“Ooooh,†cooed Chris Pratt last night, his eyes opening wide as a tray of desserts came into view. We were at an awards-season party celebrating The Lego Movie, Pratt’s smash animated hit, and among the passed appetizers was a vast array of colorful cupcakes, each topped off with an edible Lego brick. “What if you stacked four on top of each other?†Pratt asked as he scanned the cupcake tray, searching in vain for a sugary loophole. “Would it still count as one cupcake because they’re Legos?â€
Even one cupcake would be a cheat for Pratt, who famously got buff this year for Guardians of the Galaxy and retained his impressive figure for next summer’s action spectacular Jurassic World. The trailer for the latter movie just recently debuted online, and Pratt confessed that he had some qualms about it: Namely, he wasn’t happy with his own performance. “I’m just like, Aw, why did I do that with my eyebrow?†he told Vulture. “Unfortunately, it was one of those things you do as an artist where you’re hypercritical about it the first time you see it. I had to take a couple steps back and keep watching it before I was like, ‘Oh my God, that is really good.’ So it took me two or three times seeing it before I knew it was great, but that’s how I was with Guardians of the Galaxy, that’s how I was with The Lego Movie, that’s how I am with everything I’m in.†A self-confessed Jurassic Park superfan, Pratt sought to assure fans, “The movie’s gonna be ten times better than the trailer.â€
Pratt’s self-inflicted creative doubts make him a good muse for Lego Movie directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who just pitched Pratt the outline for Lego Movie 2, which they’re currently scripting. “I was like, ‘You guys, this is fucking perfect. It’s awesome,’†said Pratt. “And they were all, ‘No, it still needs work.’ I was like, ‘No, it doesn’t, it’s ready now, let’s go!’
“You know what’s so cool?†continued Pratt. “I don’t read comments online a lot — I’ve learned not to do that, because 19 of them can be great and then the 20th one won’t be, and you’ll think about it all day — but that being said, with Lego, which is at something like 95 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, only 5 percent of critics found something wrong with it. Well, whether they admit it or not, both Chris and Phil are so hypercritical of their stuff that they exist in that 5 percent, and that’s really what drives them to make the movie so good. So when they told me the pitch for the second movie, I was like, Oh, they want to get 100 percent on this next one.â€
And though Pratt’s all too willing to put his own performance through the wringer, he’s not nearly as tough on other people’s creative efforts. “I’m not that 5 percent, I’m just not,†he laughed. “I’m the guy who’s like, ‘DUDE, DID YOU SEE THAT ONE MOVIE? THAT WAS AWESOME!’ And people are like, ‘Really, The Butterfly Effect?’ And I’m like, ‘YES! IT’S THE BEST MOVIE!’†He grinned, shooting one last look at the tray of Lego cupcakes. “I love ‘em all.â€