When the internet started to turn against Chris Pratt back in 2019, a viral tweet joked that Hollywood should just digitally replace all his roles with Zachary Levi — you know, that harmlessly loveable guy from Chuck and Shazam!. Fast forward five years, though, and that tweet has aged worse than Thor: The Dark World. Pratt is fresh off starring in 2023’s most profitable film, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Levi looks in danger of being irrevocably canceled.
Over the weekend, Levi trended for all the wrong reasons when he attended a Reclaim America rally and publicly endorsed Donald Trump as his choice for president. The fact that the once-beloved actor — also known for voicing Flynn Rider in Tangled — has outed himself as a er of the tangerine tyrant has left his many fans crushed. What’s more, in an unexpected twist, it’s left these same folks doing their best Thanos impression and wondering if perhaps they treated Pratt too harshly.
Just like Levi, Pratt is another popular actor from the superhero sphere — they’re even both part of the MCU, with Levi playing Fandral in the Thor films — but there is one key difference between them. Like him or loathe him, Pratt has yet to staple himself to Trump in any way, shape, or form. So now many are demanding that people redirect their anti-Pratt ire in Levi’s direction instead.
It turns out he was the real Chris Pratt all along.
The phrase “Chris Pratt is a saint” is not one we ever expected to see appear on the former bird app.
Of course, others aren’t quite following how Levi’s unpopular political opinions mean Pratt should be exonerated entirely. Many continue to speculate that Pratt secretly harbors similar allegiances to Levi, but that he is too smart to say the quiet part out loud. As one scathing tweet put it, “Chris Pratt is who Twitter thinks Chris Pratt is, he just has enough money to pay a good publicist who will tell him not to be Zachary Levi.”
The irony in this whole drama is that people once wished Levi had won the role of Star-Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy instead — he’s known to have auditioned for the part and come close, before Pratt ultimately got the gig. It looks like James Gunn made the right call on that one, then, and he’s probably about to do so again over at DC Studios. It seems unlikely that Levi will get to play Shazam in the DCU, for a variety of reasons. Meanwhile, rumors abound that Gunn has some DC role for Pratt cooking up.
Sometimes all it takes is one word to transform your whole image. And no, in this case, that word isn’t “Shazam!” — it’s “Trump.”
Published: Sep 30, 2024 11:28 am