Batman, Wolverine and Robocop, or why Darren Aronofsky should make a blockbuster

 As you are probably aware, Jose Padhila's Robocop reboot of Robocop opens in the UK on Friday, and I for one can barely contain my apathy. It's important to point out that I haven't seen the film yet, and early reviews have been surprisingly positive, so perhaps I'm being overly harsh.

The point is, though, that there was a time that I was genuinely excited about this movie - about four years ago when it was first in pre-production. The reason I lost my excitement had little to do with the Batman-wearing-a-cycle-helmet redesign, and more to do with the change of director. Robocop 2014 was originally going to be shot by Darren Aronofsky, the visionary film maker behind Black Swan and Requiem For A Dream.

Aronofsky seemed the perfect choice. Ever since his debut, Pi, his films have had an unsettling element of body horror (think of the pounding migraines of Pi's lead character, or the close ups of the protagonists abused and twisted bodies in The Wrestler or Black Swan). The thought of what Aronofsky could do with a half-man, half machine (all cop) protagonist was trouser-tentingly exciting. Clearly, however, Aronofsky's ideas were too terrifying (and presumably too R-rated) for Hollywood executives, who passed on his vision in favour of a relative unknown.

This isn't the first time Aronofsky has developed a tentpole movie, only to fail to see it through to the end. A couple of years ago he was involved in development on The Wolverine. Hugh Jackman reported they wanted to do a stand alone, R-rated Wolverine movie set in Vietnam in the '70s. Once again, the idea of what Aronofsky could do with an immortal character in an R-rated film is impossibly tempting. Fast forward to 2013 and The Wolverine is a fairly generic 12A superhero movie set in modern day Japan.

Finally, the best known unmade Aronofsky movie must be Batman: Year One – the film which eventually became Batman Begins. Although the original comic book doesn't exactly lend itself to body horror there are plenty of Batman villains I would love to see Aronofsky take a crack at (Two Face, Killer Croc, and Bane to name just three).

Perhaps Aronofsky's true place is at the fringes of the mainstream. As a director he arguably has the best and most exciting oeuvre of the twentieth century, and if he had been distracted by these blockbuster movies we might never have had classics like Black Swan and The Wrestler. It's also entirely possible that, had he stuck at them, his versions of Batman, Wolverine and Robocop would have been turgid, generic, compromised mush, ruined by studio meddling and bereft of any of the style and intelligence that he has brought to the films that he has made. 

By God, though, I would like to have seen what he could have done with these iconic characters. Please, someone, give this man a blockbuster.

New Hollywood, Old Directors

As you are no doubt aware, Martin Scorsese's latest film, The Wolf of Wall Street, opened in the UK on Friday. Reviews have been largely positive. Empire magazine even stated it “is the first Martin Scorsese film in some time that feels as though, in a few years, it will join Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas in the canon.”

At the end of the last century the crown kings of American film were the directors of the “New Hollywood”. This was the term given to the gang of young directors who rose to prominence in the late 1960s and early 70s. Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, William Friedkin et al. Martin Scorsese was still back then referred to as “America's greatest living film maker”. It's a label that is less used these days, partly because there are new pretenders to the crown (for example David Fincher and PT Anderson), but also because nothing Scorsese has done since 1990 has reached the dizzy heights of his early masterpieces.

Many of his contemporaries have fared much worse. The same issue of Empire quoted above also features Francis Ford Coppola's latest movie Twixt – which has gone straight to DVD in the UK after two years in limbo. It's a rarity these days for a film by Brian De Palma to not go straight to DVD. William Friedkin spent nearly 20 years languishing in the world of TV. Spielberg's obviously doing well for himself, but most of his recent work is still a long way from the glory days of Jaws and ET.

This is not a phenomenon exclusive to film. How many musicians, writers and artists blaze a trail in their early careers before sliding slowly into mediocrity?

I believe that most human beings really only have a few profound observations they can make about life and the world. Once they've made those initial statements, where do they go? They can either repeat those same few statements over and over, with inevitably diminishing returns, they can quit and do something else, or they can work for hire, which might make you money but is unlikely to lead to too many awards ceremonies.

There is, however, an exception to the rule that artists usually do their best work early in their careers. The great American directors of the 70s are now in their 70s. They are in the final phase of their working lives, which gives them a new perspective, and perhaps a new artistic impetus. As stated above, The Wolf of Wall Street has been getting strong reviews. William Friedkin's Killer Joe was warmly received in 2011. Terence Malick has made more films in the past four years then he made in the previous forty. Spielberg's Lincoln is widely regarded as his best film since at least Schindler's List.

I think we're beginning to see a resurgence of some of the greatest film makers who have ever lived. And I can't wait to see what they do next.

Gravity – Movie Review

Gravity opens with the most jaw-dropping special effects shot since Sam Neill saw his first Brachiosaurus in Jurassic Park. Planet Earth stretches out before you, whole, three dimensional, real. In one long, unbroken shot we are introduced to our lead characters as they float through the void, above the audience, in an utterly convincing depiction of modern space flight. Instantly the film makes the best use of 3D seen in the modern age – this film needs to be seen in the cinema.

Our lead characters, Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), are doing routine repairs on the Hubble space telescope, when they get word that a cloud of debris from a damaged satellite is heading their way. As the previously routine mission spins out of control the visual virtuosity continues. Director Alfonso Cuaron throws every trick in the book at the audience – space debris flies towards the screen, the camera flows seamlessly through an astronaut’s visor and into a POV shot, and floating water bubbles land on the camera lens. Gravity is an aggressively stylish film that rivals the work of Fincher and Scorsese for flair and audacity.

Praise is also due to stars Bullock and Clooney, as the jittery rookie and smooth old-hander respectively. Clooney, playing to his strengths, slides back into the easy charm shtick that has served him so well since ER, and reminds you what a likeable screen presence he can be. Bullock, meanwhile, is a revelation, in the more challenging of the two roles, and gives a performance which a) finally puts the ghost of Miss Congeniality to bed and b) must now be considered the hot favourite for Best Actress come awards season. (Special mention must go to the scene where she finally breaks down under stress, which had hardened cynics all around – including myself – pretending they had something in their eye.)

Sadly the script, and the science, can’t quite live up to the quality shown elsewhere. There is an inherent tension in the core premise between scientific realism and disaster movie thrills, and the film expends so much energy trying to create a sense of scientific verisimilitude that it’s especially disappointing when it doesn’t live up to its own exacting standards. As the film moves into its third act, implausibility becomes an increasing problem, and it’s sad that a film which impresses so much with its credibility at the beginning, has you crying “Bullshit!” at the last moment.

There are also moments where sentimentality, cheesiness and cod profundity threaten to overwhelm the good that has gone before. One particular moment, where Clooney is forced to spell out a message that really should have been implicit, is awkward and jarring.

It will be interesting to see how posterity treats Gravity. My instinct is that, on the small screen, and in 2D, its flaws will become glaringly obvious. Don’t let that happen to you. Gravity doesn’t reach the heights scaled by 2001, and never really properly makes its mind up as to whether it wants to be a philosophical science drama or an action thriller. It is, however, a towering visual achievement, an overwhelming spectacle, a rip-roaring action movie, and the best fun I’ve had in a cinema in at least six years.

5/5

Censorship Part 1: Moral panics and Kick Ass 2, or Why Jim Carrey Should Have The Courage Of His Convictions

This is part 1 of a 2 part article.

Two films currently on general release have both attracted controversy for their supposedly violent natures. Only God Forgives attracted boos and walkouts at Cannes earlier this year over its violence (something that is becoming a tradition at Cannes in recent years), whilst Kick Ass 2 star Jim Carrey has withdrawn his support from the movie, stating via his twitter feed “I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to... others involve with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.” I will post my own opinions on these films in the next few days but I want to examine the relationship between real world violence and media violence, and society's attitudes towards that relationship.

Chloe Grace Moretz, Carrey's co-star in Kick Ass 2, suggested in a Guardian interview last weekend that Carrey had felt forced to distance himself from the film as he was involved in lobbying for gun control laws in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, and could foresee the accusations of hypocrisy that would fly in his direction whenKick Ass 2 was released. This isn't a stance that's without merit; certainly I would agree that doing something to curb the utterly insane right of US citizens to bear arms trumps the importance of publicising a superhero movie (and, indeed, the comic's creator Mark Millar has suggested Carrey's denunciation was worth $30 million of free publicity, so it could be Carrey is having his cake and eating it), but by distancing himself from the film I believe Carrey is tacitly accepting the idea that fictional violence and real world violence are linked, and in doing so he is actually damaging the causes of gun control and of free speech.

Let's start by stating the facts. No study has ever shown any conclusive correlation between exposure to fictional violence and one's propensity for real world violence (a recent US Supreme court decision criticised existing research as inconsistent and methodologically flawed). Moreover, mass shootings of the type seen at Sandy Hook are far too rare to be attributed to any single source. If watching the Matrix and listening to Marilyn Manson caused people to commit atrocities (as was widely argued by apparently sane people in the wake of Columbine) then the turn of the century would have been marked by a level of worldwide bloodshed unseen since 1945. As violence in the media – and the realism of violent video games have increased – levels of violent crime have dropped. In their 2002 evaluation of school shooters, the U.S. Secret Service found no evidence to suggest that these perpetrators consume more media violence than anyone else.

Following the Sandy Hook massacre The Sun and The Daily Express newspapers both ran stories about gunman Adam Lanza being a fan of Call Of Duty (The Sun's front page headline was “Killer's Call of Duty Obsession”). Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik was also cited as being a fan of the game series (in fact, aside from his insane ideology it's almost the only think I know about Breivik, which goes to show how widely this insignificant fact was reported). A quick check on Wikipedia reveals that Call of Duty: Black Ops (released in 2010) has sold 25 million units worldwide. Those are first hand sales – that figure doesn't factor in second hand sales and people borrowing or sharing games. Given that there have been 9 Call of Duty games released in the past decade, totalling over 100 million sales, and that “As of March 31, 2012 there are 40 million monthly active players across all of the Call of Duty titles” (Wikipedia) it seems reasonable to estimate that, in total, somewhere in the region of 50-100 million people have played a Call of Duty game at some point. It's hardly surprising that a couple of those people have done something awful.

There are numerous examples over the past half century of violent media being blamed for the ills of society. As well as the attempts to blame Columbine on Goth culture (and really, doesn't it show the ignorance of the people making these claims that it was the goths whom they found the scariest people in youth culture?), the one that made the biggest impression on me during my youth was the controversy over Child's Play 3, and the attempts to link this exceptionally silly and tame horror film with the tragic and horrifying murder of toddler James Bulger by ten year olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. For the record, there is no evidence whatsoever that either Thompson or Venables had ever seen this movie. The only link between the movie and the case at all is that Venables father had rented the movie a few months before the murder. As Venables was not living with his father at the time, and as police psychiatric reports state he disliked horror movies, it is extremely unlikely that he ever saw the film, let alone that it had any influence on his later behaviour.

A toddler is murdered in the most horrific manner by two ten year olds. A lone gunman kills 77 people, mainly teenagers, in a pre-planned killing spree – driven by a hatred of muslims. Two teenagers kill 13 people, then themselves, in a mass shooting. Another gunman kills twenty elementary school children and seven adults before killing himself. Movies and video games are blamed. Why?

I believe that violent media is scapegoated because this act of scapegoating allows our society to avoid having a much more complex and meaningful discussion about the real causes of these awful events. In the Bulger case, the real issues involved were particularly profound. Both boys came from abusive family backgrounds. Both were barely over the age of criminal responsibility and were tried in an adult court – a process that the European Court of Human Rights decided in 1999 had denied them a fair trial. The then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, increased Thompson and Venables' sentence following a campaign by The Sun newspaper (this intervention was later overruled by The House Of Lords as illegal). The Prime Minister, John Major, said in response to the case that “society needs to condemn a little more, and understand a little less". Rather than discuss the appropriate age of criminal responsibility, the causal effects of nature and nurture, how we as a civilised society should deal with children who are capable of such appalling acts and whether social services should intervene more in the case of antisocial families of the kind that spawned Thompson and Venables, the two common reactions (propagated by the press and endorsed by politicians) were to a) blame Child's Play 3 and b) write two ten year old boys off as having been born pure, unmitigated evil. Even blaming a movie makes more sense to me than the latter.

In the case of Sandy Hook the issues were much simpler. Adam Lanza suffered from multiple psychological and neurological issues and had access to a wide variety of firearms. This is not to say that a combination of the two will always lead to mass murder, but if you keep rolling two dice, eventually you will roll snake eyes. Attempts by the right – notably Fox News – to pin the blame on violent media are an attempt to distract from the urgent need for reform of the country's gun laws.

Politicians are only too eager to play into this narrative as it allows them to take quick and decisive action that gives the appearance of effectively dealing with a matter that, in reality, defies easy fixes. These moral panics are always focussed on things that exist outside the mainstream of popular culture - horror films, rock music or video games. These aren't the things that are enjoyed by the opinion formers and elites of society. They are things that are enjoyed by the “other” - by the youth or outsiders in society. They offer easy scapegoats because the people doing the scapegoating – and by and large the audience for such scapegoating (I'm looking at you here, Daily Mail readers) – can place culpability for society's problems on an external force, that is not a part of their day to day existence, rather than examining their own responsibility for the problems of the society on which they live. Politicians can then take steps to ban or regulate these scapegoats without fear of a backlash from the majority of their voters. Note how quickly an attempt to blame the Aurora shooting on media violence foundered – Batman is simply too mainstream these days to credibly blame mass murder on. I believe this is also why video games have replaced horror movies as the default target for such moral panics: the savage cinema wave of extreme horror films started in the early 70s and, as a result, many people now in their fifties and sixties will have enjoyed these films in their youth and know that they weren't corrupted by them.

In Part 2 I will examine censorship itself and why it doesn't work.