Blahbusters

Don't buy the frantic pleadings of the Hollywood media machine -- summer blockbusters have become a colossal bore.

By Charles Taylor

May 28, 2004 | Does anyone really care about any of the upcoming summer blockbusters? Sure, Alfonso Cuaron stands a good chance of finally rescuing the Harry Potter series from the numbing "faithfulness" of Chris Columbus. And something that turns out to be much better than anyone expected will sneak in and surprise us, as "The Italian Job" and "Freaky Friday" did last year, and as the wonderful "Hellboy" and "13 Going on 30" have done in the run-up to this year's summer movie season. In August, American audiences will finally get to see Zhang Yimou's martial-arts drama "Hero, which may be the best movie you'll see this year and the next, and in July, Richard Linklater releases "Before Sunset," the sequel to his "Before Sunrise," one of the most exquisite romantic films ever made. (So, by the way, is the sequel.)

But facing the glut of the next few months, is there anything coming out of the studios that any of us face with the prospect of real excitement? "Catwoman"? "King Arthur"?

It's worth noting that even the word "blockbuster" no longer even means what it once did. Once upon a time, it was a superlative used to describe a film that succeeded beyond all (usually financial) expectations. In that sense, it's still accurately used for, say, "The Lord of the Rings" movies, which surely deserve to be thought of as blockbusters. But now it is indiscriminately applied to every empty, expensive action movie out there. The word has been "liberated" from its factual meaning to become just another weapon in the publicists' arsenal, a way of referring to the size of gargantuan productions -- regardless of how they eventually do at the box office or what kind of critical response they receive. And the media dutifully swallow the line.

We're not even into June, and already predictable patterns seem to have emerged. "Troy" appears to be this summer's respectable middlebrow entry, as "Seabiscuit," "The Road to Perdition" and "Saving Private Ryan" were before it. Its sudden emergence as this year's "adult" summer entry is thanks to a passel of "it's not bad" reviews. (Not bad? One of the core myths of Western literature and Western civilization starring Brad Pitt and directed by the snooze-inducing Wolfgang Petersen?)

More and more, the prospect of sitting through the big summer movies seems like a chore to be gotten through, and often with less of a sense of accomplishment and pleasure than other summer chores -- installing the air conditioners, say -- promise. Twenty-five years ago, even though "Star Wars" had begun the reduction of American commercial movies to infantile, formula-driven spectacle, there were still summer movies that felt like something to be excited about -- "E.T.," "The Empire Strikes Back," "Superman II" -- that would open, and stay around for three or four months (longer in some cases). More important, for the duration of their theatrical runs, they seemed like news, not something we'd see on a marquee a month later and ask, "Is that still playing?"

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