After delivering
War Horse and
The Adventures of Tintin to audiences in 2011, Steven Spielberg will tackle the best-selling book “
Team of Rivals” and bring the story of President Abraham Lincoln and the road to the end of the Civil War to the sliver screen. Looking to projects beyond the film titled
Lincoln, Spielberg briefly discussed his follow up film titled
Robopocalypse, based on the New York Times best selling science fiction book by Daniel H. Wilson of the same name, with
Time Out.
Spielberg offers some hints about what audiences
can expect from the film, from the obvious premise of a global war
between man and machine, and compares the upcoming film to another
science fiction film directed by Spielberg himself-Minority Report. Now as a huge Spielberg fan who considers Minority Report
to one his best films and an underrated one amongst cinema in general, I
can’t help but be intrigued by the film despite the novel on which it’s
based having strongly divided reviews and the title being admittedly
ridiculous. However this comment from Spielberg himself on the films
plot and themes stood out amongst everything else he had to say on the
project:
“It’s about the consequences of creating technologies which make
our lives easier, and what happens when that technology becomes smarter
than we are. It’s not the newest theme, it’s been done throughout
science fiction, but it’s a theme that becomes more relevant every
year.”
What really caught my attention with his comments wasn’t the films
premise, which was to be expected given the nature of the source
material, but his input on exploring a theme that has been tackled
numerous times in film before. Nowadays there are too many pretentious film goers who stick their noses up at any mainstream film-unless it was
produced for less than one million dollars and distributed only into a
number of theaters that you can count on both hands-for using a story,
theme, style or even one single type of sequence that has been used
before…ironically while losing their minds over films such as
The Tree of Life for reminding them of the works of Stanley Kubrick.
Superhero films are the biggest victims of this
over simplified method of judging films these days, however in the eyes
of the “intelligent film goer” any film that doesn’t completely turn the
conventions of film making on their head, or at the very least draw
inspiration from the least common styles of film making, isn’t worthy of
being referred to as “cinema”.
The comments by Spielberg about Robopocalypse’s
theme and how it’s not exactly the most fresh of ideas out there helped
me fuel more arguments against these sort of “film fans”. Now this
isn’t me fanboying over Spielberg or making it seem as though he’s come
across some ingenious, undiscovered argument in favour of mainstream
film. This also isn’t a premature review of the film stating its
brilliance. Given the fact that the project hasn’t even gone into
production yet, I’m well aware that the film could be a disaster. It’s
simply an observation I’ve made about his statement that helped me
realize a point I hadn’t considered all the much before.
The idea that plots and themes would be reused
isn’t anything new considering many classic tales have been passed on
through generations for ages. However the notion that they can continue
to grow more relevant as humanity continues to grow and, in some cases,
fails to heed the warnings of these stories is something to consider
when criticizing a film for failing to completely reinvent the wheel. For
example, given the nature of our history, could themes of man’s evil
towards his fellow man not be one that can only continue to evolve and
have new examples with which to explore these ideas? It’s an interesting
notion that not only does time warrant the reuse of familiar ideas, but
it can also make them ever more significant and offer new methods in
which to express these ideas. This to any sane person is a stronger way
to judge films: How something is explored, not solely what is being
explored.
Source: Time Out
