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Prior to his breakout performance in 21 Jump Street, Channing Tatum was seen by most as just "generic handsome guy". Teaming up with Jonah Hill, Christoper Miller, and Phil Lord, finally gave audiences a chance to see Channing Tatum's as more than a rom com hear throb. 21 Jump Street let Tatum show off his acting chops, and even landed him future roles with some of hollywoods biggest directors.
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Handsome and he's probably a dummy
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And then this guy, he's short and insecure. And he's probably good with money
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Oh, you are good with money. Handsome and probably a dummy. Ice Cube's grizzled Captain Dixon was really just saying out loud
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what the general public circa 2012 had concluded about Channing Tatum. You have an exceptional muscle tone there, young man
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But 21 Jump Street, a raucous romp about cops who go undercover as high school students
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that was also a charming bromance about two guys who become best friends despite their differences
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changed all that. Clearly I wasn't talking to you, big t***. I was talking to your partner over here, fake-ass handsome McGee
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It was exactly the movie Tatum needed to make, and it completely transformed the way audiences and filmmakers thought about him
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In 2012, Channing Tatum was primarily known for playing a handsome dancer in the Step Up movies
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and a handsome soccer player in She's the Man. Films like Dear John and The Vow cast him in romantic leads, and sometimes he played square-jawed soldiers in action fare like The Eagle and G.I. Joe
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It's always good for an actor to be working, but the roles weren't doing Tatum any favors
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He was cementing himself as an image of generic handsome guy. Even worse was that Tatum kind of looked like a jock who bullied nerds in the halls of a high school somewhere
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The cumulative effect was that the movie going public was mostly just wondering when Hollywood was going to stop trying to make Channing Tatum happen
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It's backwards and unnatural, and it's got to be stopped. The announcement of 21 Jump Street didn't generate a lot of excitement either
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Recent film adaptations of 80s TV shows like the A-Team movie and G.I. Joe, The Rise of Cobra, had struck out with audiences, so expectations were pretty low
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Producer and star Jonah Hill, for his part, was talking up Jump Street as an R-rated
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insane, bad boys meets John Hughes type movie, and promising it wouldn't just be a spoof of the
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old show. You see, the guys in charge of this stuff lack creativity and are completely out of ideas
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While the final product definitely had some spoofy elements, the script Hill crafted with
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screenwriter Michael Bacall was primarily a clever satire of tropes from buddy cop films and 80s teen movies It also had a surprising amount of heart and sweetness to it Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller who were busy developing a reputation for creating memorable movies out of questionable premises
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made a conscious decision to treat the character seriously from an emotional perspective
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Everyone involved was determined to actually make a good movie. But pulling that off would mean finding a very special actor
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to play Greg Jenko. The character is introduced as a handsome high school-aged bully
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complete with a jock's trademark letterman jacket. When Hill's soft-hearted nerd Morten Schmidt asks the popular girl to the prom
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and is harshly rejected, Jenko cackles and rubs it in. You're a f***ing nerd
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And, you know, she's, I don't know, she's hot. We kind of want to punch the guy
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But then we learn Jenko is failing his classes, which means he isn't going to prom either
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He becomes vulnerable for a moment. Schmidt sees it, and we see it. The awkward nerd and the dumb jock
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both trapped by their respective stereotypes. stereotypes. Fast forward seven years, they meet at the police academy
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and realize that each has something to offer the other. Their perceptions of one another begin to change
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and that opens the door for new possibilities. Suddenly, they're helping each other out
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egging each other on, and just generally making each other better. For the first time, it's clear that this
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isn't an 80s movie where the jocks and the nerds will spend the whole runtime at each other's throats
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This is about moving beyond that kind of thing to a place where different stereotypes
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can be on the same side and even learn to love each other. From that point, all it takes is a single fist bump
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and Schmidt and Jenko are BFFs. Get ready for a lifetime of being bad ass mothers
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Oh, I am. We empathize with Schmidt right from the start, but Jenko has to win over his partner
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to win over the audience. Through Schmidt's eyes, we go from hating Jenko
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to reluctantly sympathizing with him, to cautiously starting to like him, to thinking of him as a goofy brother
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We get to be brothers? This all happens in the first five minutes of the movie
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One of the reasons Lord and Miller can effectuate this transformation so quickly is because on Hill's suggestion
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they cast Channing Tatum as Jenko. Tatum's previous roles made it hard to imagine him
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being all that funny He had so little comedic experience even he was nervous about the idea and joked in interviews about his plan to ride Hill coattails But really his public image predisposed the audience
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to see Jenko as the dull meathead that Schmidt saw. At the same time, the actor was capable of
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staging a charm offensive when the moment came to win back the crowd. Tatum's willingness to lean
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into his image as a dumb, handsome jock let him blend seamlessly into his role. So when Jenko
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was humanized via his relationship with Schmidt, a lot of that goodwill rubbed off onto the actor playing him
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Audiences found themselves rooting for Greg Jenko and through the power of transference, Channing Tatum
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Tatum spends the rest of the movie leaning into his dumb guy with a heart of gold act
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and audiences loved him for it. The movie earned north of $200 million
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and was widely embraced by critics. The success paid immediate dividends for Tatum's career
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Buoyed by the newfound popularity, his next movie, Magic Mike, which came out just four months
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after 21 Jump Street was a massive hit and launched a franchise. His new and improved
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reputation also moved test audiences to demand 2013's G.I. Joe retaliation be hastily rewritten
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to give Tatum's Duke more screen time. But Tatum had also made his mark as a funny man
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and starting with 2013's This Is The End, he increasingly turned up in comedic roles
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In 2014 alone, he made guest appearances in The Simpsons and played Superman in Lord & Miller's
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Lego Movie, a role he would reprise in two sequels. He also teamed up with Hill again to make the
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sequel to 21 Jump Street. 22 was a bigger hit than 21. Anyone with half a brain, myself included
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thought it was destined to fail spectacularly, but you got lucky. It finished its run as the
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seventh highest grossing comedy of the 2010s and solidified Tatum's status as a box office draw
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My name is Jeff. That same year saw the release of Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher. The movie was
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showered with critical acclaim, and it was clear that Tatum's moment had arrived
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Meanwhile, the quality of the offers Tatum received steadily improved, and over the next two years
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he would get to work with a string of elite filmmakers. The Coen brothers gave him a big song and dance number in their comedy period piece Hail Caesar and Quentin Tarantino used him for a small but important villainous role in The Hateful Eight How are you doing dummy By the time Tatum lit up the internet by dancing in drag
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with Beyonce while competing against his wife, Jenna Dewan, on a now legendary episode of Lip Sync Battle
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his image had completely reversed itself. He was a fun, personable guy who people actually liked
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The rap stuck, and Tatum's winning streak has continued. More recently, he's popped up beside Ryan Reynolds in Free Guy and ended the Batman's
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run in the number one spot at the box office with the action-adventure comedy The Lost City
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The thing about all this is, it almost never happened. Producers could always tell Tatum had star quality, but prior to 21 Jump Street, they
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couldn't really figure out how to use him. His image as a bland, handsome guy kept landing him roles that just reinforced his image as
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a bland, handsome guy. Given that, it seems difficult to overstate just how much Tatum owes Hill, Lord, and Miller for
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gambling, not just on his ability to play JNCO, but also on the public's willingness to find him
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funny. And it was no sure thing. Dramatic actors branching out into comedy isn't as common as the
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reverse, and either way, playing against type is often a gamble. For every Henry Fonda in Once Upon
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of time in the West, there's a Tom Hanks in Bonfire of the Vanities. Early on in 21 Jump Street
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Ice Cube's character reflects on the fact that as an angry black captain, he's really just an old
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tired police movie cliche. But rather than resist the implication, he embraces it. He also advises
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his underlings to embrace their stereotypes. And it turns out that's what Channing Tatum had to do
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It's why 21 Jump Street was exactly the movie he needed to make
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The bottom line is that despite being a great performer who proved capable of generating a genuinely impressive body
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of work, Channing Tatum almost never got to show us his full potential because
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of the stereotype he embodied. But the exact right part in the exact right script
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can completely change our perception of an actor
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