Long before he became one of Hollywood’s most bankable action stars, leading franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, Chris Pratt was best known as the lovable idiot from Parks and Recreation. Andy Dwyer was initially conceived of as a supporting character whose accident brought Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) into Leslie Knope’s (Amy Poehler) orbit, establishing the friendship at the heart of the series. But Pratt proved so effortlessly funny and likable that Andy evolved from Ann’s slacker boyfriend into one of the show’s central characters. Even Andy’s eventual relationship with April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza) developed organically thanks to the actors’ chemistry.
Parks and Rec established Pratt as a likable comedic actor, but that success came with a downside. Pratt leaned into Andy’s doughy physique and childlike personality, which made him even less fitting for the action hero roles he dreamed of playing. He’s talked about this openly in the past, particularly in an episode of the Scene Stealers podcast released in January 2026. In that interview, he credits one movie in particular as the reason he went on to become Star-Lord — and that movie just landed on Netflix.
Originally released in 2012, Zero Dark Thirty chronicles the decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, the tense and methodical thriller focuses on Maya (Jessica Chastain), an obsessive CIA analyst whose pursuit of a single lead culminates in the real-life raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. That’s where Pratt comes in.
As fictional Navy SEAL Justin Lenihan, Pratt arrives relatively late in the movie as part of the team assigned to conduct the raid. Even in a role with limited screen time, he delivers a memorable performance. Joel Edgerton plays the team leader, Patrick Grayston, but Pratt’s Lenihan emerges as the unit’s strongest personality. He expresses skepticism about the mission and presses Maya on the legitimacy of the intelligence placing bin Laden inside the compound.
“I didn’t even want to use you guys, with your dip and your Velcro and all your gear bullshit,” Maya responds. “I wanted to drop a bomb.”
Pratt conveys a grizzled frat-boy energy as Lenihan hops around camp playing horseshoes. While most of his teammates remain relatively quiet, he comes across as gregarious and approachable.
Later, as the team rides a helicopter toward its target, Lenihan listens to something through his headphones and jokes that it’s a motivational speech from Tony Robbins. Even just seeing Pratt wearing wired headphones while inside a metal metal vehicle makes the character feel like a proto-Peter Quill. Not long afterward, Lenihan is sweeping through the compound in complete darkness with disciplined precision. And we admire him even more when he pauses to calm and direct some children the team encounters amid the chaos.
That balance was crucial. Lenihan retains flashes of Pratt’s warmth and humor, but even with a few wisecracking jokes, he’s is a serious character. As Pratt recalled on Scene Stealers, nobody watching Zero Dark Thirty laughed when he appeared onscreen, which he’d gotten used to with Dwyer.
“I was selling and portraying a badass, and people bought it,” Pratt said. “You’re constantly recalibrating how the business sees you and where you might live in the marketplace.”
Zero Dark Thirty gave Pratt his first real opportunity to change that perception. It certainly helped that the movie was a critical and commercial success, grossing more than $132 million worldwide against a reported budget of around $40 million and earning five Academy Award nominations.
Pratt had auditioned for several Marvel roles over the years, but the studio repeatedly passed. When Guardians of the Galaxy came along, he initially resisted auditioning. According to Pratt, director James Gunn was similarly skeptical about casting “the fat guy from Parks and Rec.” Casting director Sarah Finn eventually persuaded them both.
By then, however, Zero Dark Thirty had helped Pratt identify the kind of leading man he could become. He wanted to combine the physical credibility of an action hero with the comedic instincts he had developed on Parks and Rec. His transformation for the movie also proved he could look the part. When Pratt later met with Marvel executives, Kevin Feige reportedly produced a shirtless photo taken during his Zero Dark Thirty training and asked whether he could achieve that physique again. Seven months later, Pratt became Star-Lord.
That career transformation makes Zero Dark Thirty a fascinating time capsule, but Pratt is hardly the only reason to watch Kathryn Bigelow’s gripping thriller. The movie belongs primarily to Chastain, whose performance transforms Maya’s pursuit of bin Laden into an all-consuming obsession defined by the painstaking process of gathering intelligence over the course of 10 years. Chastain also won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama for this role.
Zero Dark Thirty also wisely does not make a patriotic spectacle of the raid itself. The sequence is dark and disorienting to emphasize the uneasiness surrounding a shadow-ops mission like this. Pratt fits naturally into that restrained approach. Lenihan’s easygoing humor humanizes the raid team, but that levity mostly disappears once the operation begins. Watching him move between those modes now feels like seeing the two sides of his future stardom come together. It may be a small role, but it helped prove that the lovable idiot from Parks and Rec could also be taken seriously as a man of action. For that reason alone, Zero Dark Thirty is worth watching on Netflix.
