Bond film where we, the audience, suspended belief long enough to take it seriously. In future, the sight of 007 trying to stop another villain from destroying the world is going to ring laughably hollow when the real world outside our windows is nothing but a smouldering post-apocalyptic wasteland.
And speaking of heroes... my how the mighty are falling; Sylvester Stallone. Governor Schwarzenegger. Lance Armstrong. Oscar Pistorius. Salman Rushdie. Michael Jackson. Barack Obama. Chinua Achebe. The centre cannot hold, things fall apart. We are losing all our heroes. That’ s ok... maybe we don’ t need another hero. Especially not the 2D kind. What we need now... is leaders. Leading us into... what, though?( Speaking of... Go with God, in peace, Dear Madiba).
But, the coming Dystopia is the least of our problems- as writers. Try this little experiment. Tell me... what’ s your latest manuscript or screenplay about? Good? Evil? Love? Death? Murder? Peace? War? Heaven? Hell? Vampires? Werewolves? Aliens? Dysfunctional Families? Depressed Teenagers? Comets? Asteroids? Armageddon? Yawwwwwn! May as well shred it. If, last year, there was nothing new under the sun... then, this year and into the future, Nothing New is going to be sliced, diced, chopped, sodomized, re-hashed pureed and served up as a franchise reboot of a prequel remake.
Nope. Nothing new out there. What used to be great themes have become high-concept commercials. These days an A-list Ad Agency can take the range of emotions you’ d normally experience in a powerful human drama like TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and cram it into a glossy 30-second Car or Kentucky commercial.“ All the great themes have become theme parks.” It’ s the sad end of an era, alright. Like Bond without Connery. Like TWO AND A HALF MEN without Sheen.
Remember the days when“ Murder” was a scary subject for a movie? Unless you’ re feeling old as I am, you probably don’ t. A time when just the title and poster scared the crap out of audiences? Titles like; MURDER!( 1930), A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER
What film is scarier than watching the world end in slow-motion
( 1953), INTENTIONS OF MURDER( 1964), MURDER BY DECREE( 1979), just the word in the title almost guaranteed bums on seats- back in the day when murder was a shocking subject. Just the fact that there was a MURDER captured on screen was heavy, dude. Ask anyone who saw PSYCHO back then for the first time. Or, check out the latest biopic about Hitchcock with Hopkins. Murder, as a movie subject, was almost always scary. Not any more. By the time we reached NBK in the early 90’ s murder was beyond dull and boring- until it was reinvented by Tarantino and Stone through Mickey and Mallory as hip and fashionable. Where are we now? How shocking is murder today... when it’ s dished up daily in lavish portions in the news and entertainment media? It’ s now a popular reality TV series on the Crime and History Channels. As common, disturbing or horrifying... as a Discovery wildlife docci about Predators.
What else is killing story? Technology. Loooots of fancy technology. It’ s coming. It’ s here. They say a man who has everything has no choice? And baby, are we spoiled for choice. We got apps interfacing with hardware and tools. We got 3D printers capable of rendering, cell by cell, a new human earlobe... ready for surgery. We got a zillion channels on DSAT( but try finding a movie you’ re in the mood for somewhere in that re-run central). There is a Tsunami of cool new hi-tech gadgets coming. Interactive Apps. Virtual Reality. Droids. Robots. Skin jobs. Fully immersive cyber body suits, and interactive fucking. Yip. All coming. And more.
We’ re talking Isaac Asimov’ s futuristic vision of Trans-humanism. We are a species that constantly fuses itself into its surroundings and technology of the day, and the latest realm is digital, robotic, genome, to name a few... Never mind tats and piercings... we’ re talking beings that will gradually replace limbs and organs with more efficient prosthetic robotic ones. And once we’ re all micro-chipped and aligned like iron filings in a magnetic field, which direction will we align in, I wonder? For whose agenda? They’ ve already
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