from Wikipedia.
I think Stephen may have to start on another film:
In the July 2009 issue of Fantastique magazine, director Sommers had the following to say in an interview: “Steven Spielberg and I have a great script for When Worlds Collide. We just have to wait now because of Roland Emmerich’s 2012. It’s too close a project.”
2012 already did his movie and it will be almost impossible to top. It is too close a project.
[Some small spoilers follow]
I just got back from 2012 and it was so much better than I could have imagined. A great disaster movie has to have great special effects. 2012 does have those, with entire cities falling into the oceans.
But the good movies usually present something else. They present a series of postulates and provide examples to answer them.
How we as people should deal with the world when it completely changes, when things alter so far that they can not be the same again? Do we all panic and run around screaming? Or do we try and find something constructive to do?
Do we sit around pissing in our pants? Do we climb over everyone else and devil take the hindmost? Do we try and maintain our humanity or descend into purely animalistic violence?
All great questions for society today as we change from one phase to another, from Industrial Age to Information age, from fossil fuels to green energy, from exponential growth to sustainability.
2012 is a really well done lightweight movie but it does try and present some answers to these questions. That is why I think it may have a longer term impact than a simple popcorn movie might.
And as I was watching it, I was reminded a lot of When Worlds Collide. The causes of civilization’s destruction are different in the two movies and the scope of the special effects are not on par (the difference between an ‘A’ movie with 10s of millions to spend and a ‘B’ science fiction movie).
We have Danny Glover, as the President, suggest that perhaps they should have held a lottery to determine who gets a seat. That is exactly how ‘When Worlds Collide’ did it. 2012 took a different route to populate the arks. So it seemed to me that there was a wink at “When Worlds Collide” in 2012.
But a lot of the tropes are really similar. We have scientists who know what is happening, politicians dealing with the crisis, corrupt businessmen throwing their money, children in peril and a good-looking lead to sympathize with. We have arks to carry the survivors to a new world. We have love triangles.
The general sweep of the narrative is very close. The questions are similar, although answered slightly differently.
And in neither does the businessman make it on the ark while the good looking lead does. The third wheel of the triangle dies nobly. That is not a spoiler. We knew that was going to happen. There is a reason they are cliches.
But the reason 2012 may have any impact has to be more than simply great effects destroying the world. I mean, it does a great job doing that but it is the personal stories that really matter. Besides simply destroying everything, the reason for this sort of movie can rise above mediocrity is by how it answers those questions, what is the right way to react in the face of such terrible change.
Our stories are lessons, teaching us what our society expects of its members. 2012 does a remarkably good job presenting very strong examples of how to act through world-shaking change.
We can have the competent courage of John Cusack or Chiwetel Ejofor, the quiet dignity of Danny Glover, or the weaselly shouting of Oliver Platt. We can have John Billingsley, playing a minor scientific character, step up in his moment and utter the few words that allow the entire course of the narrative to shift 180 degrees. We can have George Segal, trying to call his estranged son for the last time or Johann Urb competently saving people’s lives while putting his a extreme risk.
The new ‘When Worlds Collide’ may have different special effects and a slightly different plot, but it will really cover the same narrative ground. Same questions and similar answers. Only it will be second and possibly travel on the same path that 2012 has blazed.
So I think it could end up like Deep Impact vs. Armageddon.
Not that either of those is as great a film of their type as 2012. But everyone remembers the narrative sweep of Armageddon while few do for Deep Impact. Similar narrative arcs are present in both, but Armageddon does so in ways that viscerally affect us while Deep Impact does not.
I’m afraid something similar would be in line for a remake of ‘When Worlds Collide.’ It is really hard to see how it could engage our senses with even better special effects for the end of the world, while doing a better job with its personal narrative.
What I would suggest is not to remake ‘When Worlds Collide” but to make the movie of the sequel, After Worlds Collide. No one has made a modern disaster movie that deals with the aftermath. In 2012, the three arks that carry the people left of humanity sail to Africa. Fade out. Independence Day – one final speech and fade out. The Day After Tomorrow – transfer everything to Mexico and fade out.
Tell us what happens next.
Tell us of how they manage to survive.What type of courage will be needed AFTER tremendous changes have altered the world? How does civilization actually survive and how does it look?
Tell us how that story should go. Because someday we are going to get past the problems we face. What should that world look like and what types of people do we want to be in it?
[Yes, I can not believe I wrote this much about a movie that should have been as slight as 2012. It is not meant to be a really deep movie and many characters are stereotypes. But they are cliches in the grand tradition of Jung and Joseph Campbell. There is a reason their actions become so important to us and why it is important to understand somewhat the overarching rationales for the narrative we are presented.]
[And yes, it is my ability to write these sorts of things about movies that helped raise my GPA at CalTech. Two quarters of classes where we watched movies and wrote about them. I got very good grades!]
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