He's game ... Leonardo DiCaprio. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
How do you commit genius to film? It's a question Leonardo DiCaprio will no doubt be asking of himself after it was announced that he is to take the role of Nolan Bushnell, creator of pioneering computer game firm Atari in a movie to be called, surprisingly, Atari.
Bushnell was as much a salesman as he was an inspired engineer. At the same time as running Atari in the late 70s he was also building the Chuck E Cheese chain of pizza restaurants (a chain that later ran into the ground). So DiCaprio could yet play Bushnell more as business brain than geeky genius. That would be a shame though, as the dramatic challenge involved in playing a brainbox is one of the most enjoyable in Hollywood.
Times have changed since the only requirements necessary to play a brainiac were a pair of thick spectacles and a spotted bow tie. Perhaps it was Matt Damon who broke down the barriers, his genius janitor in Good Will Hunting beginning a trend for portrayals of great minds that were both troubled and, fortunately, beautiful.
Speaking of a beautiful mind, Russell Crowe is not your stereotypical geek, but you can imagine the rambunctious Aussie delighting in the role of schizophrenic mathematician John Nash. It was an opportunity to move the conception of genius on again; from a frail ditherer in spectacles to a butch paranoiac in too-short trousers.
Both Crowe and Damon managed to break from the tradition that required a change of dress to impersonate an intellect. Instead genius became associated with emotional vulnerability, something that could be expressed through a troubled look from a swoonsome male.
Without this twist Jake Gyllenhaal might never have had a career. Released the same year as A Beautiful Mind, Donnie Darko cast Gyllenhaal as someone who was both blessed with a metaphysical potency and unable to take his eyes off his shoes. Oh, and he looked awfully handsome too, in his slovenly way. Since then, Gyllenhaal has produced a variation on this performance in the majority of his movies, albeit playing characters with varying levels of smarts. From the vulnerable maths student of Proof to the sensitive squaddie of Jarhead via the instinctual, but unusual, cartoonist-detective of Zodiac, he's done em all.
So where next for the genius? Even more emotionally wrought studies like Benedict Cumberbatch's Hawking for the BBC? Or will the genius be normalised? Become the everyday? I guess we'll see when Ed Norton takes on the role of mild-mannered nuclear physicist Bruce Banner later this week.
