@skylordcosplay/InstagramFor many of us, we experienced Avengers: Endgame in our local cinema, surrounded by other excited fans and, probably, a few noisy kids who had been dragged there by parents who couldn’t find a sitter.
That’s not to say the Avengers movies aren’t for kids of course, but seeing as they’ve been in the works for over a decade, there’s bound to be some families where the parents are way more into it than the kids ever will be.
For a few lucky fans around the world though, the first time they saw Endgame was in a cinema with the Avengers themselves, having been at the red carpet event with the cast of the film.
One such fan was Skyler Pinales, a cosplayer from Utah, who went to the Los Angeles premiere of Endgame along with a number of fellow dedicated fans looking uncannily like the heroes onscreen. Though it wasn’t just Skyler’s natural resemblance to Chris Pratt that got him into cosplay, as the activity has helped him through struggles with depression and body positivity issues.
Before getting into cosplay, Skyler didn’t even know what Guardians of the Galaxy was, and it wasn’t until friends started saying he looked like Chris Pratt that he finally watched the film and decided to give it a go – and it’s obviously paid off.
As Skyler told UNILAD:
I had no idea who or what the Guardians were. I didn’t even know about the first movie until Christmas of 2014. I remember seeing everyone at Salt Lake FanX wearing the red jackets and helmet of Star-Lord, but had no idea what it was.
After I finally watched the movie I remember looking at myself in the mirror one day and kinda had the thought like ‘hey, I kinda look like that guy,’ but thought nothing of it really. It was about a month or so later that I had friends start to point out my resemblance to Chris [Pratt] and told me I needed to cosplay as him.
While Skyler’s cosplay of Chris Pratt led him to the red carpet, another character he played led him down a not so fulfilling path.
Skyler said:
One character I cosplay is the Heath Ledger Joker, and I had studied the character for about a year, which lead me into a bit of a depression, which included weight gain, and it was after an event I saw a picture of my face and realized that I had put on a lot of weight.
So Skyler knew he had to make a few changes:
My biggest changes were I almost immediately went cold turkey on soda and tried controlling my portion sizes and cravings. I also got back into my other favorite hobbies of ballroom dancing and working in a haunted house. Both of those activities really help me shed the pounds.
That was about 7 years ago and I’ve gone from around 250 at my heaviest to around 190 when I was heavily dancing on a college tour team. Right now I’m around 210 and I’m still trying to get back into better shape by going to the gym and dieting properly.
Skyler shared an image of his transformation on Instagram, saying he was ‘still working’ on it, and sometimes still struggles ‘with body positivity’ but added: ‘Things like this give me a better mindset and know I can always do better. One day I’ll get that Chris Pratt body.’
Of course, motivation to get that Chris Pratt bod is in no short supply when you’re attending the Avengers premiere with the man himself.
As Skyler said:
The Endgame premiere was really a dream come true. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be at a red carpet event (though Endgame had purple carpet) and the culmination of the years being a Chris Pratt lookalike and improving my cosplay to be top notch finally paid off.
Unfortunately, I only got to interact with [Chris] for about 10-20 seconds as he signed my Star-Lord helmet, because he was being rushed through the crowd to get to the press events and such, and sadly he didn’t mention anything about my cosplay.
Still, without the cosplay, Skyler wouldn’t have been at the star-studded affair in the first place, getting to witness the final film in a saga that’s been 11 years and 22 films in the making.
As well as being a student, Skyler works as department leader at a local movie theatre where – understandably – he gets the Chris Pratt comments fairly often.
Though he has some fun with it too:
It’s honestly still one of my favorite things to do – to see how many people I can trick or catch looking/doing double takes. Almost every day I wonder what I can do to be more like any of the Chris Pratt characters.
I work at a movie theatre and sometimes I’ll be just going about my day and helping a guest and they’ll stop and start to comment, ‘hey, do you know you look like…’ and I will cut them off and look them dead in the eye and reply, ‘Chris Pratt?’
Of course, it’s not just a natural resemblance to Chris Pratt that helps with the cosplay, as Skyler has gone to great lengths to make the outfits as accurate as possible, including an original working TPS-L2 Sony Walkman – the same model Peter Quill has in Guardians of the Galaxy, Sony’s first commercially available Walkman.
All in all, Skyler reckons he’s spent over $2,000 on his Star-Lord costume alone. Though I’m sure it wasn’t the most expensive outfit on the red carpet that night.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.