Boffo B Movies In The Offing!
Hollywood, hoping to catch the Gorezilla wave, are going back in time to recapture the golden era of B movies! Only this time it isn't the atomic bomb they are scarifying about! No, this is big news! They plan on making all of mankind the villain for doing damage to Gaia! Yes, environmental catastrophe is the order of the day for the folks in Hollyweird.
LOS ANGELES, March 11 — Tired of abuse by mankind, the earth is angry. Worse, the planet is out to even the score.
Audiences can expect a story along those lines when M. Night Shyamalan’s film “The Happening” reaches screens in the next year. The project, to which 20th Century Fox signed on last week, imagines a planet that is starting to act like the vigilante Travis Bickle from “Taxi Driver.”
“The Happening” will not be the only big-budget studio film to test a new kind of villainy, in which the real victim is the environment, and, whatever the plot variations, the enemy is all of us. Beginning this summer and for months after, movies as diverse as the “The Simpsons Movie,” “Transformers,” a remake of “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” and James Cameron’s “Avatar” will take on environmental themes.
Dumping popular Hollywood villains of the past — drug lords, aliens, North Korean dictators, even the news media — for an environmental bête noire carries risks for studios that don’t mind frightening viewers, as long as it’s all in fun. But it also hints at the possibility of more sophisticated entertainment, and perhaps even the kind of impact that “The China Syndrome,” with Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas, exerted on the nuclear power industry when it came out in 1979.
Why stop there? Why not look deeply into the great impact the all-time great Them! had on the world? Or Godzilla! That gave us decades of Raymond Burr! Or even better, The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock! Yes, today's Hollywood giants are working diligently to produce the next generation's fond, but laughable, memories! You gotta love it.
Has Hollywood had anything approaching an original thought in generations? Or do they just recycle until their audiences leave?
Dumb Stuff, Environment, Media | Gaius Monday, 12 March , 2007
By James Aach, Monday, 12 March , 2007 @ 11:06 pm
It is probably unreasonable to expect the visual entertainment industry to be friendlier to science and technology with their onscreen product than the publishing industry is now. It’s hard to get a book published with even relatively simple (and accurate) science in it these days. I suspect most of the folks making the creative decisions in both print and film gave up on science around sixth grade, and are uncomfortable with it in any form beyond good vs. evil (with lots of explosions). Combine this with an effort to use film as a medium for expressing one’s views and changing minds and you have today’s mass entertainment. The China Syndrome was slightly above average in this regard, as at least some of the sets looked realistic (I know, I work in a nuclear plant) even if the scenario and warnings in the film were overblown. It’s also rather sad that the viewing public looks to such films for guidance in these areas - - but we are a species which has always used story-telling as a key means of communicating ideas and values. Unfortunately, these days if one wishes to communicate in a mass medium, science is considered a no-no.
James Aach, author of ‘Rad Decision’, the first insider novel of nuclear nower, available (at no cost) at RadDecision.blogspot.com or in paperback at online retailers. (You’ll LOVE the mutant squirrels!!) For further discussion of the lack of science within popular literature, the http://www.lablit.com site has plenty of material.