So which of Vanity Fair’s “new class of leading men” will actually make it?

Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood Issue is an awards-season mainstay, usually mixing and matching a bunch of hot up-and-comers with established legends. This year, the magazine has decided to address our supposed leading-man crisis head-on. Coming off a dimmed-star fall where Leonardo DiCaprio (age: 51) had the best box-office results in a field that included established figures like Dwayne Johnson (53), Channing Tatum (45), and Colin Farrell (49), it makes sense to try and sort out some leading men who are significantly, rather than barely, under 50. The magazine came up with a dozen. In alphabetical order, they are: A$AP Rocky; Riz Ahmed; Jonathan Bailey; Austin Butler; Harris Dickinson; Andrew Garfield; Michael B. Jordan; Paul Mescal; Glen Powell; Lakeith Stanfield; Callum Turner; and Jeremy Allen White.

Now, before examining these fellows in detail, let’s say upfront that they are all, to some degree or another, good actors. They have all given multiple good performances, and it makes sense that they’ve collectively worked with the likes of David Fincher, Baz Luhrmann, Richard Linklater, Ryan Coogler, Ridley Scott, Chloe Zhao, Quentin Tarantino, Darren Aronofsky, Wes Anderson, and many more. But Vanity Fair’s cover is specifically about leading men, not just the quality of their acting. It’s also understandable that they’re going to cast a wide net and choose twelve guys. You don’t want to choose three guys, because in the likely event that at least one doesn’t pan out, you don’t look great. So it makes sense to gather up a dozen, even though there are arguably not more than a dozen audience-enticing stars actively working across age ranges and genders in the movies today.

So, how’d they do?

Well, first, they did some age fudging. The article doesn’t specifically quantify any age limits, but presumably a next generation of leading men should move beyond the elder millennials. Andrew Garfield is great, but he’s been leading movies for 15 years at this point. He played Spider-Man in 2012! He’s not even the newest Spider-Man! Similarly, the pushing-40 Michael B. Jordan is undeniably a leading man. He’s the biggest star on this list, and probably belongs on a master list of stars who can genuinely help to open a movie. But Creed came out a full decade ago! He definitely belonged on the 2017 version of this round-up. Lakeith Stanfield is a bit younger, but including him, too, feels a little late.

On the other side, has Jonathan Bailey really proven himself as a leading man at the movies? This weekend, he’s in theaters playing second-at-best fiddle in Wicked: For Good (and honestly, he’s kinda stiff in it!). He was endearing in Jurassic World: Rebirth, and arguably the male lead of that one, but the stars of that movie are Scarlett Johansson and dinos. Callum Turner, meanwhile, has only been in a few wide-release movies, two of which were Fantastic Beasts sequels where he played Eddie Redmayne’s brother. His next wide release comes when the A24 fantasy dramedy Eternity expands over Thanksgiving. It is quite bad, and he’s arguably third lead in a movie that is largely from the Miles Teller character’s point of view. A$AP Rocky had a great year, with terrific supporting parts in Highest 2 Lowest and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. He has not starred in a movie, and it seems unlikely that he’ll drop his music career for one as a full-time leading man.

So that’s six out of twelve who either don’t feel all that new or don’t feel like leading men. The remaining six are, honestly, still a little on the basic side, but fair enough that you can’t compete for leading-man title without being pretty established on some level. Paul Mescal and Riz Ahmed aren’t really box office draws, but they’ve both received Best Actor Oscar nominations, which goes a long way in terms of clout. Ahmed had a typically quiet and nuanced star turn this year in Relay, the kind of grown-up thriller that barely gets seen outside of streaming these days – which is too bad, because it’s a taut and entertaining film that he deepens with his performance.

Harris Dickinson is one of those British guys who’s been kicking around forever, and I’m not sure it’s going to happen for him – unless he becomes James Bond, which was rumored a while back, and even then that sort of sets you on a different path. Jeremy Allen White definitely has something, although it feels pretty tied up in The Bear – notably not a movie – at the moment.

The obvious picks, then, are Austin Butler and Glen Powell, which might reveal my own limited thinking in this area. They’re both a certain kind of traditionally masculine white dude, cowboy variations that skew ’50s greaser (Butler, befitting a former Elvis) and ’90s prep (Powell, which partially explains his Linklater affiliation). They both can carry a film in that leading-man way; not that they’re bad actors, but that their strengths involve a natural ability to draw the eye toward what they’re doing, even if what they’re doing isn’t of stunning depth. They’ve also both recently toplined underperformers at the box office: Butler brings a lot to Caught Stealing, and the movie did OK for the kind of dark-odyssey crime drama it is, but like The Bikeriders, it proved his mettle while failing to take him to the next level. Powell, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to be making a bigger hit out of a new version of The Running Man.

These aren’t either actor’s last chances, of course, and more than likely they’ll each log a hit or two in the next few years. Powell is in a J.J. Abrams movie with Jenna Ortega, as well as an A24 movie opposite Margaret Qualley. Butler has a crime movie with Jeremy Allen White, also coming from A24. That hip company, along with its competitors Neon, may turn out to be vastly more crucial to these prospective leading men than an indie would have been 10 or 20 years ago. A24’s romantic drama Materialists notched a non-franchise success for Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans, and Dakota Johnson, who have all struggled a bit outside of their signature characters; Garfield and Florence Pugh also had a small-scale but more traditional romantic-drama hit with We Live in Time last year. (Then again, as big a name as Dwayne Johnson had something of an A24 flop this year with The Smashing Machine.)

The point is, there are fewer and narrower paths for traditional leading men than ever before. Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of the Vanity Fair list is that none of these guys seem to have any current plays to suit up for a superhero role; even Garfield and Jordan didn’t stay in the genre all that long. Ironically, becoming a bona fide long-term movie star actually feels trickier than becoming a superhero. One of them can be faked in post; the other can make you feel all too human.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.