“I like sci-fi and action”: Jack Black names his favourite dystopian movies
Ravaged futures and apocalyptic wastelands have been cinematic staples for decades, with dystopia a malleable term that can be applied to media in a number of different ways. Jack Black doesn’t have the greatest track record in the subgenre, but that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy it as a viewer.
The actor and musician made his third-ever appearance in a feature film dealing with dystopia, standing in the background doing very little in Sylvester Stallone’s Demolition Man. Playing the key role of Wasteland Scrap #2, Black did little other than listen to exposition bounced back and forth in his direction.
He spent an unreasonably lengthy amount of time on set, though, with Black initially disappointed to learn that after being cast, he was nothing more than a glorified extra. He’d spent days sitting around waiting for his call, which dragged on for weeks. Fed up, he went out and partied the night away, which naturally led to his Demolition Man cameo being carried out hungover when he was given his moment to shine the very next day.
Two years later, Black popped up in dystopian cinema once again in Kevin Costner’s infamous Waterworld, which did at least give him the distinction of appearing in the single most expensive production in history. In what was becoming a recurring trend, it’s easy to overlook that he’s even in it.
It would be three decades before he returned to dystopia, and when he did, he was better off doing anything else when his voice-only role as Claptrap in the video game adaptation Borderlands was torn limb from limb by critics and cratered at the box office to gain instant notoriety as one of the biggest flops of 2024.
It hasn’t been great for him personally, but as a film fan, Black knows what he wants to see from his future-set epics. “I like sci-fi and action,” he told Movies. “Blade Runner I really like, and The Road Warrior, but I also like more serious films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and A Clockwork Orange.”
Jack Nicholson’s grandstanding performance as Randall P McMurphy obviously doesn’t fit the bill, but the other three definitely do. Not only that, but Ridley Scott’s neon-drenched masterpiece, George Miller’s superior Mad Max sequel, and Stanley Kubrick’s rumination on free will in a broken society happen to be three of the greatest dystopian movies ever made.
They couldn’t be more different from each other on every level as a thought-provoking existential sci-fi, a dust-covered and no-frills action thriller, and a haunting socio-political parable, respectively, but Black’s top picks only serve to underline the never-ending versatility of dystopia and how it can be applied in so many different ways, with greatness just one of many common denominators that unite his favoured trio.
