In Defence Of The Summer Blockbuster

The summer blockbuster. The three most scorned and derided words in the cinematic lexicon, stolen from the theatre and never given back. While the summer blockbuster is widely treated with disdain, this is unfair – blockbusters are a necessary and often entertaining part of Hollywood.

Summer blockbusters are regularly sniffed at by critics who regard them as rejecting artistic values, good acting, an electrifying script and an emotionally engaging story. Instead, they favour sketchy character development, car chases and explosions, and cater to popcorn-munching, sticky-fingered children. Yes, it’s that time of year again – awards season is over and studios are looking to recoup their annual losses with highly-marketed, merchandise-heavy, big-budget action extravaganzas.

While blockbusters are now less well-regarded, the very first blockbusters helped to reinvigorate a stale industry suffering from the advent of television. They are now frequently rated as the best ever made, with special effects taking us to galaxies far, far away and mechanical sharks remaining unseen for half the film but still keeping us hooked. In a similar way, the summer blockbuster period is a welcome break after awards season, allowing Hollywood and its audiences to recharge their batteries creatively and mentally before the awards season rolls around again.

However, in a Hollywood with a stunning lack of originality coursing through its veins, the endless parade of remakes, sequels, prequels and adaptations has understandably left critics pining for the Hollywood of freshness and creativity. They want Kaufman-esque scripts that are emotionally engaging, thought-provoking and sophisticated, but instead get The Green Lantern and aren’t happy about it. What critics tend to forget, however, is that even before the blockbuster era, Hollywood was using epic spectacle to sell films to the masses. From Errol Flynn’s Technicolored Robin Hood to fighter planes buzzing around King Kong on top of the Empire State Building in the 1930s and films like Ben-Hur twenty years later, action and excitement have always been a key part of filmmaking.

The key to a great blockbuster appears to be the successful marriage of action with sympathetic and believable characterisation. Roger Ebert said that Jaws was ‘a sensationally effective action picture, a scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings’. A more recent film, The Dark Knight, has a lot of action sequences, but they always have a uniquely human element to them, such as the choice Bruce Wayne has to make about whether to save the woman he loves or the man who is truly capable of helping him clean up Gotham City. If more blockbusters followed this general rule, their reputations might be improved.

Ultimately, blockbusters are nothing new: they have become one-note dumb entertainment but this makes the really good ones stand out. We watch films to escape our lives and our problems and, for pure escapism and excitement, there’s surely nothing better than watching a dinosaur headbutt a Jeep over a cliff.

Biting The Bullet

Biting the Bullet = creating blog. Even though I haven't told anyone about it so really this is just for myself at the moment.

Name: Excelluloid. It's a good name for a film blog I think. Because it's both excellent AND about celluloid. Even though I may also write about music and bitch about football on it occasionally.

Here's a picture of De Niro looking like Saddam after he came out of the hole in the ground he was hiding in. It makes me laugh.