Scott: Before I get into what make a good blockbuster and what makes a bad one, I want to talk first about why a great one is rarely possible. And for that, I turn to a favorite quote that director Jonathan Nossiter made while touring with his ambitious but flawed anti-globalization drama Signs & Wonders: "You can't fall in love in a McDonalds." I think he's right, though I'd amend it slightly to say you can't fall in love in a McDonalds unless Wong Kar-wai is involved somehow. The reason, of course, is that all McDonalds are essentially the same—big, sterile, impersonal—and deliberately so, since homogeneity and mass appeal are important for brand continuity and recognition. But the moments and memories worth cherishing in life are specific and personal, and that always favors the entrée that could only come from the little Italian bistro around the corner, not the same value meal that's simultaneously being consumed in synthetic environs from Eugene to Poughkeepsie.
So it's no act of snobbery to say that blockbusters don't stand much of a chance of making my Top 10 list, because they're prepared for mass consumption and rarely bear the strong, personal stamp of a single creator. Take these two examples: Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies and Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. To my mind, these are about as good as modern-day blockbusters get, and that's owed to the fine work of both directors, who were able to corral elephantine productions while inserting a significant piece of themselves into the material. Just the thought of a nine-figure production like Spider-Man pausing for a scene in which Peter Parker visits Aunt May in the hospital (and maybe squeezes out a tear or two) makes me smile, because it's a character moment that out-of-proportion with the rest of the movie. And the moments of unbridled whimsy, not to mention the Bruce Campbell cameos, are also rare for this sort of thing. Jackson's Rings movies are more workmanlike—how can they not be given so much terrain to cover?—but his willingness to embrace Tolkien's fantasy without a trace of irony or "hipness" is a risk that paid dividends and is reflective of his taste as a filmmaker.
All that said, however, how many Raimi fans prefer the Spider-Man movies to Evil Dead 2? And how many Jackson fans like Lord Of The Rings more than Heavenly Creatures? Both of these filmmakers began as sandlot fantasists, and it's that go-for-broke, homemade touch that makes their earlier work seem so much more inspired and tactile than their studio films. I try not to be that big an auteurist, but I tend to favor blockbuster directors who are capable of managing enormous productions while still having a forceful enough vision to shine through. Historically, no one has done that better than Steven Spielberg, who virtually pioneered the modern blockbuster with Jaws and has made several truly great films—E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and A.I., to name a few—in this format. But Spielberg's a bit of an anomaly, an uncannily gifted filmmaker who's also a true populist in the Capra mode, and instinctually wants to appeal to the masses. I don't think anyone has Spielberg's talent for making blockbusters, but there are a handful of names that get me excited: Pixar's John Lasseter possesses the most distinct sensibility in American studio animation since Walt Disney, and Pixar recruit Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille) seems like a prize pupil; Joss Whedon's terrific Serenity may have tanked and his Wonder Woman project withered in development, but he's got the chops (and the ear for snappy dialogue) to be a great popular filmmaker; and I'd like to see Guillermo Del Toro take another shot at Hollywood blockbusters after Pan's Labyrinth, given the stylish work he did on Hellboy and Blade 2.
As for what makes the bad ones bad? I submit 1998's Godzilla as Exhibit A-Z: Anonymously produced and directed, willfully compromised in its attempt to appeal to the broadest possible audience, made with total disregard to the essence of the Godzilla myth, and pre-sold to every fast-food chain and toy manufacturer willing to participate in promotional tie-ins. It is, in a word, product. And as a moviegoer, being presented with "product" doesn't exactly fill me with goodwill, since the bottom line in my critical ledger is entertainment, not how well what I'm seeing might perform in Malaysia and other crucial overseas markets. As for other bad blockbusters, there are just too many to name, since overproduced, pandering behemoths are generally par for the course. (Okay, I'll give you a hint on one: It rhymes with "dreck.")
I usually enter the summer blockbuster season excited and optimistic, and leave it feeling drained and undernourished, because the sum total of all that effort and expense amounts to precious little. I honestly enjoy the ritual of seeing these summer movies in a theater with popcorn just like everybody else, but don't you find that fatigue sets in after a couple of months? I know it's a clichéd expression, but aren't these movies just empty calories?
Noel: Maybe. But keep in mind that you're talking to a guy who probably could "fall in love in a McDonalds." I think we Americans get too embarrassed sometimes about the cultural trappings that define us, from the strip malls to the theme parks. A well-balanced aesthetic diet makes room for art, pop, and all the gradations between, and a well-balanced cultural diet should be able to appreciate an actual forest and the little landscaped troughs and islands surrounding your corner fast food joint.
And remember this: even though a Big Mac never changes, you change. The McDonalds you've known, in all the places you've lived and visited, are transformed by your memories of who you were then, and what you were doing with your life that either led you to darken that McDonalds door or to drive on by it, nose in the air. The same is true with blockbusters. Godzilla was awful from an aesthetic perspective, but from a cultural perspective, it stands as a monument to what the Hollywood excess of 1998 looked like. We can still study it, even if we don't enjoy it, exactly.
Because here's the thing: You can't have a Spielberg unless you have several dudes with spreadsheets, crunching numbers and reducing art to an equation. What's great about Spielberg is that he's learned how to work the system to his advantage, delivering commercially saleable properties that also display his fascinations with certain kinds of human behavior. There's always going to be some here-today-gone-tomorrow Hollywood yahoo who thinks that if a frozen pizza cooks for ten minutes at 400 degrees, it'll cook just as well for one minute at 4000 degrees. But there are also going to be those who think that the most important line item in the budget is the director's salary, and who'll trust the ones who've made them money before to make them money again.
Yes, I enter blockbuster season every year with the same enthusiasm you do, and walk away a little exhausted. But I think I enjoy the whole experience more than you do, because I'm always looking for that little bit of kink that a smart director can bring to a property that sold on formula alone. Even some of last summer's "letdowns," like Superman Returns and Poseidon, had moments of real tension and/or poetry, and I remain convinced that The Break-Up, for all its flaws, had a sensibility unlike any other, which isn't always easy to pull off.
In some ways, it's a miracle that any movie exists, given how pricey they are to make and how many people have to say "yes" along the way. These big comedy and action behemoths may be less miraculous, because they represent the kind of "pick the low-hanging fruit" mentality prevalent in corporate America. But it's important to engage with that mentality too. It's all a part of the world we live in. And let's face it: if that low-hanging fruit doesn't get picked, it'll fall to the ground and rot. (Though some might argue that it's rotten already.)
Ultimately, I think that while we may agree that the cost-to-benefit ratio may soon sink the blockbuster as we know it, we're probably of two minds about whether that's a good thing or not. I want to keep the spectacles coming, reliably confined to the months of May, June and July. I get the feeling that you'd miss them if they were gone, but you wouldn't weep.
Scott: I get what you mean about the importance of a well-balanced cinematic diet, but unless you're talking about the Atkins Diet, that's not what we're getting. Because after awhile, choking down one sweaty meat patty after another makes you feel a little sick. Given your oft-professed affection for fast food, I had a feeling my McDonalds metaphor wouldn't fly, but I still stand by it. When you say, "even though a Big Mac never changes, you change," I can see how that might apply to your memories and the power of your own imagination to convert the homogenous into something special. But keep in mind, the movies are the Big Macs here and it becomes a struggle to eke substance out of the experience. You might be able to glom onto certain moments in films like Superman Returns and Poseidon—the former, especially, features some strikingly ironic images—but even if these films were perfectly flame-broiled, could you really fall in love with them? I don't think so. Fast-food restaurants are about stepping up the trough like everybody else, swiftly consuming your meal, and forgetting about it the second you leave the place. Like I said, I think the metaphor plays.
It's here I should probably make a disclaimer, because I feel like I've been disproportionately harsh on the blockbuster and perhaps not true to my real feelings, which are more ambivalent than hostile. Spectacles are an irresistible part of what the movies are all about, and that's been true since their inception, when films were exhibited throughout the country like a traveling circus. I would miss them if they were gone, because after all, man cannot live on wine alone. Every summer, there are always a handful of blockbusters that justify the form, and deliver the sort of experience that you can't get from high-toned art films, which rarely have an interest in genre, much less spectacle. While I expect the bubble to burst on blockbusters as we currently know them, escapism of that sort won't ever go away and I don't wish it to.
All that said, the season of spectacles may be confined to the months of May, June, and July, but the blockbuster mentality persists 365 days a year and that can get pretty insidious. As I mentioned before, with the likes of Spider-Man and other "tentpole" franchises on the docket, studios would rather bet the farm on high-risk/high-reward prospects than collect the dividends from a dozen minor hits made possible by prudent spending and modest expectations. (They're giant corporations, after all, and what's a few million dollars profit to the likes of Sony, anyway?) This isn't the best example, since it was a standard studio dump job, but it was absurd to watch Lucky You come out on the same weekend as Spider-Man 3; even if it were impeccably executed, like Wonder Boys from the same director, it would seem hopelessly out of its element, doomed to be dwarfed by movies that are too big to care much about the human condition. Studios still make a few movies a year like it, mostly to get bestowed with a certain amount of prestige during awards season, but character-driven dramas are more often than not the province of boutique arms like Fox Searchlight or Warner Independent, or genuine independents. In this climate, a solid, no-frills docudrama like Shattered Glass—which in the past would have been produced and released nationwide by a major studio—now becomes an arthouse movie.
I was disheartened by the sentiments of some A.V. Club comment-boards regulars who said they'd only open up their wallets for effects-driven spectacles like Spider-Man 3 because other types of movies would play just as well on DVD. To a large extent, I blame the independent movie scene—specifically, its hasty embrace of digital video—for degrading the value of film as a photographic medium. If filmmakers don't care a whit about the quality of their images, then viewers are correct in believing they can just as easily watch a movie on television without losing anything. Now, I don't wish to open up the small-screen/big-screen can of worms again, because we've been down that road before in another Crosstalk, but it's a sad side effect of the blockbuster mentality that other types of films are being dismissed as inessential theatrical experiences.
I leave you with another favorite quote, this one from a scene in Bull Durham in which veteran catcher Kevin Costner gives some advice to the young speedballer played by Tim Robbins: "Don't try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring, and besides that they're fascist. Throw some ground balls. They're more democratic." In this scenario, think of the studios as Roger Clemens. And even if you don't hate Roger Clemens, you certainly don't wish to see the fucker pitch every night, do you?
« Previous | 1 | 2
- Comments