Film scholarship of late has pinpointed the mid-70s as the birth time of the contemporary blockbuster movie. After a spate of personal, auteur-driven films defined what many have heralded as the heyday of American cinema, directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas began to experiment with popular genre forms, which they imbued with their own aesthetics. The results, “Jaws” and “Star Wars,” respectively, had theatergoers lined around the block, set box office records and reinvigorated the notion of a “popcorn film.” What were once construed as “B” films were now A-list pursuits.
Dozens of sequels and prequels later, moviegoers’ fascination with tent pole movies shows no sign of declining. A tacit scan of this summer’s offerings (summer being, on the Hollywood calendar, mid-May to September) reveals several franchise flicks from, as director Terry Gilliam would say, the “more big fun” school of movie marketing.
In keeping with a trend established in summers past, sequelitis has revisited the multiplex in the form of a superhero, a pirate and a computer-animated cartoon character, who have managed to garner not only fan’s loyalty but their entertainment dollar as well. These big-three blockbusters are also each the third installment of their respective series – titles that represent nine films in all and billions of dollars in revenue.
“Spider-Man 3” must first be appreciated for its no-frills title. A longwinded label is the first misstep many sequels make – consider the “Die Hard” series, which, after the obligatory “Die Hard 2,” became overly ambitious. The third movie was titled “Die Hard: With a Vengeance” and its upcoming fourth installment is dubiously dubbed “Live Free or Die Hard.” Mercifully, the producers ditched several working titles for the latest film including “Die Hard: Reset,” “Die Hard: Tears of the Sun,” “Die Hard 4.0” and “Die Hard 4: Die Hardest”.
The new episode of Spider-Man finds the web-slinging hero’s plainclothes identity, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire), mulling a marriage proposal to love interest Kirsten Dunst. The relationship is interrupted by the usual quandaries leveled on those with dual identities as more than one romantic interlude is cut short by the squelch of a police scanner and the hero’s obligations to save the day. Otherwise, the film is rife with the usual twists (betrayal, redemption, catharsis) and spectacles audiences have come to expect, if not require, of their summer blockbusters.
Ditto “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” a redemption tale that reclaims Johnny Depp’s Capt. Jack Sparrow (in his requisite black eyeliner) from the clutches of the kraken leading to an inevitable face-off with squid-headed Davy Jones. The film also features a honey-baked Kiera Knightly and, as Sparrow’s father, a long-promised cameo by Rolling Stones alumnus Keith Richards, whom Depp has repeatedly claimed was the inspiration for his own character. This third and possibly final installment of the seafaring series has already past the $400 million mark – the fastest film to ever do so and a vast improvement to the genre which Roman Polanski nearly sank 20 years earlier with his water-logged “Pirates.”
“Shrek the Third” reunites the voices of cast-mates Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and Antonio Banderas in Dreamworks’ computer-animated series about a green ogre with a Scottish brogue and a talking donkey sidekick. As its title might suggest, this third flick explores notions of lineage with affable curmudgeon Shrek facing fatherhood and a mid-life career crisis. Despite the sense of finality detected by many critics (the specter of a “next generation” is a fine note to end on), producer Jeffrey Katzenberg assures there will be more Shreks to come, including an upcoming holiday-themed featurette.
A worthy antidote that all but apes the conventions of the blockbuster is director Hal Hartley’s sequel-of-a-sort, “Faye Grim.” The film stars Parker Posey as the title character (a single mom with a well-earned chip on her shoulder) and picks up a story line established nearly a decade ago in Hartley’s “Henry Fool.” In that film a garrulous, egomaniac and would-be poet tumbles through the lives of adult siblings, whose need for escape from their dreary lives in Queens makes them susceptible to Henry’s romantic lies and purported literary intrigues. “Faye Grim” furthers the tale when it turns out Henry’s copious lies from the first film are revealed to be true – leading to a droll caper of international espionage that manages to maintain its art house roots. Shot lean and mean on high-definition video (and almost entirely in Dutch angles), “Faye Grim” was released simultaneously in theaters and DVD, a recent trend in independent distribution.