Chris Pratt receives the MTV Generation Award. Now what?

Things changed, and Chris Pratt is the latest to receive MTV’s Generation Award, a lifetime achievement honor created in 2005 to celebrate mega movie stars like Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp and Sandra Bullock. In just five years, Pratt went from being the modern-day equivalent of Tony Danza on “Taxi” to the star of two billion-dollar franchises in “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Jurassic World.” He was the voice of protagonist Emmet Brickowski in “The Lego Movie,” Steve McQueen to Denzel Washington’s Yul Brynner in the 2016 remake of “The Magnificent Seven” and set off celestial sparks with Jennifer Lawrence that same year in the sci-fi hit “Passengers.”

To quote a great San Diego news anchor, that escalated quickly.

Has anyone ever made a more stunningly swift transition from television to big-screen superstardom? It’s not entirely unprecedented. Pratt was 33 years old when his career skyrocketed, which is about the same age Bruce Willis was when he went from playing smirking private detective David Addison on “Moonlighting” to street-smart New York City cop John McClane in “Die Hard” (audiences actually laughed at the trailers, prompting a panicked 20th Century Fox to remove Willis’s face from the poster). And while the sarcastic Peter Quill, aka "Star-Lord," was, personality-wise, more of a wheelhouse character for Pratt than McClane was for Willis, it was the physical transformation that left moviegoers gasping – especially when Quill is stripped of his shirt and hosed down by his extraterrestrial captors. Pratt had gone from doughy to downright sculpted. Now that he’s got this physique, he hasn’t been shy about showing it off.

If you’re looking for a caveat to Pratt’s sudden success, it’s that the four-quadrant blockbusters have all been IP-driven. Though “Guardians of the Galaxy” was technically a new Marvel series, it was still a Marvel series, a carefully managed risk tied into the overarching narrative that began with 2008’s “Iron Man.” “Passengers” is the only wholly original film of the bunch, and while it performed respectably despite mostly negative reviews (doubling its $100 million domestic gross overseas), it wasn’t exactly a runaway smash.

There’s no doubt Pratt’s winning streak will continue with this month’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” but what’s the plan for the 2018 Generation Award recipient outside of franchise filmmaking? When is he going to soil that nice guy image with a role like Cruise's Frank T.J. Mackey in “Magnolia” or Vincent in “Collateral”? While nothing substantial has been revealed about his character in Vincent D’Onofrio’s forthcoming western “The Kid” (co-starring Ethan Hawke as lawman Pat Garrett and Dane DeHaan as Billy the Kid), it’s possible that role may give moviegoers their first glimpse of a darker, more complicated Pratt.

The next phase in Chris Pratt’s unlikely movie star career is upon us, and with his box office clout, he can not only call his tune, but handpick the people to call it. Does he go the Cruise/Pitt/DiCaprio route and align himself with his era’s most gifted filmmakers, or will he adopt the conservative, play-the-hits philosophy of Sylvester Stallone and Eddie Murphy? Who exactly is Chris Pratt? We’re about to find out.