11/9/2022 0 Comments Books like maze runner“I think he’s part of this initial crop of, like, beloved white boys/Internet Boyfriends-Logan Lerman comes to mind-for being largely unproblematic and down-to-earth,” Natalie Oganesyan, a celebrity news writer for BuzzFeed tells me. So why does O’Brien, despite his limited filmography and low-key presence in pop culture, have such a strong hold over millennials? When you think of “Internet Boyfriends,” the category of (mostly white) male celebrities that Twitter continually finds themselves sexually flustered over-from Harry Styles to Daniel Kaluuya to John Cho to Timothee Chalamet-those lovable men are typically adored in conjunction with their steady contributions to the zeitgeist, whether it be Oscar-nominated films or pop earworms. But over the past five years, he’s found a way to harness the ultimate celebrity superpower of being unproblematic and likable on social media and maintain a unique level of allure that’s cemented him as the “Internet’s Boyfriend.” Most recently, this public favor-and talent, obviously-earned him a role in Taylor Swift’s newly-released “All Too Well” short film as a supposed analog for Jake Gyllenhaal as well as an appearance on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm playing a rock band-leading version of himself. Since then, O’Brien has not continued starring in blockbuster movies or, more curiously, landed on one of a thousand streaming television shows (although he starred in a well-received episode of the Jordan Peele-produced YouTube anthology series Weird City in 2019). Furthermore, the film series was brought to a halt when O’Brien suffered serious injuries on the set of the final installment The Death Cure (he eventually fully recovered, allowing him to finish shooting). The franchise, mostly comprised of up-and-coming actors, also suffered from a lack of star power that would attract eyeballs outside of the group of young moviegoers who were most likely already familiar with O’Brien. While The Maze Runner trilogy was a financial success, the series is largely considered a flop, failing to make the same cultural imprint as its female-led dystopian predecessor The Hunger Games and even the abandoned Divergent series. By the time O’Brien starred in The Maze Runner in 2014, I had seen one too many YA novel film adaptations but was nonetheless excited for O’Brien to become a household name.īut that meteoric ascent didn’t really happen, at least in the sort of franchise-star-to-Oscar-contender-pipeline sort of way. I watched O’Brien’s interviews on YouTube and sought out his other projects like the indie rom-com The First Time and even the terrible Vince Vaughn-Owen Wilson vehicle The Internship. However, I walked away with a lasting crush on O’Brien and his portrayal of Scott McCall’s (the titular character) best friend Stiles Stilinski, who felt like a spiritual descendant of The O.C.’sanxious heartthrob Seth Cohen. So I sat down and binged two seasons of crappy CGI and a plotline involving Colton Haynes turning into a lizard before deciding that was all the Teen Wolf I could digest.
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