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How We Reached Peak Superhero Bod

While it may seem like eight packs and blasted pecs were there at the dawn of the Marvel and D.C. cinematic universes, heroes weren't always this ripped.
This image may contain Chris Pratt Human Person Chris Hemsworth Face Skin and Man
Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in X-men, 2000; Chris Pratt in Guardians of the Galaxy, 2014, Chris Hemsworth in Thor: Ragnarok, 2017.From left, from Moviestore/Rex/Shutterstock, from Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Everett Collection, courtesy of Marvel Studios.

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For Chris Pratt, the difference between TV success and global movie stardom was about 60 pounds. That’s what the former Parks and Recreation star had to drop—and replace with chiseled muscle—in order to land Guardians of the Galaxy, the Marvel superhero film that turned him from a familiar face into the friendlier Harrison Ford of his generation. Now he’s omnipresent, currently starring in a second Guardians film that’s smashing even more box-office expectations. Pratt has spent his most recent press tour frankly chatting about his weight-loss regimen and meticulous eating habits, cataloguing the latter in the silly Instagram series #WHATSMYSNACK, where he waxes comedic about his 180-calorie carrot-cake muffins and the other tiny, bland snacks that keep him fit.

It wasn’t always like this. Before studios became fluent in superhero, there was a time when action stars could get away with having a bit more gut. “Indiana Jones doesn’t look like that. Mel Gibson in all the Lethal Weapons didn’t look like that,” stuntman Eddie Davenport tells Vanity Fair. Neither did Tobey Maguire in the first Spider-Man—who was fit, but in a high-school-metabolish kind of way—or a younger Chris Evans in the first, barely remembered Fantastic Four.

Then Hugh Jackman came along. Consider the first time you saw him play Wolverine, in 2000’s inaugural X-Men. He was regular-guy buff, the neighborhood toughie who never met a chest exercise he didn’t like. But he evolved, and was flexing melon-sized biceps by 2006’s X-Men: the Last Stand. By this winter’s Logan, Jackman’s Wolverine had spent 17 years as a famously thick, veiny slab of muscle, matching his body to the comic book version of his character.

“With the first three X-Men films, I never had Wolverine exactly how I wanted him to look, to be honest,” Jackman said in a 2015 interview with, where else, a body-building magazine. “Now I want Logan to look animalistic, savage, carnal, veins popping out, and coiled like a spring. I wanted audiences to say, ‘O.K., this guy could quite easily rip someone’s head off.’”

Along the way to reaching that noble goal, he perhaps inadvertently set one for every superhero to come. The first X-Men films were made before the Marvel Cinematic Universe explosion, before Zach Snyder’s grimdark take on Superman and Christopher Nolan’s prestige-y Batman films. Jackman raised the bar—and deadlifted it, probably. And in a post-Jackman world, actors playing superhero soldiers (Chris Evans, Captain America), gods (Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Henry Cavill’s Superman), and everything in between (Pratt, natch) have to look every inch the part.

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in X-Men: Days of Future Past, 2014.From 20th Century Fox Film Corp/Everett Collection.

Davenport, who’s worked twice as Jackman’s body double, naturally agrees that the actor’s superhero buffness has had major influence. But he also thinks increasingly cut superheroes are a sign of our late-capitalist times: “Everybody just looks to upgrade everything. They want a bigger house, they want a faster car, they want a better version of their iPhones. That mentality just kind of skimmed over to people’s bodies. Somebody always seems to raise the bar and that just becomes the new normal.” This is proven true every few years, from Brad Pitt six-packedly monologuing on the set of Fight Club, to filthy Spartans raising hell in 300, to Chris Pratt posting “six months no beer” #gelfies for that special Celebrities Are Just Like You (But Hotter) touch.

Trainer Jason Walsh—who knocked Matt Damon back into Jason Bourne–worthy shape and turned John Krasinski from a soft sarcasm machine to an action hero for 13 Hours (the Pratt treatment, if you will)—agrees. The longtime trainer thinks movies and social media have inspired “a new evolution in training,” he says. “It’s bigger now than it ever has been.”

The way these actors bulk up, however, is changing. Though the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and Dwayne Johnsons of this world—both of whom came from traditions of extreme fitness (bodybuilding and wrestling, respectively)—still cultivate enormous muscles, most modern-day action stars ape the Wolverine look by getting “shredded,” i.e., stripping away fat so that their muscles are as defined as possible. The “camera adds 10 pounds” rule plays to their advantage, Davenport says: “What helps that is if you just stay on the leaner side. The more shredded you are, the more massive you look.” He cites Daniel Craig in Casino Royale, as an example: “He looks massive when he’s walking out of the water in the beach, but he’s just shredded,” he says, guessing the actor is “a buck 70,” or 170 pounds in gymspeak.

Walsh, too, admires a leaner, more modern look, downvoting the dated aesthetics of Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Walsh also emphasizes his desire to help “empower women,” who still don’t get enough attention in the superhero space. (Wonder Woman arrives this summer, and Captain Marvel will hit in 2019.) Walsh recently trained Emma Stone for her upcoming role as Billie Jean King in the Battle of the Sexes, helping the petite star earn some surprisingly defined biceps. “If I told you how strong this girl is, it would blow your mind. She ate it up,” he says. “We lifted five days a week . . . she worked her ass off.”

Of course, female superheroes have traditionally been held to different but no less difficult body standards—they must be ultra-slender and toned, sometimes with defined muscle (Jennifer Garner in Daredevil) but more often without (Halle Berry in Catwoman, or Scarlett Johansson as the Black Widow). Where male co-stars have to puff up their chests to fill up their superhero suits, actresses must primarily shed weight to squeeze into whatever form of leather or spandex awaits them.

Halle Berry in Catwoman, 2004; Jennifer Garner in Daredevil, 2003.Left, from Warner Brothers; Right, from 20th Century Fox Film Corp, both from the Everett Collection.

That requires a different preparation mode from male actors, who are constantly in the gym and consuming extraordinary amounts of food. Or, more blatantly, they might turn to potential enhancers like steroids. Walsh says you won’t find the stuff around any of his stars, but acknowledges that there are certainly entertainers who try substances out of desperation. “The guys that do it probably don’t have a lot of time,” he says, adding that he won’t handle star clients with too little time to train. Two months is good. Three months is “perfect.”

In a 2014 Mens Journal feature, many insiders said the people most likely to turn to performance-enhancing drugs are actually stuntmen. They’re the ones who have to look perfect without studio benefits like trainers, nutritionists, and ample preparation time. “You’re never on a break. You are training 365 days a year,” Davenport says. “When we get a call, it’s normally a week or two before filming starts . . . if you don’t look like Wolverine right now, they’re just gonna call and find somebody who does.”

It makes sense that stuntmen would be the ones looking for shortcuts. But even they can’t fully escape the reality of dieting, working out, and preparing for dangerous feats. “I can put the most amazing, high-performance, nonsense-from-space gasoline in my car. But unless I turn on the ignition and hit the gas pedal, it’s not gonna go anywhere,” he says.

Davenport is, to this day, astonished by Jackman’s work ethic. “He’s an absolute beast . . . he was doing two-a-days on Logan. Like, we’re sitting around eating lunch and he’s training again.” Of course, that physicality also presents challenges for Davenport. When the stuntman got the call about Logan, he had been traveling in Australia—and dropping weight, dwindling to about 188 pounds. Then the studio gave him a vivid mandate: “There’s a clone [in the film]. The clone is Wolverine in his prime—and that’s gonna be you . . . we need you to be big.”

Davenport gained about 18 pounds for the role in under two months, thanks to a truly horrifying, self-designed regimen. “I didn’t see nine P.M. for I don’t even know how long. I was up by three o’clock, four o’clock in the gym, lifting as heavy as I could. My first meal—this will make you want to vomit—after I got back from the gym would be 10 hard boiled eggs, two cups of oatmeal, two cups of blueberries, two bananas, and a protein shake. That’s meal one of eight. I would literally need time after I ate to stop sweating and just not move. If I get up, I may throw up.”

The end result was looking like the chef’s-kiss version of Wolverine, all tightly packed muscle and Grand Canyon-depth definition. But the regimen for the look is monstrous—which is why it’s so shocking that Jackman has opted to reach a new physical peak with every X-Men and Wolverine film he’s done, and that Chris Pratt and Chris Evans and other Chrises will have to keep doing the same.

“To be Wolverine for 17 freaking years—who does that?” Davenport says. After working on Logan, the stuntman has to reject the urge to compare the star to other actors. Still, he can’t help but hear a small voice in the back of his head, echoing a very particular message: “None of you will ever amount to Hugh Jackman.”