After more than a decade of pumped-up protagonists on screen, is it time for Hollywood to slim down?.

There was a time, not too long ago, when slim guys could be heroes, too. Mr Keanu Reeves did it in The Matrix. Mr Viggo Mortensen did it in Lord of the Rings. Mr Pierce Brosnan did it repeatedly as James Bond. It was a time of innocence, when a set of washboard abs and a well-defined chest weren’t considered necessary, or even particularly helpful, to the task of saving the world from evil overlords and megalomaniacs. Indeed, the idea that a man burdened with such a grave responsibility would have either the time or the inclination to get his pump on seemed rather strange. Muscles? Those were just things that bodybuilders had, surely?

Well, times have changed. The highest-paid movie star on Earth last year was Mr Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a man who used to be a wrestler and still has the rippling abs to prove it. Not far behind him on the list are: Mr Ben Affleck, who piled on 25 pounds of muscle to play the caped crusader in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice; Mr Vin Diesel, who has forged a long and fruitful career out of being huge, most recently in The Fate of the Furious; and Mr Chris Pratt, who went from doughy funnyman in Parks and Recreation to brawny leading man in Guardians of the Galaxy. These actors have brought a level of vein-popping musculature to the screen not seen since the days when Messrs Stallone, Van Damme and Schwarzenegger ruled the box office. Bulging out of their vest tops, cartoonish in their proportions, they’ve pushed the male physical ideal well out of reach.