Chris Pine is one of Hollywood's most familiar faces, a person who is versatile and can move between the blockbusters and the independent circuit due to his now production arm he is flexing in recent years post-pandemic. He is good looking and possesses one of the most distinctive voices that has lent itself to many a documentary and will now feature as the lead male voice in the new Disney animated feature film, Wish, that is released this Friday in theatres.
Chris Pine first came to prominence in the early 2000s as the love interest opposite Anne Hathaway in the Princess Diaries 2: A Royal Engagement (2004) and then Lindsey Lohan in Just My Luck (2005). He was marked out as the boy next door that you can take home to meet your parents, he would star in wholesome content as opposed to raunchy comedies.
Then came his defining turn as Captain James T. Kirk in J.J. Abrams' reboot of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek which led to two further sequels. These films were box office gold and credible attempt to recapture the magic of the final frontier, with Pine's portrayal gaining great praise alongside Zachery Quinto's Spock.
The same year saw him star in a small indie film called Carriers, where he was part of a group attempting to evade a global pandemic – this gritty indie film showed his strengths as an actor and as Star Trek did his ability to hold together an ensemble.
His casting as Kirk in a franchise meant he had to navigate this journey of one for them and one for me mentality, something reflected in the last five years of his career where he has started to produce films he stars in to shepherd his career more closely.
In 2010, he was chosen to star opposite Denzel Washington in Tony Scott's last film Unstoppable, a year after Star Trek and the future looked promising as he was being entrusted with these roles.
Yet the following year there was a mis-step with This Means War opposite Tom Hardy and Reese Witherspoon; a rom-com set in the world of espionage with Pine and Hardy as two CIA operative suitors aiming for Witherspoon's affection – it did not succeed in finding an audience.
He did have a quite brilliant cameo in Into The Woods, the Sondheim musical adaptation where he showed off his ability to sing also with the song ‘Agony' as Cinderella's Prince – a role that showed his musicality and versatility poking fun at his good boy persona.
Following the two Trek sequels (2013 and 2016), he still seeked some credibility and box office awareness. He attempted to take on the poisoned chalice character of Jack Ryan in Shadow Recruit, which was a decent stab at the role but again did not connect with an audience, the same fate that succumb Ben Affleck in The Sum of All Fears.
2016 was perhaps his watershed year, as he had three fine releases in a calendar year. The Finest Hours shows him as a sea captain who must rescue men from a burning oil rig at sea – a matinee actioner he led a great ensemble, the final Star Trek entry (Beyond) came at the end of the year but it's the film that is the meet of that sandwich which provides perhaps his most memorable role.
In Hell and High Water, he plays Toby Howard, a small-town bank robber with his brother, Tanner (played by Ben Foster), their movements elicit interest from Texas Ranger Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) in a film scripted and directed by Taylor Sheridan. The action-packed family crime drama was heralded as a great film and rightly so, the scene where Bridges and Pine have a showdown on Howard's porch shows the reserved ability of Pine to stand toe to toe with one of the greats.
Yet this was an actor willing to take risks with his choices and also able to poke fun at himself and his persona. Through happenstance, he was one of four Chris' who came to prominence at the same time along with Messers Hemsworth, Evans and Pratt. You need only see his monologue from Saturday Night Live in May 2017 to see the self-effacing side of himself. https://youtu.be/MGurtL83zhY
The joke being that he was not good enough for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and this led to him landing in the Warner Bros DC universe as Steve Trevor opposite Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman in the 2017 film directed by Patty Jenkins (and the subsequent lacklustre sequel).
The first entry in the franchise was successful partly due to the winning chemistry between Gadot and Pine, and that is something you can credit to Pine, who consistently is an actor who can garner genuine affection from his female leads and remains one of the most desirable bachelors in Hollywood currently.
Post-pandemic, saw the release of the Wonder Woman sequel which was not well received and then in 2022 you see an actor attempting to navigate the rest of his career. Producing several projects – The Contractor (espionage thriller), All The Old Knives (two hander with Thandiwe Newton – again great chemistry in a so-so film) and his presence in Olivia Wilde's film Don't Worry Darling, gave the film some legitimacy and credibility and he handled the press coverage in Venice with class.
This Friday, Disney is releasing in theatres its brand new and 62nd feature length animation film entitled Wish it is about a young sorceress who is taking into training with a grand magician who is more than he seems, King Magnifico voiced by Pine (who voices in animation for the first time since 2012's Rise of the Guardians, when he voiced Jack Frost).
This year has seen him lead the new franchise Dungeons and Dragons which was warmly received, perhaps a bit more than his directorial debut as mentioned, and with a sure-fire hit in Wish – written by Jennifer Lee (who directed and co-wrote Frozen), this film with influences of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty married with recent magical Encanto(2020) – early buzz suggests that Pine as King Magnifico is a standout.
Pine has traversed a varied career for the last twenty years in cinema, now is the time for him to make a claim to not be only the best Chris but perhaps the best low-key leading man in Hollywood who can try his hand at any genre with confidence but also box-office security.
