Vulture Study: Who Has the Biggest Biceps in This Summer’s Movies?
When Thor arrives in theaters on Friday, it will kick off a movie season that is unusually strong in biceps. As played by Chris Hemsworth, a six-foot-four Australian, Thor looks like he’s got a cord of wood, an enormous hock of ham, or a spacious living space for an entire community of Smurfs as arms. (A fact to strike envy in steroidal hearts everywhere: The Hemsworth you see onscreen is actually the “leaner, meaner” version of Thor. At one point, Thor director Kenneth Branagh had to tell him to stop bulking up.) And Hemsworth will be followed by a wave of super-jacked leading men: Captain America, Green Lantern, Crazy, Stupid, Love, Friends With Benefits, and Conan the Barbarian are just some of the movies marketing the buff bodies of their stars (Chris Evans, Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling, Justin Timberlake, and Jason Momoa, respectively). But just how big are they, and who is biggest? This is the kind of scientific challenge that Vulture thrives on, so we set out to rank them by bicep size. Our methodology? We found pictures or screen grabs of the stars that best highlighted their arms, then found other items in the frames that had known, constant sizes (sharpies, stroller wheels, dog tags, Thor’s hammer). Using them as points of proportional reference, we were able to calculate the diameter of the biceps (not their circumference) at their plumpest points. Behold, the biceps of summer, in ascending size order.
The wimpiest arms of the summer belong, rightfully, to Steve Rogers, the scrawny guy who becomes Captain America with the help of a marvelous, muscle-...
The wimpiest arms of the summer belong, rightfully, to Steve Rogers, the scrawny guy who becomes Captain America with the help of a marvelous, muscle-inflating machine. (That machine is to muscles what helium pumps are to balloons.) Chris Evans's head was cut and pasted onto this weakling's body; his real physique places him much higher on this list.
We include Wiig's skinny, regular-woman arms as a point of comparison to those of wimpy Steve Rogers's, which are even smaller.
Photo: Photo Credit: S...We include Wiig's skinny, regular-woman arms as a point of comparison to those of wimpy Steve Rogers's, which are even smaller.
Photo: Photo Credit: Suzanne Hanover/Copyright: ? 2011 Universal Studios. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
And here is a pretty normal-looking guy's arm. Inevitably, his bicep size is dwarfed by beard fluffiness, but neither is bad!
Yes, yes, this outfit is less revealing than Daniel Craig's James Bond bathing suit, but don't let the fabric fool you: the five-foot-ten Craig is pac...
Yes, yes, this outfit is less revealing than Daniel Craig's James Bond bathing suit, but don't let the fabric fool you: the five-foot-ten Craig is packing some guns. The aliens must have had to special order the futuristic bracelet that talks to them to fit his meaty forearm.
Photo: Zade Rosenthal/2011 Universal Studios
The next three men on this list basically share a physique. They’re all six foot one, lithely jacked, and inspired by Michaelangelo's David. Justin Ti...
The next three men on this list basically share a physique. They’re all six foot one, lithely jacked, and inspired by Michaelangelo's David. Justin Timberlake will use his frame to convince you he’s fit to act sleep with Mila Kunis and incite Patricia Clarkson to goose him.
Meanwhile, actor and underwear model Kellan Lutz will use his frame to convince you he’s fit to act sleep with Mandy Moore.
Some actors go Method by putting on or losing weight. Ryan Gosling went Method by going to the gym. (He's playing a slick ladies' man and romance coac...
Some actors go Method by putting on or losing weight. Ryan Gosling went Method by going to the gym. (He's playing a slick ladies' man and romance coach to Steve Carell and honey to Emma Stone in Crazy, Stupid, Love.) His muscles are a lot harder to laugh at than his character'sbizarro working-class accent.
Reynolds looks like he's the same size as the preceding three men. But it's a proportional optical illusion: He's a little taller than the others and,...
Reynolds looks like he's the same size as the preceding three men. But it's a proportional optical illusion: He's a little taller than the others and, we discovered, has a much larger head, making his biceps look smaller than they actually are. All to say, don't be fooled: Reynolds could crush you and Kellan Lutz. (Obviously, he would only ever do that in a sweet way.)
And now, we're moving away from the David toward the Bodybuilder. Arguably, Evans has the most impressive arms of anyone on this list, because he's sh...
And now, we're moving away from the David toward the Bodybuilder. Arguably, Evans has the most impressive arms of anyone on this list, because he's shorter, only five foot eleven (and you know how actors like to round up). Proportionally, Evans is a total freakish physical specimen — just like Captain America!
Momoa, who is basically reprising his Game of Thrones role in this summer's Conan (though hopefully with less rape?), is at an anatomical advantage: H...
Momoa, who is basically reprising his Game of Thrones role in this summer's Conan (though hopefully with less rape?), is at an anatomical advantage: He's six foot four, hence the bigger guns. Sorry other dudes, he's just bigger than you. Well, almost all of you.
We're pretty sure you could cut your head on those things.