Could Star-Lord become the face of Avengers 2.0?

Chris Pratt's Christian faith may be too controversial for this rumor to be true

I wasn’t going to write anything for Memorial Day, especially not something about the industrial entertainment complex.

After all, this is a serious holiday, one I was able to celebrate on the National Mall year after year during decade of the Summer Institute of Journalism era, which began in 1995. Plus, my family is headed to a church event today to celebrate some friends settling into a new home. That sort of thing happens on holiday weekends.

Then I noticed a rumor that combines two topics that, for several years, I have considered both interesting and symbolic. So, here we go.

First, there is the rolling Marvel Cinematic Universe train wreck that has followed the mega-hit “Avengers: Endgame,” with studio leaders struggling to satisfy the felt needs of “modern audiences” while also pleasing old-school fans. Second, there are the storms of controversy that get stirred up whenever action-flick superstar Chris Pratt dares to discuss his Christian faith.

Put those things together and you could have — we are at the rumors stage — an important plot twist in the dramatic story of Hollywood and the fading movie franchises that used to print money for the powers that be. In Rational Sheep land, you may remember these headlines, and there are others that would fit in this list:

* “Age of the crashing Hollywood empires — Snow White, Disney woes, Star Wars fears, Indiana Jones and other pop-culture Marvels.”

* “Disney Wars: $Billions at stake, as well as ... The future of entertainment franchises that ordinary Americans offer to their children.”

* “Behold, Hollywood has a huge hit -- for boys. This silly, some say sloppy, movie is raking in $$$, while it's fans go wild.”

* “Reading the tea leaves in a famous ‘reaction video’ — Are the ‘toxic’ Star Wars fans wars about race, gender, politics or class?”

Where to start? I hate to do this, but readers will need to watch the first five minutes or so of the YouTube video at the top of this post. In it, some self-avowed Hollywood insiders discuss a bombshell rumor about the Marvel Universe. These online rebels claim a 90% accurate rate on their scoops and, in my experience, they have frequently been on target.

Anyway, the team at the WDW Pro channel (the emphasis is on Disney rumors) claims that the Marvel brain trust is prepared to create expanded roles for Pratt in their (troubled) efforts to create a new Avengers team. Could Pratt’s Star-Lord character — the Alpha in the Guardians of the Galaxy series — become the face of the next set of Avengers?

Sounds logical, right? Maybe.

After all, Y!Entertainment recently offered this headline: “Chris Pratt Was Asked Where His Avengers: Doomsday Chair Was, And He Had An A+ Response.” Here is the top of that public-relations teaser:

When Avengers: Doomsday went into production, fans were treated to a four-hour livestream revealing two dozen names of the stars of the new film. I remember, I live blogged the whole thing. …

While we’ve since learned that not every important name in the Avengers: Doomsday cast was revealed in the live stream, several were conspicuous by their absence. One of those was Chris Pratt. Collider recently asked him just where the chair with his name on it was, and the actor joked that it must have been there; we just didn’t see it. Pratt said…

“I don't know. I think it was far off -- like they must have cut away from it. I don't know what happened. It was there. I'm sure it was there.” …

To be clear, Chris Pratt is just joking and isn’t confirming his appearance in Avengers: Doomsday. If his chair wasn’t there, it’s because he either isn’t in the movie, or Marvel doesn’t want us to know he is, and either way, Pratt is pretty good about not letting the cat out of the bag, unlike some other MCU actors we could mention.

And Yada Yada. Based on previous post-credit-scene tips, Star-Lord is supposed to return somehow, someway.

But why would it make sense to make him THE STAR of future Avenger 2.0 efforts? I mean, that would cost a lot of money, since Pratt is a truly bankable movie star. Plus, his faith has also made him controversial.

Thus, my question for this post: Are the principalities and powers of the Marvel Universe so desperate to heal their rift with Middle America that they would put a super-spotlight on a (#triggerwarning) evangelical Christian (of some kind or another)?

I mean, what if moving Pratt out front would require some sort of Avengers demotion for Ms. Captain Marvel, played by Brie Larson, the mistress of hot-quip quotes?

Would Hollywood survive? Could this be another sign that even Hollywood leaders may think there is a “VIBE” shift in America that they should notice? I mean, Pratt never committed the sin of endorsing Orange Man Bad, or anything like that, but he also didn’t join other Avengers in publicly backing the campaign of the presidential candidate previously known as Joe Biden.

I mean, the goal of activists not that long ago was to get Pratt fired, somehow. Right?

Thus, there is this BIG QUESTION: Could Pratt save Marvel?

By the way, I’m not a Marvel fan. But, obviously, I think that the changing shape of the entertainment marketplace is something that pastors, parents, teachers and counselors should ponder.

What think ye?

And while we are at it, here is a “On Religion” column flashback to an earlier chapter in the dramatic Hollywood story of Chris Pratt: Controversial Believer.

---

That strange sermonette that Chris Pratt tricked MTV viewers into swallowing (2018)

Everyone knows what the angelic nanny Mary Poppins meant when she sang: "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down."

Hollywood superstar Chris Pratt put a different spin on that during the recent MTV Movie & TV Awards. After receiving the Generation Award, he told fans to "listen up," because he was speaking "as your elder." Then he recited what CNN called his "Nine Rules for Living."

It was a strange set of commandments – part potty humor, part youth-pastor sermon. But Rule No. 4 said this: "When giving a dog medicine, put the medicine in a little piece of hamburger and they won't even know they're eating medicine."

That's what Pratt was doing. The megastar of Guardians of the Galaxy and the Jurassic Park reboots followed the MTV rules and used some mildly off-color humor – like how to poop at a party without smelling up the bathroom. These MTV celebrity-fests are known for their racy fashion statements and crude language.

That humor was Pratt's "hamburger." What caused a tsunami of Internet clicks was his "medicine," speaking as an out-of-the-closet Hollywood Christian.

Rule No. 2 proclaimed: "You have a soul. Be careful with it."

Rule No. 6 was rather personal: "God is real. God loves you. God wants the best for you. Believe that, I do."

Rule No. 8 was just as blunt: "Learn to pray. It's easy, and it's so good for your soul."

There was more to this drama than the rare chance to hear a "Hollywood A-lister tell people to pray," noted film critic Titus Techera of the Claremont Institute. Pratt was trying to turn celebrity worship upside down.

"Celebrities don't create themselves – nor do they simply come out of the cynical manipulations of Hollywood. They come out of us," he noted, in an Ave Maria Radio essay. "We want something we can worship now, easily. … Above all, we love these celebrations because, unlike church, they don't require that we sacrifice our pride. That's the same as saying that we tend to find church boring rather than exciting. …

"The best celebrities can do is bear well the burden of our wrong-headed worship – not to throw it off, but gently and humorously to point us in the direction of what's truly divine and thus worth worshiping. This is what Chris Pratt did with his nine rules."

It's possible that Pratt was more candid than he appeared to be in MTV's broadcast. In recent years, the actor has become increasingly candid about his faith, even during times of personal turmoil. At last year's Teen Choice Awards – his first public event after announcing his separation from his wife, actress Anna Faris – he said: "I would not be here with the ease and grace that I have in my heart without my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

At the MTV award show, Pratt concluded with rule No. 9, and some complex faith-based language.

"Nobody is perfect. People will tell you that you are perfect just the way that you are. You are not! You are imperfect. You always will be, but there is a powerful force that designed you that way," he said. "If you are willing to accept that, you will have grace. And grace is a gift. … That grace was paid for with somebody else's blood. Do not forget that. Don't take that for granted."

Producers switched from one camera to another after Pratt's reference to "a powerful force that designed you that way." The MTV press office confirmed that this program was prerecorded and never aired live. The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question about whether Pratt's remarks were edited – perhaps removing an explicit reference to Jesus.

Whatever happened, Pratt's pronouncement "was funny, it was strange and it was moving," said David French, senior writer at National Review. The video "went viral" because Pratt offered sobering advice to a generation of young people that has seen its share of anxiety and depression, even after waves of messages that things are fine just the way they are.

The bottom line, is that millions of "people really like Chris Pratt," said French, reached by email. "Christians always love it when a celebrity publicly embraces Christ, and he did it in a particularly striking way."