Time to reboot blockbusters for bonkers new world

The point of blockbuster films is that they don’t have to stay in touch with reality.

This is why every alien invasion or viral outbreak is ultimately sorted out by a handsome young American with almost no body fat, rather than by a multinational team of scientists who resist the urge to take their shirts off all the time.

Still, we have our limits. A giant mechanical shark stalking Amity in Jaws is frightening.

A giant mechanical shark rising out of the sea and roaring like a wounded bull in Jaws: The Revenge is hilarious.

Which is why the Hollywood blockbuster needs an urgent update.

In 2020, somewhere between Covid-19, Siberian heatwaves, cigarette bans and the US president retweeting a video clip celebrating white power, we gently pushed away from reality and floated into a world of almost pure science fiction.

And if popular culture is going to keep up, the old scriptwriting formulas are going to have to adapt to this brave, bonkers new world.

For starters, the decades-old trope of the US president as a humble warrior-citizen, defending his country and his species in Independence Day or 2012, is a goner.

In his place is a morbidly comical caricature, shouting at his television inside a bunker while aides try to lure him out with a trail of cheeseburgers.

But who should replace Potus as pop culture’s Henry V, urging humanity once more unto the breach?

Some argue that scientists should have a much greater role in global leadership, but I’m not sure they can handle the chestthumping stuff.

Say what you like about former UK prime minister Winston Churchill, but British morale in 1940 might have been somewhat lower if it had been left to a panel of scientists ...

“G-good evening? Is this on? OK. So, um, in terms of the process outlined in annexure 4 of the document in front of you, there is consensus that we shall fight on the beaches, though at this point we are hesitant to say whether this will be at low tide or high tide, given that both present advantages and disadvantages.

“But we can agree that we will fight on the beaches at some point, taking into account the composition of the sand, which, as you’ll see on page 34 of the report compiled by our oceanographic and geological teams, can have multiple outcomes on the deployment of heavytracked vehicles such as tanks, so at this point we do not want to be too specific, since we’re dealing with hypotheticals.”

No, modern blockbusters will still need silk-tongued politicians to deliver the showstopper speeches.

Well, except for ones set in SA.

If Neill Blomkamp had produced in 2020 rather

District 9 than in 2009, instead of being an allegory about race and xenophobia it would have seen mildmannered bureaucrat Wikus van der Merwe finding himself embroiled in an alien plot to acquire and sell a carton of Chesterfields, before being exposed to an hour of muttering by Cogta minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma during a press conference and having his brain trickle out of his nose. However, all of these changes pale into insignificance next to the largest shift the postCovid-19 world will require of popular culture — the recognition that we are not all watching the same movie.

Today we inhabit a planet in which a large number of people believe that refusing to wear a mask during a runaway pandemic is a form of resistance against some sort of oppression; that Brad Pitt survives by running straight at the zombies.

Which makes me wonder if it’s time for Hollywood to start producing films and TV specifically for this highly suggestible and lucrative market, a kind of anti-3D blockbuster for people who refuse to see in more than one dimension.

Consider, for example, the potential in a Die Much Harder franchise, in which a tough vigilante cop endures the nightmare of not being able to buy a rocket launcher from a supermarket.

Imagine an Alien reboot, in which the crew of a space ship, having found a family of Syrian stowaways hoping to start a new life, dies one by one of outrage.

Then there’s Deep State Impact, in which a comet threatens to obliterate us, but because the Earth is flat, scientists turn it so its wafer-thin edge is facing space and the comet whizzes past just centimetres away.

And let’s not forget The Walking Read, a TV series about a liberal zombie apocalypse, in which a sudden outbreak of education infects millions of people with the notion that women should have the same rights as men and black people should be treated like white people.

In the end, our heroes retreat to the one place they know they’ll be safe — their podcast.

Which is where we leave them. Please God.

Today we inhabit a planet in which a large number of people believe that refusing to wear a mask during a runaway pandemic is a form of resistance