Does a blog that has to resurrect itself every time for the annual jubilee of a single blog post make sense?Perhaps not, but since I don't really have a readership that would extend beyond my girlfriend and random middle-aged Moldovian deviants surfing for Dame Edna photos, I don't really have to care.
So, here we (or, indeed, I) go once again.
In keeping with the title of this blog and perhaps also my natural propensities, here are some grumblings. For your pleas-uh, as they say.
It’s not a great time to be a movie buff (a vocation on which I have all but given up in recent years); everything’s a superhero movie. I’m a superhero movie, you’re a superhero movie, my aunty Lisbeth and her book club are being adapted into a superhero movie by Kevin Smith right as we speak.
Even the once-interesting harbingers of idiosyncratic tales and singular vision, a new langue du cinema for these post-modern times, are now spitting out comic book movies like flapjacks. And everyone seems to be in on the act.
Of course, it's not only comic book movies, it's also the children's fantasy genre which has studio heads falling over themselves to snatch up the film rights to anything kiddie-friendly in their ceaseless quest to discover the next cornucopia of sequels.
The 2000s, sadly, have seen an almost total infantilisation of movies. What, to me, is most surprising about it is that nobody seems to mind. In public discussion, the 70s are seen as the golden age of cinema, while the 80s marks to many a downward spiral into commercial fluff with no substance. The blossoming of independent cinema in the 90s is considered the force that revitalised movies after such a dreary era for the art.
But lo and behold, we have seen almost nothing in the way of forward-thinking filmmaking or fresh young talent in the last decade. Unless, of course, we are talking in the language of the tech-nerd; FX, 3D, CGI. And everyone from film rags to the discerning cinema-goer seems fine with it.
Admittedly, the superhero films and family fare served up by the one-time independents far exceeds in quality anything the Michael Bays of this world could come up with. Point is, a psychologically complex and thematically sweeping superhero film is still a superhero movie -- a movie about spandexed people battling ludicrously-named villains with motives as profound as "My pops died so I think I'll just might subordinate the populace of this city while cackling maniacally in order to really underline how supremely diabolical I am!"
From this...
When it comes to complexity, subtleness, uniqueness and handling of tough, serious real-world themes (such as race, sociopolitics, etc.) the most profound comic book movie (probably The Dark Knight) still falls short of the average -- for lack of a better term -- adult-themed movie. (No, not that kind, you perv you.)
...to this.
Just to ram my point home in the most unsubtle of manners, here are directors that once were destined for real cinematic accomplishments, and the moppet-fodder for which they have become to be known (and yes, I am aware that I will feel the unhinged wrath of the fanboys if they ever happen to stumble upon this):
Bryan Singer, director
- Then: The Usual Suspects
- Now: X-Men, Superman Returns
Chris Nolan, director
- Then: Memento, Insomnia
- Now: Batman Begins, The Dark Knight
Peter Jackson, director
- Then: Braindead, Heavenly Creatures
- Now: LOTR trilogy
Ang Lee, director
- Then: Eat Drink Man Woman, The Ice Storm
- Now: Hulk
Sam Raimi, director
- Then: The Evil Dead
- Now: Spiderman movies
Spike Jonze, director
- Then: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation
- Now: Where the Wild Things Are
- Then: Mount Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums
- Now: Fantastic Mr. Fox
And the list goes on ad infinitum. Yes, these are and promise to be top-rate fantasy fare, but ultimately the future of cinema is not advanced by the best and the brightest making what, in the end, amount to children's movies -- even though adults in their droves, me included, watch them. What if Scorcese, Kubrick, Allen, Altman, Lynch and co. only made comic and fantasy book movies? Where would cinema be today?
