Far be it for me to suggest that Prospect readers don't have their fingers on the pulse of popular cinema, but in case you haven't seen all Hollywood's blockbusters this year, I have selflessly done so on your behalf. The summer is nearly over, so I've bagged all the biggies. What, then, is the state of American popular cinema in 2005?
At first sight, things seem like business as usual. The most successful cultural export industry in the world has churned out loads of rubbish. In the last year, the Hollywood sausage machine has given us Robots, Mr and Mrs Smith, Star Wars Episode 3, Fantastic Four, Wedding Crashers and The Island, all "high concept," all low achievement. If the Star Wars film had been in French, it would have been accused of being ponderous and plotless. But instead it was ponderous and plotless and hugely successful, taking $810m in cinemas around the world, which makes its DVD rental and sales estimate an additional $1bn. Of the above six stinkers, the first four, it should objectively be noted, were made by 20th Century Fox. Good to see Rupert Murdoch's empire contributing as much to the art of cinema as it does to that of television and newspapers.
But mainstream cinema in 2005 was different from recent years in a number of ways. For a start there were fewer sequels, which is great, except that there was also a downturn in box office. If the industry concludes—as Variety did—that takings fell because there were fewer sequels, then we can expect more next year. More encouragingly, three of this year's big hits were actually quite good. Batman Begins (Warners, £18m in Britain so far), War of the Worlds (UIP, £32m) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Warners, £19m) were each distinctively mounted and—in parts, at least—intelligently spectacular. Three good Hollywood blockbusters in one year is rare, but these films were intriguing in other ways. Each used production design to signify the dysfunction of its dark-haired, central character. Lighting and colour expressed his mental problems, so much so in the case of War of the Worlds that some multiplexes stuck notes on their doors telling audiences that the dark look of the film was "as its director intended." More significantly, as many commentators noted, two of the films were veiled commentaries on America today. Johnny Depp's infantile, squeaky-voiced man-child who has created a Neverland for himself and who can only engage with children, usually sadistically, could not fail to call Michael Jackson to mind. And the brilliant first hour of War of the Worlds, where America is invaded by beings from elsewhere is a dead cert 9/11 allegory.
Even these good films were frustrating, however. Two of them in particular stumbled where mainstream American films really intend to succeed—in their third acts. Los Angeles is the Mecca of story structure in screenplays. It may not be the most creative place in the film world, but it prides itself on being the home of narrative cinema. Its screenwriting gurus preach a three-act creed, where the final act resolves the hero's journey satisfyingly, answering the psychological and thematic questions established in act one and explored in act two. Act three is—according to Robert McKee and Syd Field—not a place for subplots (they should be resolved at the climax of act two), but for the deep, meaty revelation of the solution to the problem which will restore order to our hero's life and to his world.
Neither Batman Begins nor War of the Worlds quite afforded these satisfactions. The former asked very engaging questions about its central character, Bruce Wayne. How should he grieve for his murdered parents? How can his father's philanthropy adapt to modern life? How can the son's rage be channelled into something good? But when the third act kicks in, Batman Begins becomes too manic in its determination to build to a big climax to complete what it had set out to do. And this was as nothing compared to War of the Worlds. Not since Saving Private Ryan, also directed by Steven Spielberg, has a film started so well and ended so badly. The first hour was even better than Batman. Spielberg's trademark broken family is once again the focus. Dad has the kids for the weekend, but he knows nothing about them and cares little. Spielberg is the master of such somnambulant Americana, terrifying his complacent world—ripping it up, hurling objects through it with Old Testament wrath. As with Saving Private Ryan, when a filmmaker does this to you in act one, he has you completely. So what does Spielberg do? He throws it all away. When the tripod extra-terrestrials invade, the psychological and social richness goes. Act one of War of the Worlds treats you as an adult, but half way it assumes you are a child, trowelling on the absurdities in set-piece after set-piece. In fact, it's difficult not to conclude that failure to bring its planes in to land has been the central creative problem in Hollywood for a generation. Since the earliest days of CGI and before, mainstream American filmmakers have not so much resolved their dramas as abandoned them in favour of the new fifth gear that CGI affords—impossible, melodramatic otherworldliness.
So what can be done? Something radical perhaps? I'm all for the droit d'auteur not to have his or her film tampered with, but if the great mainstream American films are too over-the-top at the end, too well-endowed with action and multiple endings, why doesn't someone—for the sake of moviegoers and in the interests of the filmmakers themselves—quietly return these films to the cutting rooms and, er, improve them? There are copyright issues involved, and such action might well attract the attention of the odd Hollywood lawyer, but putting that aside, wouldn't cutting these movies make the world a better place? Maybe the BBFC, which has the right to ask porn directors to remove scenes before certification, could do the same on aesthetic grounds? It could email Spielberg saying that War of the Worlds will get a 12A certificate as long as he agrees to make act 3 a bit more believable. Then, in order not to incur the costs of reshoots, the offending directors could ask someone like Jean-Luc Godard to make the new endings. He could then simply excise the offending scenes, insert his signature black screen and a quotation from Howard Hawks or Louis Althusser (either would do) and we'd have a better result.
War of the Worlds and Batman Begins might be films maudits after Godard got his hands on them, but they are films maudits anyway, and my suggestion would make them maudit in more palatable ways. If summer movies were started by Spielberg and finished by Godard, they might turn out to be the best ever made.
