Hollywood could save a lot of energy by producing one endlessly recyclable summer blockbuster that would keep all comers happy. Call it Mamma Mia: Harry Potter and the Transforming Ice Age,say – or, even better, the Summertron 3000, suggests Donald Clarke
THE YELLOW-TAILED summer blockbuster has, truth be told, never really looked at home in the foliage of northern Europe. Yet, for the past few decades or so, cinematic twitchers have devoted much of the warm months to its study.
Oddly, the first sighting of such a beast on these shores took place in January. Released in the US during the high summer of 1975, Steven Spielberg's Jawssavaged the nation's box offices with such ruthlessness that the studios felt obliged to redraw their release strategies. From then on, the year's biggest mainstream movies would be released simultaneously throughout the Union in the weeks between Memorial Day at the end of May and Labour Day at the start of September. What's that you say? You'd like your film to steadily accumulate word-of-mouth as it builds from a small initial release in a few key cities? That's for pantywaists and communists. Get out of here, Rosa Luxembourg, and take your nancy-boy friends with you.
Jawsdid not, in fact, arrive in Ireland until the early months of 1976.
Indeed, it took two decades for the window between US and European releases to properly contract. By the end of the century, however, we were all included in the annual summer jamboree. Within weeks of the big summer release opening in New York and Nebraska, that film will also be playing in Norwich and Navan.
The anomaly, of course, is that British and Irish punters have never viewed summer as the heart of the cinema-going year. In virtually every corner of the United States, citizens enter air-conditioned movie theatres as a way of escaping the exhausting, blisteringly hot summer temperatures. Here, on those days when the sun breaks through, it is regarded as sacrilegious to even consider attending the picture palace. This writer – even paler and frailer as a child than now – remembers one particular phrase being slung at him again and again throughout his teenage years: “You’re going to the cinema on a nice day like this?” Well what did you expect me to do? Go abseiling? Take up white-water rafting?
The mathematics of American and European cinema are – in one regard, at least – perfectly complementary. In the US, takings vary in direct proportion to the temperature. In Europe, they vary in inverse proportion to the same statistic.
Anyway, whether we like it or not, we have been drawn into the summer blitzkrieg. This year, the World Cup has, admittedly, caused exhibitors to hold back, and the season has begun with something of a phoney war. But, by mid July, the assault will have begun in earnest. The third Twilight movie arrives this week. Reimaginings of The Karate Kidand The A-Teampotter along at the end of the month. Shrek Forever Afteris already with us.
Hollywood expends a furious amount of energy scattering movies throughout the summer schedule. Every week, another bunch of stars is flown to another top hotel for another busy press junket. Thousands of posters are run up. Prints are struck. It all seems like an awful waste of energy.
Surely, in these straitened times, there must be a more economical way of launching the annual assault on the world’s pockets. Perhaps, the East Germans had it right. In the decades before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the old GDR and the US demonstrated very different approaches to the production of automobiles. In the US, the car firms delivered a vast variety of shapes, sizes, colours and styles. In the eastern bits of Germany you got one car to suit all purposes: the boxy, utilitarian Trabant.
Here is the answer. The People’s Republic of Southern California should, perhaps, focus its attentions on producing one, endlessly recyclable summer movie. Let’s call it the Summertron 3000. Obviously, in a free market that offers endless diversions on endless electronic platforms, the average punter is not going to tolerate a stark utilitarian product. The Summertron 3000 will be a luxury item, but, within its niche it will be the only such item available. It will come in any colour you like as long as that colour is every colour under the sun.
Now, to determine our design specs, let's have a glance at the five biggest summer films of 2009. (It hardly needs to be said that the biggest movie of all, something about blue aliens, came out at Christmas time.) We have, predictably enough, three sequels: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Princeand – breathtakingly huge outside the US – Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.In The Hangover,we have one boozy lads' comedy. In 2012,we have an old-fashioned disaster movie from Roland Emmerich.
One key demographic is, however, not catered for in that list. Go back to 2008 and we observe Sex and the Cityand the agreeably barmy Mamma Mia!shovelling up vast heaps of gold in all territories east of Nantucket. So, a particular section of the female cinema-going audience – have we avoided gender stereotyping there? – should also be considered when designing the Summertron 3000.
What we need is a story about a violent killer robot who gains confidence while at wizard school and, after much study, devises a spell to summon cuddly dinosaurs back to Earth as part of his efforts to avert global, climactic catastrophe. With me so far? Unfortunately, he gets insanely drunk at the school prom and forgets where he has left the ingenious formula.
Happily, four variously caricatured lady robots are on hand – Primbot, Shagbot, Workbot and Fretbot – to take him round the shops as a diversion. Eventually, everyone realises that there are more important things than the end of the world and they all sing along to one of several featured tunes by the Scissor Sisters. (A special version of the film, intended for middle-aged male gits, will be issued on DVD with Leonard Cohen songs replacing the Sisters’ melodies.)
No, the idea does not constitute the ravings of a maniac desperately searching for silly- season filler (as if). Consider Christmas. Every year, we force ourselves through the same rituals: crackers, turkey, disharmony, deaf auntie Sally’s poisonous plum puddings. That festival is characterised by a hunger for repetition and familiarity. It’s time to treat the summer movie season the same way. Every other Friday, the Summertron 3000 will be released and, depending upon the media’s mood, reviewed as disaster movie, wizard flick, lads’ romp or shopping’n’shagging comedy.
Be honest. You’d barely notice the difference.
Twilight opens today and is reviewed in film reviews
