Dream­ing Big – The great­est block­busters of the 21^st century

We love block­busters. We hate block­busters. To some they are the man­na from cash-mon­ey heav­en, a rea­son to depart from the punch-clock drea­ri­ness of exis­tence and see if the dream fac­to­ry has any­thing new to offer. To oth­ers they are the fes­ter­ing scourge of the cin­e­mat­ic land­scape, the equiv­a­lent of pre­fab archi­tec­tur­al eye­sores. Some the­o­rise that they are a nec­es­sary evil, that their suc­cess allows the wider film indus­try to func­tion through trick­le-down eco­nom­ics. Super-sized box office hauls means there’s plen­ty to spread around, that film cul­ture can have a low­er tier, one which prizes unique per­son­al visions over florid gigan­tism with an easy mar­ket­ing hook.

What­ev­er we think, block­busters are impos­si­ble to ignore. Crit­i­cism of these movies often auto­mat­i­cal­ly veers to tired appraisals of con­ven­tion, saleabil­i­ty, or whether the qual­i­ty of the spe­cial effects meet with per­son­al expec­ta­tion. Like a stopped clock, they some­times chime with the moment, or do some­thing out of the ordi­nary which pro­longs their half-life. Block­busters are now made like cars, rolling off vast pro­duc­tion lines at reg­u­lar inter­vals in the hope that appetite for destruc­tion nev­er fades. In an era of Mar­vel and Pixar, DC and Dream­Works, these movies are not just part of the media land­scape – they are the media landscape.

With this in mind, we posed a sim­ple ques­tion to 12 con­trib­u­tors: what do you con­sid­er to be the most impor­tant block­buster of the 21^st cen­tu­ry? The result­ing essays, each cov­er­ing a sin­gle film, argue the case for a fall­en giant, or else attempt to keep the flame burn­ing for a mega hit whose pop cul­ture stock has fall­en. Does Avatar deserve its sta­tus as the most suc­cess­ful film of all time? Is The Dark Knight cinema’s fore­most response to ⁹⁄₁₁? Are the fem­i­nist cre­den­tials of Sex and the City under­val­ued? Was What Women Want the last block­buster com­e­dy of its kind? Here is our trib­ute to all those in the film indus­try who are able to dream, and dream big.

“Super­man Returns is a movie about fan ser­vice – about what myths owe their pub­lic. A film in ambiva­lent awe of itself, it pal­pa­bly strains to live up to impos­si­ble demands: for com­ic-book zip, Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ry alle­go­ry, and enchant­ments at once com­fort­ing­ly famil­iar and new­ly thrilling; it’s a film like its hero, an Atlas whose shoul­ders are begin­ning to buck­le. A self-con­scious­ly clas­si­cal Super­man sto­ry, the film is com­mit­ted and self-dep­re­cat­ing, hit­ting the marks laid down by the orig­i­nal and most pri­mal com­ic-book arche­type – and also the most earnest.” Read the full arti­cle

“Nolan repeat­ed­ly reimag­ines, even opti­misti­cal­ly amends, the rapid­ly shift­ing sky­line of ⁹⁄₁₁. We see build­ings – a cen­tral police sta­tion, two ware­hous­es, a hos­pi­tal – blown up as part of the Joker’s con­vo­lut­ed machi­na­tions. Even in this most relent­less­ly paced work, Nolan paus­es often to focus on fire engines, those emblems of ⁹⁄₁₁ hero­ism, arriv­ing at the scenes of dis­as­ter. And, over and over, we see peo­ple plum­met­ing from build­ings, only to be res­cued mid-fall, in a way that those des­per­ate jumpers from the Twin Tow­ers nev­er were…” Read the full arti­cle

“One of the most play­ful, audi­ence-rous­ing aspects of What Women Want is how it plays with the straight macho star image of Mel Gib­son. In addi­tion to the many fun moments where his head is wrecked at hear­ing the dis­il­lu­sion­ing truth behind what wom­ankind real­ly thinks, we get to see him cov­er up his naked­ness, talk to his wan­ing erec­tion, wax his legs, wear lip­stick, try on tights and loud­ly pro­claim he’s gay…” Read the full arti­cle

“The film offered up the promise of a fran­chise that would not select its vil­lains at ran­dom, but rather the­mat­i­cal­ly link them to the main character’s growth as both a hero and as a per­son. Yet, it was a promise swift­ly dashed by the mul­ti­ple vil­lains and the­mat­ic inco­her­ence of the 2007 three­quel. Spi­der-Man 2 is a per­fect super­hero film sequel: able to stand on its own as a self-con­tained sto­ry while also exten­sive­ly and intel­li­gent­ly draw­ing from and devel­op­ing the char­ac­ters and themes estab­lished in the pre­vi­ous episode…” Read the full arti­cle

“Instead of being over­long at 144 min­utes, Casi­no Royale feels epic, which is just right for a sto­ry that is meant to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cre­ate, devel­op and then final­ly (re)define a hero worth fol­low­ing in future instal­ments. As gru­elling as it is to talk about ​“world-build­ing” in a post-Mar­vel con­text, Casi­no Royale unfurled a uni­verse of anx­ious, unsta­ble geopol­i­tics and shift­ing alle­giances that should have been the per­fect play­ground for an agent not always will­ing or able to sub­or­di­nate his baser impuls­es to the demands of duty.” Read the full arti­cle

“The Sex and the City movie stands among a num­ber of films tar­get­ed towards women that don’t seem to strive for qual­i­ty, know­ing full well that due to being a part of a well-estab­lished fran­chise, the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor might be enough to appeal to an audi­ence starved for rep­re­sen­ta­tion. As a cel­e­bra­tion of mon­ey and the upwards mobil­i­ty it affords you, the film may feel par­tic­u­lar­ly alien­at­ing for con­tem­po­rary audi­ences who sim­ply don’t remem­ber the free­dom and oppor­tu­ni­ties of a pre-2008 econ­o­my.” Read the full arti­cle

“It’s a film that ques­tions (as the Ter­mi­na­tor films did before it) the hubris­tic pur­suit of tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment while rely­ing on just that to bring its audi­ence-proxy – Sam Worthington’s delib­er­ate­ly blank slate, Jake Sul­ly – to a prim­i­tive state of grace and its audi­ence to an unprece­dent­ed lev­el of hyper-immer­sion. ​“Teach me how to see,” says Jake, an invi­ta­tion Cameron extends to the audi­ence…” Read the full arti­cle

“If we take the inter­view sequence in Mag­no­lia as the most self-reflex­ive moment for Cruise the actor, then Edge of Tomor­row is the cor­re­spond­ing moment for Cruise the star. A block­buster about the state of the block­buster, it’s the Star­ship Troop­ers of the 21^st cen­tu­ry, tak­ing apart the medi­um itself, trait-by-trait, cliché-by-cliché, as well as sharply decon­struct­ing Cruise’s star per­sona. Like Paul Verhoeven’s great movie satires, Edge of Tomor­row works because it is first and fore­most a bril­liant exam­ple of the very form it seeks to satirise…” Read the full arti­cle

“The Wachowskis went to unprece­dent­ed lengths to match the orig­i­nal look of the ​’60s car­toon, shoot­ing fore­ground, midground and back­ground sep­a­rate­ly, then dig­i­tal­ly com­posit­ing every­thing togeth­er in post-pro­duc­tion to achieve a seem­ing­ly end­less depth of field. All this ampli­fies the melo­dra­ma at the heart of the film; the death of Speed’s old­er broth­er, Rex (Scott Porter). Return­ing to that open­ing sequence, we see Speed in the mid­dle of a race dri­ving along­side Rex’s ghost as he risks break­ing his record – a thrilling set piece that estab­lish­es the film’s emo­tion­al stakes…” Read the full arti­cle

“Unwit­ting hilar­i­ty may be 2012’s dom­i­nant mode – as when The Vat­i­can cracks down the mid­dle and rolls like a giant bar­rel over thou­sands of pious Ital­ians. But the CGI set pieces are sur­pris­ing­ly effec­tive, par­tic­u­lar­ly one near the begin­ning of the film. A mas­sive earth­quake razes Los Ange­les to the ground, pum­melling it straight into the sea as Cusack wild­ly dri­ves his fam­i­ly through the car­nage in a limo. The pave­ment shud­ders and cracks beneath them as the very fab­ric of the city – all glass, con­crete, under­ground pipes and high­ways – is shak­en loose. Sky­scrap­ers wob­ble around drunk­en­ly, cre­at­ing a gen­uine atmos­phere of phys­i­cal jeop­ardy…” Read the full arti­cle

“Pacif­ic Rim marks a con­ver­gence point in del Toro’s career. It’s where the humans and the machines final­ly com­bine as one. To oper­ate the mono­lith­ic robot Jaegers which have been con­struct­ed to defend the plan­et against an under-floor infes­ta­tion of Kai­ju (giant rep­til­ian wreckin’ balls with an ingrained man­date to destroy), two peo­ple must enter into its skull plate and work the con­trols man­u­al­ly. But there’s a catch, because it’s not the usu­al case of just sit­ting in front of a con­sole, mash­ing a key­pad and hop­ing the lit­tle red warn­ing lights don’t start flash­ing. To make these machines work, the pilots have to com­mune with one anoth­er on a psy­cho­log­i­cal lev­el. They have to dance togeth­er…” Read the full arti­cle

“Iron­i­cal­ly, no one has done more to soft­en the image of extrater­res­tri­als than Spiel­berg. In Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind and E.T., the aliens are benign, cud­dly crea­tures that reflect the more vir­tu­ous aspects of our own nature; here they’re the stuff of night­mares, the kind of creepy, bug-eyed freaks that would make even HR Giger’s skin crawl. These strange, hos­tile invaders are a nod to the films of Spielberg’s youth, but just as the ​’50s gold­en age of big screen sci­ence fic­tion – an era of fly­ing saucers, space mon­sters and excla­ma­tion marks – was an indi­rect expres­sion of Cold War anx­i­ety, the aliens in Spiel­berg’ film rep­re­sent a dis­tinct­ly mod­ern threat…” Read the full arti­cle

What do you think is the great­est block­buster of the 21^st cen­tu­ry? Have your say @LWLies