The Filtnib’s Progress

This summer Harrison Ford returns in slightly more wrinkled form as Indiana Jones (& the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). What does the film have in common with upcoming releases Hellboy II, The Dark Knight, and the long-delayed second X-Files film?

They’re all sequels.

2007 was even more of a bumper year, with, oh let’s see, Spiderman 3, Die Hard 4, Harry Potter 5, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Fantastic Four 2, The Bourne Ultimatum, Oceans Thirteen, and Shrek the Third. Of course, just because they’ve got a number in the title, doesn’t make them rubbish, but what makes sequels so sweet for investors and audiences?

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is being directed by Spielberg; that’s to be expected as it’s his baby. But it’s also generally true that sequels go to directors who proved their commercial viability on the original. Sam Raimi made both previous Spiderman films; Gore Verbinski directed the complete Pirates trilogy; Soderbergh’s stylish remake of Ocean’s Eleven won him the two follow-ups, and even Tim Story’s dubious success on The Fantastic Four apparently convinced studios he should make another.

That Warner Brothers entrusted Harry Potter 5 (and 6) to David Yates, a British director with only one other feature to his name, was a rare gamble in the big-budget film industry, whose fondness for sequels confirms a general reluctance to invest in the new.

Outside of the constantly evolving technology of film, firsts in mainstream movie-making are all too infrequent, both in terms of behind-the-camera talent, and narrative content. Proven formulas like the comic heist movie or the superhero angst-and-action film are the safest kind of investment in a notoriously unpredictable marketplace, and they’re made all the more appealing if helmed by a seasoned director who can be relied upon to bring in the film on time and on budget.

That means that Hollywood is a woefully neglectful parent of new filmmakers. At a press conference I went to for maverick director Ray Lawrence’s 2006 film Jindabyne, Gabriel Byrne lamented that “Hollywood doesn’t care about art, it’s only ever been about business”. This is not an overstatement. Of all the art-forms, film perhaps suffers most from the corrupting force of the slippery greenback, and with production costs for Spiderman 3 at over $258 million, it’s hardly surprising that few producers want to take risks.

Yet genuine originality begets cult status, which in turn promises sustained returns on the home entertainment front. Withnail & I bombed in cinemas but became a home video phenomenon. And the independent sector can be the first showcase for the visionaries on whose shoulders tomorrow’s sequels rest. The highly commercial Ocean’s franchise came from a man whose low-budget debut opened up the world of independent film-making in the U.S: Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) was made on only $1.2 million (Batman, released the same year, cost $35m).

Soderbergh’s first film exemplifies the reckless charm that comes from being new and having nothing to lose. Sharon Waxman’s excellent ‘Rebels On The Backlot’ explores the revolutionary impact of Soderbergh and other “new rebel auteurs” of the 1990s, including Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Spike Jonze. Beginning their careers as Hollywood outsiders, their unexpected success forced even the most commercial of producers to keep a predatory eye on the independent scene. In response, studios set up canny sidelines throwing extra cash into quirky, low-budget scripts.

Twentieth Century Fox spawned Fox Searchlight, now with a slate of oddball hits to its name, including Garden State, Napoleon Dynamite, the Oscar-winning Little Miss Sunshine and Juno. Its competitor Warner Independent, established in 2003, claims in its mission statement – with a grandiose swagger typical of its parent company – to provide an outlet “where new talent can grow… where the conventional wisdom of tomorrow can first take shape”.

Of course such lofty idealism masks the studios’ simple drive for monopoly; a determination to squeeze every last profit, not only from the multiplexes, but also from the arthouse crowd. The intrusion of Fox and Warner into a domain cherished by enthusiasts as the only place where film can remain free of commercialism is certainly worthy of debate; Shane Danielsen, erstwhile curator of the Edinburgh Film Festival, argues we must now redefine what is meant by the term ‘independent film’ altogether.

But as long as the trend means groundbreaking films like We Don’t Live Here Anymore (Warner Independent, 2004) or Thirteen (Fox Searchlight, 2003) get made – both of which broke new ground in content and tone – then the studios’ new interest in film firsts could reap creative – not just commercial – rewards. And despite the ongoing slough of sequels, there are reasons to be hopeful. Compared to music or literature, film is still in its infancy but has proved precocious, developing in leaps and bounds since the Lumiere’s films of 1895. Hollywood may not be the best parent, but perhaps the best films are born in the wild.

UPDATE: News just in… Warner Independent to close! Oh dear. Good luck to the 30 or so projects currently in development there… Less depressingly, it makes Warner “the only major studio without a specialty division”.

THREE FIRST FILMS THAT BLAZED A TRAIL…

‘RESERVOIR DOGS’, the debut feature from a guy who’d previously worked at a Manhattan Beach video store; credited with changing the landscape of Hollywood.
A critic from the New York Daily News exclaimed, “I don’t think people were ready. They didn’t know what to make of it. It’s like the first silent movie when audiences saw the train coming toward the camera and scattered”.

‘MEMENTO’ – set a precedent in proving that unconventional narrative techniques didn’t necessarily equate with box office doom: with his irresistibly compelling first feature, UCL literature graduate Chris Nolan became the hottest property in L.A. He has since made ‘Batman Begins’ and its (!) sequel, starring the late Heath Ledger, ‘The Dark Knight’.

‘LES QUATRE CENT COUPS’ (The 400 Blows) – Francois Truffaut was banned from Cannes the year before this, his first film, won the Palme d’Or; as a belligerent film critic, he’d repeatedly slammed the studio-run conventions of post-war French cinema. A proponent of the ‘auteur’ theory of cinema, he became the leading light of the French New Wave.