Matt Shea
RubySoho
Morgan Bell
Cibbuano
David O'Connell
Mountain Fog
THE LONG LOST HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER
June 11th 2009 08:22
Blockbuster money man James Cameron
by Matt Shea
As I remember it, life in an all boys’ school as a young tyke was often reduced to endless games of spurious boasting. In an effort to out duke your contemporaries, dangerous contests of minor league intellectual one-upmanship would ensue, only ending when some poor idiot strayed so far from the truth that the conversation would either die quietly (if he was lucky) or he’d end up with a face full of Wizz Fizz.
My biggest boast at the time I was nine years old was the fact that I’d seen "Aliens". It was something I was understandably proud of, the fact that I’d possessed the gumption and my parents the liberal spirit to allow me sit through the two-hour James Cameron action/horror fest.
The only problem was that I hadn’t seen the film. Rather, I’d seen about half of it: I remember hanging on for dear life by my tiny white knuckles, only to totally freak out when Hicks blows the head off the alien that’s trying to clamber into the assault vehicle.
This created a problem when discussing "Aliens" with Mick, one of my best friends. Mick had seen the entire film, and as we chatted about it over our morning games of handball, not only would he have me running all over the court trying to catch his googlies, he’d also have my imagination doing back flips in keeping up with the conversation regarding the film’s second half. I’m not sure if my friend ever figured out that I hadn’t seen the entire movie, but I was despondent regardless: not only did Mick have my measure in handball, but he also had the goods on all the latest action blockbusters.
It may seem like a tiny thing to lose face over, but such was the way of the 1980s and early 1990s: every other week it seemed like a big budget action blockbuster was being released. "The Terminator", "Rambo", "Aliens", "Lethal Weapon", "Predator", "Robocop", "Die Hard", "Lethal Weapon 2", "Total Recall" and "Terminator 2" all appeared in this era. It was a time when savvy producers came together with crafty studios to help unleash a new batch of talented directors in the form of James Cameron, John McTiernan, Richard Donner, Paul Verhoeven and screenwriters such as Dan O’Bannon, Shane Black and Steve de Souza.
It was such a short period of time – beginning with "The Terminator" in 1984 and, in a neat twist, probably ending when James Cameron pushed the knife into the subgenre he helped create with "True Lies" in 1994 – that it’s only now the industry and the movie-going public look back on this golden period and regarding it as a true era unto itself.
Of course, it’s that much easier to fondly look back on these films and the people who made them when faced with what passes for a Hollywood blockbuster these days. The latest is "Terminator Salvation", and not only is it a gobby splat of mucus on the good name of the franchise which spawned it, but it also speaks volumes about the state of the modern big budget action film.
Gone is the imagination, keen storytelling and engaging character of the classic blockbuster, replaced by deadening violence and empty spectacle. "Salvation" is like a metaphor for modern Western society: obese and slovenly, with themes and subtexts that would challenge only the stiffest of mental lummoxes. It rewrites John Connor as a terminally loudmouth grump with a messiah complex and features a clutch of characters who are virtually just credited extras.
"Terminator Salvation" is vacant filmmaking, but it’s simply the latest in a long line of disastrous action films that includes "Con Air", "Armageddon", "The Matrix" sequels, "300" and "Transformers". Each has built upon the last in terms of treating its running time like an extended preview, devoid of exposition and leaving audiences stumbling from the theatre with deadened pulses and pounding headaches.
Gone are directors such as Cameron and McTiernan, replaced by empty stylists such as McG, or media-savvy shysters in the form of Michael Bay. Indeed, Bay is the current king of the genre, but his films are invariably dead vessels, so concerned with swirling cameras, sizzling lens flare and giant effects that characters are virtually nonexistent and the plots geared by cliché.
"Transformers" is a perfect case in point. Bay and his collaborators had the benefit of reprising a series that contained a great deal of character, particularly for something aged at 8-year-old boys, and yet the giant robots of the feature film are left with little in the way of personality, the Decepticons reduced to an almost non-speaking supporting role. "Transformers" comes to lean on hackneyed CGI and confusing shaky cam in its second half; it rushes forwards, dragging an overabundance of minor characters and a confused audience in its wake.
Indeed, it’s difficult to think about youngsters competing to be the first to see "Terminator Salvation", or have their imagination captured by the soon to be released "GI Joe" film – another to surely take a dump from a great height on my cherished childhood memories. The Hollywood blockbuster is in desperate need of a return to the halcyon days of the late 80s and early 90s, when imagination and fleet-footed storytelling reigned supreme, rather than studio wizardry and an open chequebook.
Perhaps the only blockbuster to truly capture the public imagination in modern times was "The Matrix". And yet despite all its technical trickery, it was the story and characters that drove that film. It cascaded with ideas, but was based on a simple premise and straightforward tale that gave it an irresistible urgency and drive. It’s a shining exception in a fifteen-year trough of pig shit, and the movie’s already ten years old.
So, the era of the great action film is long gone. Or perhaps it’s just Hollywood on life support, waiting for a wet-suited James Cameron to wander up the Santa Monica beach, drop his booty and snorkel off at the recently rebooted Lightstorm Entertainment offices, and make a return to producing the unstoppable excitement of his heyday. Mick and I can only hope: the pub may have replaced the handball, but nothing has made up for the loss of the great blockbuster genre of our youth.
Check out my full review of "Terminator Salvation" over at Screentrek.
*This image is taken from Snarkerati
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Comment by Marc P
Also, I think that the Matrix - I'm talking about the first movie here - is the best of a bad bunch.
I find most of todays modern blockbusters ubearable to watch, certainly in the cinema, and usually just end up feeling seasick. Viewing them on DVD only serves to uphold the fact that, when there's no big screen to pummell audiences into submission, these movies have nothing in the way of storylines to engage the audience.
Transformers: The Movie, made in 1986 is a much better film than the current rubbish. It's just what kids want.
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
"replaced by empty stylists such as McG, or media-savvy shysters in the form of Michael Bay"
sadly, that is what we're left with... the predictable 'big' set pieces, the gleam of new cars and big guns. Hollywood blockbusters used to make you tingle with anticipation and tension, but now they're just trying to deafen and blind the audience...
a terribly old post by me, one that was never fleshed out: James Cameron, a feminist?
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
What I find interesting is that if you look at really good blockbusters, they often only have a clutch of action scenes - albeit quite long ones - still, there's always time taken for some exposition and some building of tension until things explode once again.
Cib - your article on Cameron the feminist is interesting in the context of chaps like Bay and his boys' toys films, replete with mindless action and Megan Whats-her-face. Cameron may not have been a feminist, but his films often have very strong female characters that give his films a real edge - he didn't invent Ripley, but he understood the character very well and knew he could take her into those action setups. Same deal with the way he turned Sarah Connor into the ball breaker of the second film. Pretty cool ladies, really.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
I actually enjoyed Con Air at the movies when it came out (wow, thirteen years ago now), and I think that's when I coined the term supertrash when I reviewed it for the newspaper I worked for. The same goes for Armageddon. I knew they were vacuous, but they tickled something in me. There's a great book about Don Simpson, the man behind the high concept movie. Worth reading. As a rule I don't like the movies he made (and I've seen only a few), but the power and excess stories behind the slick, violent gloss are fascinating.
I'm a huge fan of The Terminator. I actually rank it as one of the best science fiction/action movies of the last thirty years. I very much like Aliens, not so much Judgment Day, but still entertaining. I love the look of Terminator Salvation and want to see it, but it's getting a bollocking from critics (including yourself).
So what then for James Cameron's Avatar? Will it be as soulless as its subject matter? Will it take supertrash to a whole new level? Probably both.
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
With regards to Avatar, Cameron's done enough for me to give him the benefit of the doubt until this comes out. I know what you mean about it sounding uninspiring, however.
As for Don SImpson - I'd love to read his book. Such a self destructive individual that it doesn't surprise me it's fascinating.
Comment by Mick Leigh
Nicely done. I've got to agree with most of your sentiments throughout but I do wonder about the difference in audience expectations. In the 80s, and to a lesser degree the 90s, I think we had a less calloused view of film. An era when seeing a preview for a film like Tango and Cash could excite a cinema audience.
Imagine Salvation being released shortly after Terminator 2, how would it have been received? How would we be remembering it now? Was this such a golden age, or are we looking at the era through rose couloured glasses? Is your Tron experiment not an example of this?
Obviously, we have become more sophisticated (or cynical) and therefore we expect more bang for our buck; and it takes more than just throwing those bangs together to make us happy.
Oh, and by the way...I don't think I'd actually watched the whole of Aliens either, guess it was a double bluff on both our parts!
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Oooh, double bluff indeed, you sneaky SOB.
Tango and Cash? That still gets me excited. I can't wait for the sequel: Tango and Cash and Sons.
I know what you mean about audience expectations, and to a small extent I think that's true: if you watch one of those classics now they perhaps don't quite pull you in like they did when they were first released. But instead of evolving with the times, the blockbuster seems to have devolved.
I can't remember who it was, but about a year ago I read a high-profile web reviewer talking about Aliens being his favourite cinema experience ever. In a packed audience, one girl apparently bent the arm on her seat and at the end, with the scene of Ripley and Newt running to be picked up by Bishop, the audience booed the synthetic when the drop ship wasn't there, but then stood up with a roar, pumping their fists when it suddenly flew into view. You can't imagine an audience having that sort of reaction to a blockbuster these days.
As for Tron, I just think it's a bad film no matter which way you look at it: it was bad then and it's bad now.
I still think there's hope, however. Cib will kill me for bringing this up, but I think Casino Royale is a great example: It's a film you remember for its massive action scenes, but when you think about it, there are only three of them - it knows how to exercise restraint. That film's director, Martin Campbell, incidentally, is a close associate of Cameron's.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile