We're sorry, but it's coming. Rumor is that the shaggy Office star has the role of Captain America pretty much in the bag. It'd be "a multi-film deal," which means Jim Halpert is about to get big. This is bad.

Look, as actors go, Krasinki is mostly fine. He's certainly better than an Ashton Kutcher or a Dane Cook. Of the current crop of shaggy-sarcastic funnymen, Krasinksi is definitely not the worst. But his whole hangdog cutie shtick has gotten unbearably tired and downright smug on The Office of late, and his equally grating work in movies like Leatherheads and It's Complicated — mugging to the camera, oddly broad comedy strokes — have shown that his range doesn't extend much past the whole cute guy you don't notice until you do and then you really dooooo acting style. And though Captain America does begin as a nerdy little art student, pretty soon he's buff and shield-wielding. We don't see that really working with this muppetish fellow.

And besides, the real problem isn't Krasinski playing the hero in some comic movie that probably won't be good. It's that the series could make him a bonafide star, which means more gangly manboy to come — in sadsack modern dramas, in corn-blue romantic comedies, in paranoid urban thrillers. Krasinski is suited well for the small box, and now it seems that he could soon be foisted upon our megaplexes like a great messy-haired American Gerard Butler, an idea that sends an ironic slacker chill through our bones.

[Photo via Getty Images]