The movie that let Samuel L Jackson fulfil a childhood dream: “Wow, this will be fun”
Samuel L Jackson is one of the most widely recognised actors of his generation, with his films earning a combined total of over $27billion worldwide, earning him the title of the highest-grossing actor of all time.
With that in mind, there can’t be much left for him to tick off his bucket list. After all, over his decades-spanning career, he’s taken on a diverse variety of roles across almost every genre. He’s collaborated with celebrated auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, spent almost two decades as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Nick Fury, and once let it be known that he’d had enough of those motherfucking snakes on that motherfucking plane.
For every acclaimed picture that he’s appeared in, Jackson evens it out with an appearance in a mainstream genre flick. Harrison Ford’s Patriot Games followed Lee’s Jungle Fever, Pulp Fiction led to Die Hard with a Vengeance, and The Long Kiss Goodnight was his first film after A Time to Kill.
However, none of those movies fulfilled a dream he’d held since childhood. It’s a highly specific fantasy, but Jackson was nonetheless thrilled when he finally got the chance to go toe-to-toe with cinema’s most famous gigantic simian when he played Preston Packard in 2017’s Kong: Skull Island.
“It’s something I’ve been wanting to do since I was a kid,” he explained. “I saw the first one and it’s like, ‘Wow, this will be fun’. You go home with your friends, and you pretend that big thing’s out there, and you’re all running from it or fighting it or whatever. A lot of times, that’s it. It’s one of those movies I would have gone to see when I was a kid, or one of those movies I always wished I could be in.”
It’s definitely not the most challenging role he’ll ever play, but if Jackson grew up dreaming of running away in terror from King Kong, who’ll begrudge him for doing so? Not every actor grows up envisioning a future defined entirely by award-worthy performances and critical acclaim, and few stars have ever enjoyed as much success in the arena of blockbuster escapism as he has.
Even if it wasn’t enough to go down as his personal favourite, he gets a death scene at the hands of Kong, which must have been quite the experience for Jackson’s inner child. It wasn’t the biggest, best, or top-earning entry in his filmography by a long stretch, but leading an expedition into the titular island and coming up against a skyscraper-sized ape is definitely up there in terms of how the magic of cinema presents the possibility for anyone to live out the fantasies they acted out in their backyard as a nipper.
