his career began to start. He earned a residency performance with his humorous performance in the TV series Parks and Recreation. He plays Andy Dwyer, a fat man who likes to tease and play poverty, and is a very brilliant supporting role in the play.
It can be said that Chris Pratt's acting career began with comedy performance, which is his area of expertise, and since then, humorous and funny language and body movements have seemed to be engraved into his genes.
Although he started out as a minor role in some TV comedies, his acting path took an important turn. He began to get some opportunities for film projects, and in "Penalty Shootouts" he quickly lost weight and played a baseball player.
In 2012's "Hunt for Bin Laden", he successfully lost fat and shaped, with a toned figure and tough guy temperament, became a Navy SEAL on the screen, he did not give up his good performance style, and the role he created was still interesting and witty.
The film arguably laid the groundwork for chris Pratt's later character type, a screen image that combines humor and tough guy temperament.
After being rejected by Star Trek and Avatar, he finally succeeded in starring in Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014 with his unique acting style and appearance. The explosion of this movie and the leaning of the Marvel IP made his commercial value soar.
The following year, he won the favor of Universal Pictures, starring in the rebooted large-scale IP "Jurassic World". With the sequels of Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, it gained a huge impact.
Within a few short years Chris Pratt had quickly risen to the top of Hollywood. He starred in the Western film "Heroic Seven Dragons" and the science fiction film "Space Traveler" also achieved good results.
From fat people, scum, low-level little people, to today's A-list stars, humorous tough guys, but also a member of the Schwarzenegger and Kennedy family. Chris Pratt's experience is undoubtedly a counter-attack story of the typical American dream.
During this time, Chris Pratt as a genre actor essentially determined his acting style and brand image. The comedy and tough guy genres almost summed up his entire acting career.
Between the tough and handsome tough guy hero and the naïve and humorous and grounded comic, he broke through the traditional meaning of any of these types and grasped his own characteristics.
In a moment when an actor is stereotyped, it is also a moment when an actor is most dangerous, and stars are even more so.
Most stars at this stage will break through their own bottlenecks and tap their star value and potential by developing new film projects or expanding other businesses.
Chris Pratt is no exception, but this year's Battle of Tomorrow is clearly not a breakthrough, it is a war about tomorrow, and Chris Pratt is still too obsessed with the history of his "Star Lord".
2. Face and Body - Star Lord's twin
The first shot of "Tomorrow's War" is a typical way of star appearance.
In the brilliant blue-purple particle effect, Chris Pratt's handsome face immediately occupies the entire frame.
In Hollywood movies, a star's appearance is always carefully planned.
And "Tomorrow's War" is not as mysterious as in other movies, playing mysterious, selling Guanzi, it is to directly show the irreplaceable face of Chris Pratt, this face is the face of star lords, but also the face of the dragon trainer Owen, but also the face of a first-line male star.
The exaggerated expression of surprise on this face, as well as the visual effects that are very similar to Marvel movies from color saturation to sci-fi style, show the film's intentions - "Tomorrow's War" wants to recall the audience's "Star Lord" memory at the beginning of the movie, so that the audience can watch this actually completely different film in the expectation of Star Lord.
Thus, this appearance shows off Chris Pratt's appeal as a star-led actor, and it announces the film's value as a star spectacle.
After that, the light and color immediately become dull, and the atmosphere of future disasters pours in, and the tone of "Tomorrow's War" is officially revealed, and the storytelling begins.
In the story, Dan, a veteran played by Chris Pratt, is forced to take off his shirt for future wars, revealing his muscular but still sexually attractive upper body. After a group of soldiers tied him up, they just let him put his forearm into a machine.
I can't help but wonder, if it's just to install a time-travel device on his arm, what is the point of undressing? Is it just to expose the flesh?
Yes, just to expose the flesh.
This is like the breathtaking visual scenes created by Hollywood blockbusters, which have almost no connection with the telling of the story, just to show off.
Yes, movies can show off not only the technology, the ideas, the spectacle, but also the stars.
In a way, stardom is a spectacle.
Although this undressing action is forced on the character, it is an active choice in the actor, and the producer and the star hope that the audience is a screen licking demon.
There is a similar scene in "Guardians of the Galaxy 1", where the Guardians of the Galaxy are arrested and imprisoned, and star-lords are stripped of their essence, and they are washed away by an unknown red liquid, revealing a tragic picture of pity.
It can be said that undressing is a normal operation of Hollywood male stars. "Thor" Chris Hemsworth often shows his muscular physique in the film. Chris Pratt's repetition of the old trick is also understandable.
But this is also the most common operation, even the lowest level of operation, but also the easiest operation to overdraft the star image.
As a generation of Hollywood icons, Tom Cruise is not content to consume his handsome appearance, and he often risks his life in movies.
In the Mission Impossible series of films, most of the characters' dangerous moves come from Atango's personal performances, not relying on digital technology or borrowing stand-ins, but just relying on traditional stunts, constantly creating the spectacle of action adventure with their own bodies.
In Contrast to Tomorrow's Battle, Chris Pratt's body is stiff, and he is like a character in a gunfight game, with only a lot of gun-raising and shooting, without any brilliant action scenes.
Dan's resolute act of sliding down the ropes of the helicopter, the passage of wrestling with the final white spikes, and so on, are many places that could have produced good results. But it may be limited by the director's scheduling, or it may be that the actor's own action ability is limited, but it seems clumsy.
Chris Pratt in "Tomorrow's War" still continues the body image in "Guardians of the Galaxy" in general, tirelessly showing his handsome face and strong figure, but does not make more breakthroughs in other aspects.
Compared to Star Lord, his Dan is more like a less funny Star Lord twin than an independent and full character image.
3. Technology and people - the sacrifice of Hollywood stars
For the first shot of "Tomorrow's War", we can also interpret Chris Pratt from another angle.
In this shot, in order to show the effect of the characters re-converging from scattered particles in time travel, Chris Pratt's image is formed and incorporated into the painting in the color particles made by digital technology.
It looks like he was born in digital effects.
And the screen image of Chris Pratt's tough guy/hero today is precisely through the maturity of digital special effects that has penetrated people's hearts.
In other words, he is a star actor wrapped in a swaddling digital special effects. The first shot of "Tomorrow's War" is an image metaphor for this fact.
After Becoming an A-list celebrity, Chris Pratt starred almost exclusively in sci-fi or fantasy genre films.
From Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy to Irving the Dragon Trainer in Jurassic World, to Space Traveler and Tomorrow's War, most of his performances are completed in front of the green screen, and finally computer special effects complement other graphic elements and backgrounds.
It can be said that Star Lord's experience of becoming a hero on the screen is synchronized with the clue that digital special effects completely dominate the screen.
Film critic Manora Dugis once said: "In the age of virtual reproduction, the body of the star becomes the test bed of authenticity, the last resistance to authenticity".
He praised Tom Cruise. Around 2000, when digital technology had begun its pace of colonizing the picture, Tom Cruise was still practicing visual spectacles with his own real-world action adventures.
In fact, in Hollywood stars, it is not just as simple as presenting the authenticity of the spectacle and the craftsmanship of the actor's profession, the deeper clue is that the change in the screen image of the star reflects the struggle between technology and people.
So, here in Star-Lord, we see the most typical star characteristics of this era, he knows how to perform in front of the green screen without physical objects, and he embraces omnipotent digital special effects.
He may have a fixed genre and a single way of acting, but he is willing to sacrifice his independence and authenticity as an actor and immerse himself in a virtual spectacle.
In the end, he made himself a part of that spectacle, a bunch of emotionless pixel particles.
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