Would You Rather Bank on Taylor Lautner or Sam Worthington?

You can't swing a barbell in this town without hitting a new Taylor Lautner project. Every studio wants to be in business with the almost-legal teen superstar, and since New Moon, Lautner's lined up project after project, including the action movie Cancun, the pilot drama Northern Lights, and the rubbery franchise Stretch Armstrong. The only actor who could possibly rival Lautner's sudden ability to get a movie greenlit is Avatar's Sam Worthington, who got cast in several tentpoles before Avatar had even come out. So why is Worthington getting a pass, while Lautner's come in for criticism?

"Taylor Lautner... Car Wreck of The New Decade?" wrote Dave Poland in a blog entry over the weekend. "Studios seem to be having a mass delusion about Taylor Lautner," said Poland, who admits to never having seen a Twilight film but did catch Lautner on Saturday Night Live. "He's a beautiful kid. And shows not the tiniest amount of acting skill. He make Justin Timberlake look like frickin' Olivier!"

Poland isn't alone in his sentiment -- each new Lautner project seems to inspire snickers and head-shakes from the bulk of the movie blogs, run by men who favor either fanboy projects or high art but certainly not the sort of female-targeted genre that Lautner hails from. That's all fine and good -- we all need something to make fun of! -- but aren't people underestimating Lautner just a little bit?

Poland took particular issue with the Stretch Armstrong press release, which heralded Lautner's rapid recent ascent. "Mr Lautner has most certainly not become a movie star in the last few years," said Poland. "He's never even been the lead of a movie." That would probably come as a surprise to Twilight fans, who were given a daily insulin drip of shirtless Lautner over the past year, or to Summit executives, who de-emphasized Robert Pattinson for Lautner in New Moon's marketing and thrilled as they built a star every bit as big.

The major difference between Lautner and Worthington is that though the latter stars in the biggest movie ever made, he still doesn't seem to have become a household name. Certainly, producers are just as eager to work with him as they are with Lautner, but there's no DiCaprio-esque sense of discovery and public frenzy around the Aussie star, nor even a Russell Crowe-sized buzz. It's my job to follow the movie industry, and even I don't know very much about Worthington beside his inability to hold an American accent and his love of wearing heavy metal T-shirts on red carpets. Still, he nabbed lead tentpole roles in Clash of the Titans and Terminator: Salvation based on nothing more than James Cameron's vote of confidence. (The fact Zoe Saldana's career hasn't gotten a similar jolt is another story entirely.)

Worthington may be a better actor than Lautner -- his ability to convey moods other than "chirpy" is surely a positive -- but there's no question to me that Lautner is the bigger star right now. What's more, Lautner has actually helped open a movie before, while Worthington's ability to do that is still unknown. We might be uninterested in which projects Lautner picks, but for all those naysayers who think Hollywood is jumping the gun by employing him, I wonder what exactly more they need?