Now, for those who have forgotten Icarus, let me begin with his story:
Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a skilled Athenian craftsman in Greek mythology. In his attempt to escape from his exile in the palace of Knossos, Crete, where he and his son were imprisoned by King Minos, Daedalus devised an extraordinary plan. Daedalus designed two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and Icarus, which would help them to fly out of the prison tower and regain their long lost freedom. Icarus was warned by his father Daedalus repeatedly not to fly too close to either the sun or the sea. However, as Icarus started gliding through the vast blue sky, his curiosity prompted him to soar higher and higher till he went too close to the burning sun, which melted the wax and Icarus fell into the sea.
Allusions to Icarus have not only recurred in literature over the past centuries but also in popular art forms of contemporary times, where he has often symbolized "over vaulting" ambition. Yet neither Faustus' "waxen wings" nor the Shakespearean figures of Icarian flight and fall have ever succeeded in discouraging me from believing that imagination is the quintessence of the myth of Icarus. Will it be a travesty of truth to say that Icarus is a prototype of the imagining man? A man who gives men dreams and dreams their looking glass? In truth, it was an Icarus who designed the Ornithopter, another who invented the electric bulb and a third who thought that there could be something like this web log which I am using at this very moment. Then there were the Icaruses who designed the first television, directed the first silent cinema, and added color to black and white. And after almost two centuries of soaring flight, the Icarus of Hollywood is finally falling gradually and painfully; it is indeed a pitiful sight!
Rounday Garden Scene produced in 1888, is the oldest surviving film; it is believed to have universally inaugurated the era of celluloid. But Hollywood was born much later. A prolific American director by the name of D.W. Griffith was the first to make a motion picture in Hollywood; subsequently, In Old California was released in 1910. And almost a year later, the first film by a Hollywood studio, Nestor Motion Picture Company was shot. Gradually four major film companies, namely Paramount, Warner Bros., RKO and Columbia opened studios in Hollywood, along with several minor production houses and rental studios which ushered in the dramatic transformation of a small township of California into the Mecca of movie production of the 21st century.
Hollywood championed the cause of human imagination. Where on one hand histories were made by Chaplin's films like The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947) and Limelight (1952); there on the other hand movies like The Jazz Singer, Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, How to marry a Millionaire, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The King and I, North by Northwest and Roman Holiday were inspired by originality and the passion for creating magic on silver screen. Women gasped and blushed, Men whistled and applauded and children stared with bewildered eyes as King Kong climbed the Empire State Building.
Then came Steven Spielberg with Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993), all of which achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. Also, each was an original masterpiece that inspired awe, captivated our hearts and filled us with amazement as we journeyed into the heart of the unknown. Yet, at the turn of the century Spielberg has also been rendered void of nouvel imaginaire and the latest title of his movie inspires nothing more than ludicrousness. So dry is his well of imagination that in place of masterpieces like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, we now have a cheesy Western-alien cocktail named Cowboys and Aliens. Spielberg happens to be just one of the many dry running rivers. Entire Hollywood seems to be running out of ideas and creativity is getting increasingly restricted by the flamboyance of new technologies of animation. Instead of boosting creativity, the advancing technology is limiting the scope of exploration of fresh ideas. The best examples of this phenomenon are the recent declaration of sequels to the film Avatar and the soon to be released movie Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
The first set of the worst sequels that I had ever watched was probably that of the movie Species; although the first movie had its moments and originality, the following three sequels saw a gradual decline in ratings from 5.7 to 4.0. Another recent sequel out in the theaters is Scream 4. And although this episode has received a 7.3 rating on imdb.com, it will be no travesty of truth to say that Sidney Prescott had already had her share of screaming, there was no need for more after ten years.
The second symptom of Hollywood's itchy dryness of imagination is the pityriasis of remakes. Over the last decade or so, a huge number of new releases are turning out to be remakes of old films or Broadway shows. The latest of this genre is Just Go With It. The first time that I watched its 1.5 mins trailer in the movie hall, I was surprised to find that it absolutely mimicked a movie called Maine Pyar Kyun Kia (Why did I fall in love), a Hindi (Bollywood) movie released in India in 2005. In both the movies, a doctor gets stuck between two women- one, his assistant and the other, a woman he is romancing, because of a lie. Sitting in the darkness I smiled to myself thinking that Bollywood has finally started inspiring Hollywood in ways more than musicals and slums. However, on further investigation I realized that both the Hindi & the English films are based on the 1969 English movie Cactus Flower; its just that Bollywood copied it before Hollywood could redo it!
A third cataclysmic symptom of the gangrene that has set into Hollywood's strength of imagination are blisters of repetition. I just finished watching a movie called Splice, a Canadian-French science fiction horror film that was released in 2005. The director described the film: "Splice is very much about our genetic future and the way science is catching up with much of the fiction out there. [This] is a serious film and an emotional one. And there's sex... Very unconventional sex. True indeed, there was nothing more to the movie than an awkward and comic progress through titillation. In fact, near the climax of the movie, where the audience was supposed to be twitching in terror and shrieking in horror, it was actually quivering with tremors of laughter (as heard in the background of the pirated CD). Splice was just a retake on the old formula of Species, where alien is substituted by a genetically mutated organism, conceived by introducing human DNA into a work of splicing animal genes.
There are more instances than the ones cited above which prove that the Icarus of Hollywood is gradually falling into the yawning abyss of the lack of fresh imagination. Country Strong, Season of the Witch, The Roommate, The Dilemma, The Green Hornet, No Strings Attached, The Way Back, From Prada to Nada, The Rite, The Eagle, Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, I am Number Four, Drive Angry, Hall Pass, Beastly, Elektra Lux, Red Riding Hood, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid 2 form the bulk of the movies that have been released from January 2011 to April 2011, all between 4 to 6 on a scale of 10, and already forgotten. When Alexander the great harnessed four Griffins to a basket and flew around his realm, the world read something new and was delighted. When Harry Potter undertook a similar voyage, the audience watched enthralled, as they were seeing these mythical creatures for the first time on celluloid. The Griffins appeared again in The Spiderwick Chronicles; but this time the charm was over. The same UFOs in different designs keep hovering over the only one country that aliens seem to invade forever, the Dracula keeps coming to feed on the life blood of imagination- only this time he fights the werewolf not for survival but for the girl and the reels role on and on and on. Is it possible that we have imagined the utmost and nothing remains? Has the horizon been conquered and no mystery remains seeded in some innermost recess of our minds? We need another Daedalus- he will give Icarus new wings and this time he will soar above and beyond the sun!
