The long, com­plex evo­lu­tion of the blockbuster

We all know the sto­ry of how Steven Spielberg’s 1975 box office hit Jaws was the birth of the movie block­buster, close­ly fol­lowed by George Lucas’ Star Wars in 1977. This nar­ra­tive is a fic­tion­alised his­to­ry, because ​“block­buster” had been used as ear­ly as the 1940s to describe big-bud­get pro­duc­tions with mass appeal. Pop­u­lar lore, how­ev­er, cred­its the Movie Brats of the New Amer­i­can Cin­e­ma as the fathers of the block­buster film. It has become an accept­ed his­to­ry, despite cin­e­ma hav­ing pur­sued high bud­get and lav­ish spec­ta­cles long before that.

Jaws and Star Wars, how­ev­er, were a turn­ing point in the his­to­ry of the block­buster. The grainy aes­thet­ic and raw sense of feel­ing of Jaws’ B‑movie plot thrilled audi­ences, while Star Wars’ open­ing shot of Princess Leia’s ship flee­ing the Impe­r­i­al Star Destroy­er cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of its audi­ence – amongst them actor Samuel L. Jack­son, who would go on to play Jedi Mas­ter Mace Win­du in Lucas’ even­tu­al pre­quel trilogy.

The charm of the ear­ly block­busters was that they were raw and imper­fect. The sto­ries about the ago­nis­ing lim­i­ta­tions that con­front­ed Spiel­berg and his crew have become part of the film’s lore, while clum­sy effects shots and space­ships that look unfit for space trav­el, let alone spec­tac­u­lar bat­tles amongst the stars, relied on the audience’s sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief for Lucas.

These imper­fec­tions are worth cel­e­brat­ing because as tech­nol­o­gy has improved, the movie block­buster has lost some­thing that made it tru­ly spe­cial. Star Wars was able to echo our inner child’s imag­i­na­tion – think about kids at play with toy cars and fig­ures, and how their mind is the engine to escape the trap­pings of real­i­ty. What we see in Star Wars is a meta­mor­pho­sis of that very process. Only Lucas, his crew and cast were able to dream big­ger, and escape the lim­i­ta­tions of child’s play, imag­in­ing in a form that, when com­bined with the audience’s sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief, cre­ates a world that feels emo­tion­al­ly authen­tic, despite contrived.

Through the 70s and 80s, beyond the orig­i­nal Star Wars tril­o­gy, suc­ces­sive block­busters echoed this idea of chil­dren at play. The tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions of the form hon­oured the ​“imag­i­na­tion as impro­vi­sa­tion.” With improve­ments in com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery and effects, film­mak­ers have been able to cap­ture what once would have been impos­si­ble, and improve the authen­tic­i­ty of their onscreen world-build­ing. From some­thing as sim­ple as Lucas remov­ing an effects shad­ow in the Star Wars Spe­cial Edi­tion tril­o­gy, suc­ces­sive film­mak­ers have been able to cre­ate more authen­ti­cal­ly elab­o­rate visuals.

The tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions of the 70s and 80s, while far from per­fect, imbued the world-build­ing with a cer­tain impro­vised hands-on aes­thet­ic. This is a world away from today’s use of com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery and green and blue screens, which pur­port to increase immer­sion, but in real­i­ty, feel more arti­fi­cial. Once, films mim­ic­ked our phys­i­cal play – now tech­nol­o­gy has allowed them to appear as dreams, almost with­out limitation.

Back to the Future, pro­duced by Spiel­berg and direct­ed by Robert Zemeck­is, empha­sis­es this idea of play­ful imag­i­na­tion, with the eccen­tric Doc Brown played by Christo­pher Lloyd, build­ing the Delore­an in his garage. Brown and Mar­ty McFly (Michael J. Fox) are spir­i­tu­al chil­dren at play. A year after the release of Back to the Future came James Cameron’s Aliens, a sequel to Rid­ley Scott’s haunt­ed house movie in out­er space, Alien. Both films occu­py an impor­tant place in the block­buster canon, by tak­ing the fam­i­ly-friend­ly Star Wars and Back to the Future and plung­ing the idea of chil­dren at play into a dark­er and omi­nous uni­verse. While Scott’s film doesn’t con­vey this idea, its indus­tri­alised and authen­tic aes­thet­ic laid the ground­work for Cameron’s Aliens. The film’s pro­duc­tion design, from the marine trans­port ves­sel, USS Sula­co, to the P‑5000 Pow­er Loader Walk­er, have the feel of grown-ups fill­ing their world-build­ing with things they’d love to play with if they were kids.

Near­ly 50 years on, has the block­buster lost its orig­i­nal charm? Iron­i­cal­ly, Cameron’s cin­e­ma still holds onto the idea of a child at play, despite being at the fore­front of tech­no­log­i­cal advances. The world-build­ing of his Avatar uni­verse has required him to devel­op new tech­nol­o­gy, but despite this, its aes­thet­ic con­tin­ues to resem­ble a mish-mash of cin­e­ma and toy design. One can look at his world and visu­alise char­ac­ters and set pieces as toys on shop shelves even with­out the movie. It’s a reminder of the diver­si­fi­ca­tion of the block­buster, which is no longer a pure­ly cin­e­mat­ic enti­ty. From Star Wars and Spielberg’s Juras­sic Park to Mar­vel and DC super­hero films, the sole focus is no longer on cre­ative sto­ry­telling and the cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence, but on diver­si­fi­ca­tion of rev­enue. What we’ve wit­nessed is a cross-pol­li­na­tion of films mim­ic­k­ing chil­dren at play, and in turn pro­vid­ing toys for chil­dren to play with.

The pol­ished aes­thet­ic of the Mar­vel spec­ta­cle, a meta­mor­pho­sis of the block­buster, has a dif­fer­ent ener­gy. Mar­vel and the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse have evolved dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the years. There has been a ten­den­cy to offer a ground­ed fan­tas­ti­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of these worlds, from Bryan Singer’s first X‑Men film, and Sam Raimi’s Spi­der-Man. Even Pey­ton Reed’s Ant-Man felt more ground­ed, at least in its emo­tion­al sto­ry arc, than its recent sequel, which was more of a dis­ori­en­tat­ing spectacle.

We’ve seen a rais­ing of the stakes visu­al­ly, with the uni­verse expand­ing and try­ing to out­do itself, with­out ques­tion­ing the need for lim­i­ta­tions. This shift still requires the audi­ence to sus­pend their dis­be­lief as the ear­ly block­busters did, but to old­er gen­er­a­tions, it sig­nals some­thing more.

Tech­nol­o­gy has dehu­man­ised the block­buster in how they relate to our inner child. Where­as ear­li­er block­busters shared an inti­ma­cy with the phys­i­cal expres­sion of play, now there’s a dis­tance. These CGI-heavy films have dehu­man­ised this inti­mate con­nec­tion that cin­e­ma once shared. It’s not only tech­nol­o­gy that has stim­u­lat­ed this decline of the block­buster, but the lack of cre­ative ambi­tion and com­mit­ment to a series. The super­hero genre, notably Spi­der-Man and Bat­man, has seen numer­ous reboots. Cou­ple this with a reliance on a lim­it­ed num­ber of fran­chis­es, the lack of courage to devel­op new sto­ries, char­ac­ters and world-build­ing in favour of tap­ping into estab­lished fan bases, and the result is a decline in qual­i­ty for the blockbuster.

What grew the block­buster into the titan­ic force it is today, is the cre­ative use of tech­nol­o­gy to bring ambi­tious worlds to life, but also qual­i­ty sto­ry­telling, with mem­o­rable char­ac­ters and emo­tion­al arcs, as well as atten­tion to well-plot­ted sto­ries. The focus has drift­ed away from this, reliant not on sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief, but on the audience’s accep­tance of famil­iar and tired sto­ries and tropes, gar­nished with big-name stars.

The Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble series is a prime exam­ple of star pow­er, mem­o­rable, part­ly at least, for Tom Cruise’s obses­sion with esca­lat­ing the spec­ta­cle of his dare­dev­il stunts. How­ev­er, these are effec­tive­ly under­pinned by com­pelling char­ac­ters and emo­tion­al arcs. The series has devel­oped a humor­ous self-aware­ness that sees Cruise and his team of covert oper­a­tives – espe­cial­ly those played by Jere­my Ren­ner and Simon Pegg – infuse Hunt’s dar­ing feats with com­e­dy. Humour aside, Christo­pher McQuarrie’s atten­tion to devel­op­ing ongo­ing sto­ry­lines, such as The Syn­di­cate and Rebec­ca Ferguson’s Ilsa Faust, shows his cre­ative com­mit­ment to sto­ry­telling, which has been a fre­quent casu­al­ty of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions in oth­er blockbusters.

Christo­pher Nolan’s Dark Knight Tril­o­gy has come the clos­est to indulging the nos­tal­gia for the phys­i­cal expres­sion of play in cin­e­ma, where his cin­e­mat­ic world-build­ing, through a tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment, doesn’t make that sense of chil­dren at play redun­dant. Of course, there are scenes that rely on spe­cial effects, but where pos­si­ble, Nolan and his team exe­cut­ed action set-pieces prac­ti­cal­ly, such as Bat­man flip­ping Joker’s LGV upside down. The strength of the films was Nolan’s empha­sis on the­mat­ic sto­ry­telling, con­struct­ing a tril­o­gy where each film built on what had pre­ced­ed it, notably the theme of esca­la­tion and its con­se­quences run­ning through the tril­o­gy. Nolan under­stood that the strength of the block­buster is nev­er pure­ly the visu­als, but the nar­ra­tive soul – the ideas expressed that the audi­ence engages with long after the film has end­ed. With his Bat­man films, Nolan tapped into an exist­ing fan base and an exist­ing cul­tur­al his­to­ry on screen, but found a new way for the super­hero to con­nect with the con­tem­po­rary audience.

This is indica­tive of Nolan’s wider work, where tech­nol­o­gy is an essen­tial tool in his world-build­ing, but is coun­ter­bal­anced with an empha­sis on char­ac­ter, emo­tion, ideas and themes (the heart of his ear­ly films: Memen­to and Insom­nia), to cre­ate a more tan­gi­ble type of grand-scale film­mak­ing. His ideas range from invad­ing a person’s sub­con­scious to extract knowl­edge and secrets in Incep­tion, to the extinc­tion cri­sis and search for anoth­er hab­it­able plan­et in Inter­stel­lar, to the high con­cept manip­u­la­tion of time in Tenet, and this year, the cre­ation of the atom­ic bomb in Oppen­heimer.

The shift from hands-on to ​“imag­i­na­tion as dream” has been moti­vat­ed by a long-held ambi­tion to cre­ate fan­tas­ti­cal visions that feel real – even by the 70s direc­tors of the New Amer­i­can Cin­e­ma. Lucas’ Star Wars pre­quel tril­o­gy is a cau­tion­ary tale of how tech­nol­o­gy may allow a film­mak­er to tran­scend pre­vi­ous lim­i­ta­tions, but it replaces one type of mim­ic­ry with anoth­er. By many the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy is con­sid­ered supe­ri­or in cre­ative vision, despite its visu­al short­com­ings. The ques­tion remains, do we need this shift to imag­i­na­tion as dream to have its lim­i­ta­tions, in order to safe­guard future block­busters from being com­plete­ly dehu­man­ised by tech­nol­o­gy, or does some hap­py mid­dle ground exist?