Movies are like comfort food to me, and since I refuse to eat American fast food the whole time I'm abroad, I'm subbing in moving pictures. In Madrid, after an effort much more involved than I care to admit, I found a movie theater. I sauntered up to the counter, mousy and nervous, and said "Oblìvìoñ" with all the phony Spanish affectation I could muster.
"It's in Spanish," she replied.
"Okay," I returned. I figured as much, but no English subtitles or anything? And how many prints in how many different languages are struck? How many Tom Cruises are out there speaking French and German and Japanese? And all of those voice actors for every character? What a logistical and financial nightmare. There has to be some Swedish dude walking around Hollywood with racks in his pocket because be can vocally emote in a culturally pleasing way. "Who me, baby? I'm the Scandinavian Morgan Freeman."
Oblivion is pretty good. Alex Jones has already seen it twice and says it's an, "anti-Globalist tour de force." If that blurb was on the movie poster, well, I think the box office returns would speak for themselves. Visually, the film is decadent. Like ocular candy, where it tickles the senses, it's about as substantive as a belly full of Jolly Ranchers. The most revealing aspect of the film was how digestible it was even in a foreign language. Good guys with their jaws and teeth drawn out with a T-square. Pretty assistants/live in girlfriends who push years of theatrical training out through their wet, doe eyes. "Bad Guys" in their always chic post-apocalyptic black complete with form fitted breast plates and helmets festooned with bird feathers (on a ruined earth? Whatever, who gives a shit). It was all so familiar, you even began to telegraph the plot points. When Tom Cruise's character, Jack, begins to piece together his memories--shot in black and white, get it?--you have equation enough to write in the sum on the other side of equals sign. Oblivion is a film I'm sure prides itself on its late second act pinch and some SciFi wrinkles to really challenge the viewer, but alas, there was nothing left in the stew pot to chew on the next day.
A couple of nights later in San Sebastián, trying to keep from wasting my money (well, ALL of my money) on pintxos and beer, I went to Iron Man 3. Again, it was the same experience. Tony Stark, more like Tony Snark! And by they way, Spaniards DO NOT think he's funny. I've committed Robert Downey Jr's facial ticks to memory, and when he was quipping at defcon panty drop, the crowd didn't even change their breathing patterns. But the film is Pepper Potts, whiz kid helpers, Don Cheadle, plus a whole cadre of enemies and the sortie of Iron Man suits to fight them. There is a snub at the beginning that sits on screen like Chekov's gun. There are grainy, jump cut videos sent in from The Mandarin--a terrorist and foil to Tony whose storyline is wonderfully satisfying--where the anti-American bombast practically writes itself.
Is the measure of these films the overall quality? Well, it's summer fare you purchase at the concession stand as much as you do the ticket window. Instead, are the greater merits of these pictures the production of something at the heart of cinema? In film school they call it visual storytelling. In screenwriting 101 they tell young writers, "Don't put anything in text you can't put directly on screen." These films contain a complete, engaging narrative someone could walk into the theater and enjoy without even speaking the language.
It's hard for me to pull apart how much of my enculturation is enmeshed with my understanding of these films. Iron Man 3 is part of a franchise, and Oblivion is built on a number of well tread tropes, but I think it goes to when you take a toddler--the tabla not completely rasa--to the movies and they can recall the broad strokes of an animated film. Especially when it's something a'la Pixar and there is as much content for adults as children.
Perhaps this quality should be a total insult to the Shane Black and Joseph Kosinski. Maybe their films are like a flip-book, asinine pictures set in motion to make dummies guffaw. I could be the living emblem of the perpetual dumbing down of summer blockbusters. Or, there is a compelling argument, this is a very pure kind of cinema.
I ran a list of films I might not understand with the sound off, or in a foreign language. Big movies, not your 2001's and quiet dramas and Terrence Malik films, and I couldn't come up with a clear cut winner. Maybe a Nolan film? Prometheus? Crank 2? And even if it is the case, is it really a higher form of film making? We've come along way, but the men from long ago who set a camera on a tripod knowing the images had to speak for them have rightfully etched their code on cinema's DNA.
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