DAMON LINDELOF is TIRED of MOVIE DISASTER PORN. POT, MEET KETTLE.
Damon Lindelof has spoken out against movie disaster porn, which is hilarious. Such a act of dumb assery underscores the fact that Lindelof is not just a fledgling, self-congratulatory, horrific plotter. Instead he is also the recipient of at best, an embryonic sense of self. Dude tries to cop to being guilty of movie disaster porn whilst denouncing it, but let’s be honest. The hack has spent the last two summers getting rich as fuck off of the cheap trick, penning two movies (Prometheus and Star Trek Into Ennui) that feature iconography that harkens back to 9/11.
Damon Lindelof is so tired of your summer disaster porn flicks, unless they have a ripped albino in them.
Seems like everyone in Hollywood has an opinion about the glut of giant superhero movies or robot movies that destroy whole cities. In a long and very heartfelt interview with Vulture,Linelof delves into the highly profitable world of blowing shit up on screen. And why it’s not really working for him anymore:
We live in a commercial world, where you’ve gotta come up with ‘trailer moments’ and make the thing feel big and impressive and satisfying, especially in that summer-movie-theater construct. But ultimately I do feel—even as a purveyor of it—slightly turned off by this destruction porn that has emerged and become very bold-faced this past summer. And again, guilty as charged. It’s hard not to do it, especially because a movie, if properly executed, feels like it’s escalating.
And goes on to break down where the real problem is and how that all will only continue to feed the world of MacGuffins and explosions.
Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world. And when you start there, and basically say, I have to construct a MacGuffin based on if they shut off this, or they close this portal, or they deactivate this bomb, or they come up with this cure, it will save the world—you are very limited in terms of how you execute that. And in many ways, you can become a slave to it and, again, I make no excuses, I’m just saying you kind of have to start there. In the old days, it was just as satisfying that all Superman has to do was basically save Lois from this earthquake in California. The stakes in that movie are that the San Andreas Fault line opens up and half of California is going to fall in the ocean. That felt big enough, but there is a sense of bigger, better, faster, seen it before, done that.
It’s nice to see a little self reflection. So fingers crossed, he’s killing it over on the set of The Leftovers — which is anything but a summer spectacle production. Read the full article on Vulture.
[io9]