Some thoughts after Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Everyone likes to bitch about the mindlessness of Hollywood blockbusters - from Transformers 3 to the latest Mission Impossible - and how they only provide explosions, chases, and CGI, which is now officially 100% indistinguishable from live action sequences, at the expense of plot development and complex narrative. I myself have done a fair bit of such bitching. But perhaps this is a wrong way to approach such movies in the first place. Perhaps we should no longer talk about cinema but about two cinemas. One following the classical narrative tradition, both European and American (which, it’s important to remember, was NOT the only tradition in early cinema), which strives to engage viewers in original plots following unpredictable (or rather - life-like) actions of psychologically plausible characters. The other driven by the ambition to dazzle and envelop viewers in the unrelenting rush of adrenaline and awe, all of which do not have to exclude some narrative - it’s just that the storyline takes a distinctly second place. Both cinemas still use the same, or largely overlapping, production modes and distribution channels, not to mention the basic medium of transmission, which makes it harder to see that they are actually two very different things. If we recognize this difference, perhaps we will not be disappointed by MI: Ghost Protocol because the political rationale beyond the conflict driving the plot is very murky AND we will joyfully and aesthetically appreciate the elegant slickness of Resident Evil and Underworld.
Naturally, there is also a large area of overlap (will it shrink in two decades?) between these two cinemas - narrative-centered films also use heavy special effects and spectacle-driven blockbusters can also be narratively complex - but remembering that this is only a meeting zone of two distinct entities will help us to keep them separate in our expectations.
