Something has happened to our leading men in this summer’s blockbusters. Put simply, the hunk is back. No longer are movie stars soft-muscled alt boys like Timothée Chalamet, with vintage shirts and meticulous hair. Now the new shirt is no shirt; hair is slicked back with oil and spit. In 2024, it’s all about overt charisma and abs like Fort Knox.
Consider Glen Powell. The Texas-born Twisters star (who also appeared with Sydney Sweeney in last year’s Anyone But You) seems to have been built in a lab – scientifically formulated to make sure there’s not a dry seat in the theater.
He loves his mom. He owns a puppy named Brisket. He’s a trained pilot, whose flight school was paid for by none other than Tom Cruise. He’s blond, brawny, and draws comparisons to old Hollywood beefcakes like Paul Newman. The antithesis of a hot rodent, Glen’s who you call when you find a mouse in your kitchen.
He’s having a moment. But he also exemplifies a broader blurring of the line between actors and underwear models. Some of this year’s buzziest ad campaigns wouldn’t have looked out of place in a 2000s Abercrombie catalogue. There’s the British actor Theo James, wearing nothing but tiny white swim briefs in a new Dolce & Gabbana ad. The New York Times dubbed Jeremy Allen White’s Herculean look in a Calvin Klein spot “beefcake gravitas”.
Fictional gladiators are also returning to the screen. The sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 epic is going to star Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington and Denzel Washington’s hoop earring, all of whom are on glorious display in the trailer. It promises scenes of men with calves the size of bone-in hams making guttural moans while attacking each other with swords. An RFK Jr fever dream, sure, but don’t act as if you’re above it.
Like pornography, it’s hard to define what makes a hunk, but you know it when you see it. “Every hunk is hot, but not every hot person is a hunk,” said Robert Thompson, a professor of film and television at Syracuse University. “From the very nature of the word, hunk implies a hunk of something, a big physical presence. Whereas, especially in the last generation, there were antiheroes and nerdy characters and people who had much less of a physical presence being determined, attractive and hot.”
This is THE moment Austin Butler left Sarah Harris flustered mid-way through an interview.
— The Project (@theprojecttv) June 28, 2024
He knows how to charm people! pic.twitter.com/wKww1NCMOi
Hunks tend to take the path of least resistance to sexiness. There’s a safety to their cookie-cutter perfectionism. “A lot of them are just plain,” Thompson said. “They look like they came out of a 3D printer.”
But hunks are still regionally defined. Jeremy Allen White looks like the type of guy you’d run into at a party in Brooklyn; Glen Powell’s handing out free samples at a Tulsa Costco. Powell has become something of an ambassador for middle America, saying in an interview that Hollywood producers focus too much on marketing to either coast, when they should focus on what the rest of the country wants. Enough of the New York softboys: give us the middle American sports bro or guy next door.
It’s hard to escape the horniness exuded online for these guys: in one clip that’s made the rounds, a scruffy Austin Butler sits opposite the Australian TV presenter Sarah Harris, who admits to being “flustered” in his presence. “You have a very piercing gaze,” she tells him. “You have a very piercing gaze too,” he shoots back, keeping intense eye contact. The most dedicated fan fiction writer could not dream this up.
Elsewhere this summer, Zac Efron, the Peter Pan of hunks, romances Nicole Kidman in the age-gap comedy A Family Affair; in one love scene, Kidman rips off his T-shirt, Fabio-style. But the trend doesn’t just live on screens. In real life, Taylor Swift dumped her unhinged pop-rock boyfriend Matty Healy to pair off with Travis Kelce, a literal tight end. And the model Bella Hadid currently dates the cowboy Adan Banuelos.
For a while, Hollywood hunks came from the school of brooding, moody method acting: Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, James Dean, Steve McQueen. The ideal evolved into a more suave, 70s playboy type, like Robert Redford, Warren Beatty or Burt Reynolds, posing nude in the Cosmopolitan centerfold.
Reagan-era hunks tended to come from the all-American crop; the sexy but avuncular leading men Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks or Denzel Washington, who truly has hunk staying power. During the 2010s, four white dudes named Chris (Pine, Evans, Hemsworth, Pratt) dominated hot guy conversations, but also sparked discussion about Hollywood’s glaring lack of diversity.
Crucially, hunks have tended to marketed for the heterosexual gaze, with everyone pretending that gay men wouldn’t be interested in shirtless, greased-up, muscle guys. Now, the mainstream hunk doesn’t have to come off as painfully straight: the LGBTQ+ actors Jonathan Bailey and Matt Bomer played lovers in the political thriller Fellow Travelers. Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine played lovers in Red, White & Royal Blue.
True, it may be too early to write a serious obit for the anemic-chic stars out there. Chalamet’s been filming a Bob Dylan biopic, and the little lad Barry Keoghan landed both the pop star Sabrina Carpenter’s heart and a role in her Please Please Please music video.
But, overall, in times of crisis, we cling to what’s comfortable: sweatpants, Kraft mac and cheese, and a crop of good old fashioned Hollywood hunks to obsess over. Or maybe we’re yearning for a simpler era, when the world wasn’t on fire and our idols were charismatic buff boys. Whatever the reason, classically handsome men are in again. How brave of us to decide this!
