How quickly things can change in Hollywood. One day, you’re one of the world’s most widely beloved performers; the next, a poster boy for everything that is bad and cheap about an industry. It’s enough to give a person whiplash – just ask Jack Black.
Black, the peppery and eccentric star of School of Rock and Kung Fu Panda, has drawn no small amount of flak following the release of the first trailer for AMinecraft Movie. The film, a big-budget adaptation of the juggernaut video game of the same name, sees Black play a character known as “Minecraft Steve” – and attempt to impose his outsized personality on what was originally a characterless avatar. People, it’s fair to say, weren’t having it. Responses on social media were many and damning, with one widely shared tweet claiming: “I think as a society we need to accept that Jack Black is a Chris Pratt now.” (Jurassic World star Pratt is an actor synonymous with schlocky blockbuster drek, a performer whose net favourability ratings would send a seasoned politician running for the spin doctor.)
A Minecraft Movie isn’t the only recent mark against Black’s name: just weeks ago, he was lending his name and voice to Borderlands, another insipid video-game adaptation that some people averred was the worst movie of the year. Shortly before that, we have his regrettable rift with Tenacious D bandmate Kyle Gass: after Gass made a joke about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump’s during one of the band’s live shows, Black seemingly called an end to their decades-long collaboration, abandoning the band’s tour midway through. (He has since suggested a reunion may happen, but the reputational damage was done – over a controversy that would have otherwise blown over in a matter of days.) Black’s stock has never been lower. But for all his admirable idiosyncrasies as an actor, this fall from grace (dare we call it the Black Death?) has been a long time coming.
The fact is, Black has always walked a fine line when it comes to the public’s favour. Even his finest performances – School of Rock being the consensus-approved apex – skirted the line between greatness and irritation, between charming effervescence and insufferable look-at-me-ism. Black’s first noteworthy role was in music nerd romcom High Fidelity, stealing scenes as an obnoxious record shop clerk. Then, as School of Rock’s Dewey Finn, a failed wannabe rockstar turned faux-substitute teacher, Black ossified his onscreen persona, that of a too-enthusiastic manchild with a manic theatricality. But even in his heyday, Black was never particularly discerning about the projects he would put his name to. School of Rock sits among poorly received films such as Shallow Hal, Nacho Libre, The Holiday, Year One, and Gulliver’s Travels in Black’s earlier oeuvre. As the years went by, he increasingly devoted his time to child-friendly studio adaptations – Goosebumps, the Jumanji remakes, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and a handful of Kung Fu Panda sequels. It’s not like Borderlands and Minecraft represent some cheapening of his brand, so much as a natural continuation of it.
It’s a shame, partly because Black has long been an unproblematic and affably offbeat counterpoint to the usual Hollywood celebrity mould. You don’t see too many celebrities devote hours to making endearingly gauche video game content, as Black did for years on his now-dormant YouTube channel JablinskiGames. (To some extent, his penchant for terrible video game movies can be attributed to a sincere love of the source material.) He is also, to his credit, one of the rare larger actors who has escaped Hollywood’s body-size pigeonholing, taking on roles that seldom make a point or joke of his appearance.
But mostly it’s a shame because somewhere in Black’s cartoonish excess, there lies an actor of real and delicate talent. In Richard Linklater’s 2011 true-crime dramedy Bernie, we got a glimpse of the career Black may have pursued in another reality: his performance, as an effete out-of-town huckster who befriends and murders curmudgeonly senior Shirley MacLaine, was masterful and uncharacteristically transformative. He has tried flexing his wings elsewhere – a restrained dramatic turn in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, a nuanced voice role in Richard Linklater’s Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood – but Bernie is the most potent evidence of just how much Black has to offer. That was, though, over a decade ago. Recently, Black’s name only conjures to mind images of him sitting in front of a garish Borderlands placard, or of him standing alongside Lizzo in The Mandalorian – a woeful cameo that many saw as the Star Wars spin-off’s queasy nadir.
The bright side, for Black, is that it isn’t over. In Hollywood, you’re only ever one comeback away from the bosom of the public’s affection. He has the talent to bounce back, and, despite the social media backlash, a fair amount of public goodwill that could yet be excavated. For now though, it’s clear something needs to change – lest the phrase “a Jack Black movie” turn into cinema’s most foreboding warning sign.
‘Minecraft’ is out in cinemas next year