For years, Hollywood has struggled to crack the video game movie code, and it could be argued that Jack Black‘s the cheat code studios needed. Black has starred in two major film adaptations: The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which finally brings Mario’s adventures to the silver screen, and A Minecraft Movie. Both films struck box office gold, with The Super Mario Bros. Movie spawning plans for an entire Mario movie franchise and A Minecraft Movie kicking off a string of major box office hits for Warner Bros. Pictures this year. Black also starred in Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, which wasn’t based on a video game but managed to update the Jumanji franchise by applying video game tropes to its classic setup. While that would mean that Jack Black should be a lock for most video game movies, this could be a very slippery slope for those movies.
Jack Black’s Video Game Movies Match His Other Roles, for Better or Worse
Jack Black’s played three different characters across his video game movies; in A Minecraft Movie, he takes on the role of longtime Minecraft player character Steve, while The Super Mario Brothers Movie sees him stepping into the shoes of Mario’s longtime rival Bowser, and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle has him playing Professor Sheldon “Shelly” Oberon, a timid palentologist. All three characters share more than a few things in common, most notably Black’s boisterous personality. With A Minecraft Movie, it at least works because Black has Jason Momoa to play the straight man to his random antics, while Jumanji gets some comedic mileage out of the fact that a literal teenage girl is inhabiting his body. Bowser, though, feels far less menacing than the Mario games paint him out to be; he’s essentially a lovestruck reptile. The jokes about Shelly quickly dip into gross-out territory when he has to use the restroom, testing the audience’s patience.
The biggest standout of these roles is that Black often breaks out into song. The Super Mario Bros. Movie features Bowser singing “Peaches” to serenade Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), Steve sings about “lava chicken” in Minecraft. These sequences show off Black’s musical talents and his comedic timing, but it isn’t the first time he’d use those gifts to his advantage. School of Rock and Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny feature his musical skills, while Kung Fu Panda 4 even features Black doing a cover of Britney Spears‘ “Hit Me Baby, One More Time”. Fun as these songs are, they tend to pigeonhole Black into the role of comedic relief. Some video games, particularly the upcoming adaptations of Mass Effect and God of War, require a far more serious tone than what Black’s bringing to the table.
One Video Game Movie Shows The Limits of Jack Black’s Shtick
Ironically, a video game based movie released last year that starred Jack Black but also proved there’s a limit to his charm. That movie was Borderlands, and while there were a plethora of other problems that led to it critically and commercially tanking, the casting was off. Nowhere is this clearer than with Black’s performance as Claptrap the robot, who’s less a comic side relief and more “state the obvious”. Claptrap often points out that characters who act deranged “seem deranged”, and those who aren’t entirely trustworthy seem “less than trustworthy”; he also claims he’s built to be a comedic sidekick, which feels less like an actual character trait and more like a loud announcement that Jack Black’s voicing him, so therefore he’s funny (it doesn’t work like that.)
Anyone who’s played Borderlands knows that Claptrap is a tragic figure who seeks belonging, yet is unable to find it. Jack Black’s casting immediately meant that the minds behind the Borderlands movie decided to dumb him down into comedic relief, which is a shame. If video game movies are going to succeed, they should learn that a little bit of Jack Black goes a long way.
