The superhero movie that made Jack Black cry: “It’s very embarrassing”
Jack Black has reached the stage of his career where he can do pretty much anything he wants and people will still love him. Starting out in the likes of High Fidelity and Shallow Hal, Black went on head up titanic comedies such as School of Rock and Tropic Thunder, as well as more serious ventures including Bernie and Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Nowadays, he only seems to appear in video game adaptations, but as long as he’s happy, that’s all that matters.
One thing Black has never done is a proper superhero movie, despite being a self-professed fan of the genre. One Marvel film in particular has a special place in his heart, as he described during an interview with Total Film.
“In Captain America: The First Avenger, when the young scrawny Captain America – before he gets the serum to make him super – is in boot camp, and someone throws a fake grenade out, and he jumps on top,” he said. “A couple of tears squeezed out of my eyes. It’s very embarrassing.” This moment resonated with the star, who admitted that he’s a sucker for any act of heroism depicted on screen. “I cry a lot with movies,” he explained. “I don’t find it very easy to cry in real life or on film. But when I see something in a movie – it doesn’t even have to be that sad – I just burst into tears.”
Black is referring to a scene towards the beginning of the film where Col Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) decides to test the calibre of his recruits. He throws a dummy grenade into a group of trainees and, whilst the rest scamper away, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) selflessly leaps on top of it to protect them. This act of self-sacrifice is what finally convinces Phillips that Rogers is the right man to receive the super serum, thus kicking off the wimpy New Yorker’s transformation into an all-American hero.
Captain America: The First Avenger was released in 2011 as the fifth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though it was the first to take place chronologically. Black is one of the few actors not to have appeared in the MCU over the years. In a conversation with Screen Rant in 2019, the Kung Fu Panda star provided two potential roles for him in the franchise. “It’d be fun to play like an evil dude, like the Kingpin,” he said, referencing the classic ‘Spider-Man’ villain. “Maybe the Thing? It’d be rad to be that rock dude from the Fantastic Four.”
Though he’s never appeared in a Marvel film, Black very nearly ended up playing for the other team. There were plans in place to have the actor play DC’s Green Lantern in the mid-2000s, but online backlash put a stop to that. This version of the story would have taken a more comedic turn, including a scene where Black’s character eats an entire snake in one go. Sounds awful, but hey, it couldn’t have been much worse than Ryan Reynolds’ attempt from 2011.
He might never have donned a supersuit, but Black’s ability to immerse himself enough in the superhero world to garner such a strong reaction proves that he is a serious fan. In an era where the genre is on the decline, it’s nice to know there are still some true believers out there.
