Picture the following; the year is 2069, Hollywood has reached an entertainment singularity, declaring that one lucky movie star will feature in every single film from here on out. To preserve artistic purity, the public shall vote on which actor or actress will continue to represent film itself, and all previous works that don’t feature the winner of the popular vote will be sent to the fire pit.
It’s an outrageous dramatization of the internet’s latest debate, but sometimes it doesn’t feel terribly far off. Nevertheless, the good people of r/movies have taken to discussing which filmography of a single actor or actress they would exclusively commit themselves to for the rest of their lives, and it turned out to be a real head-scratcher.
The instigator kicked off the discussion by picking Tom Hanks, which would land you the likes of Forrest Gump, the Toy Story franchise, and Saving Private Ryan. Another user echoed this choice amidst a ramble of indecisiveness, pointing out how Hanks had perhaps the single best decade of filmography during the 1990s.
One responder chose Robert Di Nero, which would grant them almost all of Martin Scorsese’s films; hard to go wrong there.
Other popular choices included Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson, either of which would come with a wealth of great choices; both are notable Tarantino collaborators, and the former would come with the likes of Don’t Look Up, Gangs of New York, and Titanic, while the latter would grant you access to a chunk of the library from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Star Wars franchise.
It’s the question of a lifetime, to be sure, and hopefully, one that we’ll never have to answer consequentially.