The ‘Best Chris’ debate, as if you don’t know, is a ceaseless online discussion over which of the four Hollywood Chrises – Evans, Hemsworth, Pratt and Pine – is the greatest and why. Now, it seems the latter of these is feeling the pressure to raise his prominence in the rankings.
Pine, best known for his turns as Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman 1984 and Captain Kirk in the Kelvin Timeline Star Trek movies, is typically something of an outlier in the arguments as he’s the only one to not feature in the MCU and thus regularly share screen time with the others.
While speaking to Comedy Central interview series Stir Crazy about the issue, he had this to say:
“I feel like I’m the underdog right now so I’ll take all the support I can get… Those damn Chrises man, I just, it’s either change my name or really just step it up.”
Suggestions put forward for how to settle the debate included a movie team-up titled The Chrissening where the four of them “sit around in cute sweaters for two hours; that makes $2 billion easily,” or a convention – the Chrisicon – where they all put on “a Rat Pack show at the Sands where we entertain and do a bit of vaudeville.”
Another factor that could aid Pine in the debate are the calls to remove Pratt from consideration due to his ties to an anti-LGBT church and replace him with an alternative, such as Birds of Prey’s Chris Messina or Crazy Rich Asians’ Chris Pang.
Of course, the whole thing is really just for fun and came about due to the statistical improbability of a quartet of hunky men, of similar ages, who happen to share the same first name, all achieving Hollywood fame at around the same time. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging when actors engage with the daft games their fans play as it makes them seem more accessible and human, which would probably also be taken as a factor to consider in the ratings.