IT SHOULD n’T HAPPEN TO A FILM jOURNALIST
Jamie on the perils of believing the hype.
Twenty years in this business and I’m still a sucker. Put me in a room with a passionate director (or actor or crew member or the guy who empties the bins) and I’m instantly infected by their belief/bullshit.
At times it’s understandable, like when I went on set of Tim Burton’s Charlie And The Chocolate
Factory and came away convinced he was making a masterpiece. Here was the perfect marriage of filmmaker and material, with a then oh-so-cool Johnny Depp cast as Willy Wonka. It also boasted the most staggering sets I’d ever witnessed – rummaging around Charlie’s crooked family hovel and strolling down the entire street they’d built, past terraced houses and slanting telegraph poles towards the factory looming in the distance, my jaw hung on my chest. Then I stepped inside the factory and my mind exploded as I toured vast, candy-coloured rooms bursting with crazed contraptions. I’d regressed to a wide-eyed 10-year-old boy, ready to believe anything the adults told me – which was, of course, how visionary and definitive the film would be. Instead, it transpired that the colour of chocolate is also the colour of poo.
Gullible travels
So Charlie was an understandable error of judgement, but there were times I should’ve known better. It’s hard to comprehend now, but I once spent a year telling everyone who would listen (and plenty who wouldn’t) that Tomb Raider 2 would be an action classic, persuaded of its imminent brilliance by the stunning sets (Hong Kong’s Times Square, the Great Wall of China, the side of a volcano) and by director Jan de Bont’s wise, frank words. Cataloguing all that was dreadful about the first movie, he promised a sequel built around complex psychology, an instantly iconic turn from Angelina Jolie and bar-raising set-pieces. Terminator 2: Judgment Day was the touchstone, he said, and I, like a fool, believed every emphatic word.
Still, at least I’m not the only one. Over the last few years, numerous colleagues have returned from eye-saucering travels harbouring high hopes. On the set of G.I. Joe, director Stephen Sommers raved about how it was the “characters” that drove the project. A producer of
Hitman: Agent 47 drew parallels with Batman Begins, and compared Rupert Friend in the title role to Connery as Bond. Divergent, with its smart casting and dazzling production design, was going to be the new Hunger Games. A 50-minute footage presentation of Spider-Man 3 extracted all the best bits and disguised just how bloated and wayward the final product would be. A bewitching Bryan Singer, during the shoot of Jack The Giant Slayer, shared his personal stash of biscuits and his vision for a new slant on fairytales. And Josh Gad, walking around pixelated cars on the street (!), demonstrated a real affection for ’80s videogames and name-checked Amblin – Pixels, surely, was going to be the new
Gremlins or Ghostbusters.
Optimist prime
The thing is, I’ll never learn and nor do I want to, because the alternative is to become a disillusioned, cynical hack who forever suspects the worst. The great thing about looking at a raft of upcoming titles is that every one of them has the potential to be ace, and even Adam Sandler’s new Netflix title might prove to be
closer to Punch-Drunk Love or The Wedding Singer, or at least Happy Gilmore, than The Ridiculous 6. So while everyone on the sets of Suicide Squad, Dracula Untold and Resident Evil: Retribution talked a great game only for the movies to turn out uniformly dire, I still cling to the belief that real quality is coming down the pipeline. Trust me, The Emoji Movie is going to knock your socks off…
‘I once spent a year te lling everyone that tomb raider 2 would be an action classic’