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Now that you (Morgue) mention it, I wonder whether the big crappy shit-blowing-up-stylee disaster movie will return, too -- based on the performance of The Day After Tomorrow, it may be safe to say that the appetite for such films is gone; but it could just as persuasively be argued that the film in question was simply a piece of shit. Then again, the pre-9/11 ID4 was *also* a piece of shit. One imagines Roland Emmerlich scratching his head at the low returns for The Day After Tomorrow, wondering where the whole "huge piece of shit = huge box office" formula went so tragically wrong between 1996 and 2004, and maybe it was the WTC attacks that did it in. It's hard to say.
Then again, like every other genre, the all-(minor)-star-cast disaster movie has come in and out of vogue periodically anyhow. There's a straight line of descent from The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure in the '70s to ID4 and Titanic in the '90s. In both decades, spectacle is far more important than story, and the films can be enjoyed both by audiences who mist up over the tragic sacrifice of the one-dimensional hero and the more cynical, typically hipster-ish types who see the movies as comedies. (Poseidon Adventure enjoyed a bit of a Rocky Horror-type comeback as a midnight movie in the '90s.)
I think it's significant, though, that the genre became popular at a time when the popular perception was that a time of great social upheaval was over (post-Vietnam, Civil Rights, JFK/MLK/RFK/Malcolm X assassinations), and later when the popular perception was that a new "golden age" was underway (Clinton era -- employment highs, thriving information economy, etc.). The disaster films in both cases can be read as America congratulating itself for having pulled together and standing tall in a time of (now safely over) crisis -- even if the reality was a whole hell of a lot messier than that. Basically, what I'm saying is that it's fairweather filmmaking: If we WERE tested, the films say, we'd be able to rise up to the challenge. Not really a message America likes to hear as it is actively BEING tested, and knows better. About as close as we can get is stuff like LOTR, which follows a similar dynamic but is (again, safely) set in a realm of pure fantasy (which, paradoxically, seems far more realistic than the depiction of American life found in, say, ID4).
At the same time, I think that right now a lot of people are incredibly pissed off...on the right, people are angry at the terrorists (whoever they are this week), and on the left, people are angry at their own government. What unites people on both sides is a feeling of frustrated impotence -- what can you really do about it, in either case? The terrorists are an invisible, intangible boogeyman; Bush is quite real, but a majority vote against him didn't keep him out of office last time, and there's the real fear that if somehow Kerry is elected things won't really change much. Feeling helpless, I don't think Americans are at all interested in watching films about people being subjected to menacing acts of God or implacable foes. That's a bit too much like real life, presently. I do think that films like Kill Bill will continue to be successful, though...a pissed-off woman slashing her enemies to grisly death with a samurai sword is way more likely to induce catharsis. For better or worse, I'm pretty sure that's way more in tune with the current national zeitgeist. |
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It makes me soo mad to think that NYC had a chance to add a major architectural skyscraper to its skyline and they settled on that stupid damn Freedom Tower design. Grrr...... 
