The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.
You know what? Fuck Chris. Screw him in his chiseled, overpaid, under-shaved, beautiful face. I’m over it. I don’t care how many summer blockbusters he stars in. That dude can truly get bent.
Whew. That felt good. Do you know what I mean? If I’m wrong, tell me I’m wrong, but I’m tired of that guy. Aren’t you? Wait, what’s that? You don’t know which Chris I’m talking about? Oh, well, let me tell you: It’s all of them.
Yes, in case the entire facetious nature of this intro hasn’t made it obvious, this is about the fact that the internet decided this week to have its umpteenth fight about which of Hollywood’s Chrises—Hemsworth, Pratt, Evans, or Pine—is the most hateable. Social media being what it is, it’s hard to fully nail down why anyone thought this was a good use of everyone’s time—especially because, you know, there’s a lot of other shit going on—but Rebecca Alter at Vulture points to this tweet (below) from TV writer Amy Berg as Patient Zero in the latest Chriscourse. (Also, it’s been quote-tweeted like 14,000 times, so if this tweet isn’t the source then that means there’s an even more popular Chris-debate post out there and we are truly in hell.)
Now, this tweet is mostly pictures, but please, if you will, focus on the text: “One has to go.” This is where Berg made her most grievous error. One has to go? Yo, how about all four? How about we play F, Marry, Kill, add in a fourth option—Ignore—and pick that last one for each of these hunks and call it a day?
To be clear, this essay is not meant as a jab at any of these guys, or their careers. No harm is intended here, to their persons or reputations. Pine was great in Wonder Woman! Hemsworth might be the most self-aware himbo to grace the screen since, uh, Brad Pitt (?)! Surely Pratt is someone’s cup of tea! WIRED put Evans on the cover for goodness sake! They all have their pros and cons, and it’s not their fault they all have the same name and similar features, and—for a good portion of the twenty-teens—have dominated summer blockbusters. In fact, if everyone started calling them by their character names—James T. Kirk-Pine, Thor Hemsworth, Star-Lord Pratt, and America’s Ass Evans—it’s possible their homogeneousness might’ve escaped public scrutiny entirely.
