If you ever wondered what happened to the good old-fashioned monster movie, in which humans are little more than playthings for warring mega-beasties, the truth is that it never really went away. Last year’s Godzilla featured a preposterous plotline in which a virtually winking giant lizard defends humanity from marauding kaiju, while this year’s biggest blockbuster action spectacle, Jurassic World, culminates with a scene in which the ferocious T-Rex from Steven Spielberg’s earlier Jurassic Park movies pops out of retirement to face down the new episode’s genetically modified Indominus Rex – then inexplicably curls back up in its paddock to wait for tea rather than beginning its own bloodthirsty rampage.
This week, the phenomenon seems to have moved a step further down the line into old-fashioned B-movie madness after Hollywood studio Warner Bros and production company Legendary confirmed a release date for King Kong v Godzilla movie for 2020. The monster mashup will follow Kong: Skull Island, an “origins story” about the famous giant ape, and 2018’s Godzilla 2 into cinemas. All three films will be based around the human Monarch organisation, which was apparently at the heart of Gareth Edwards’s Godzilla (no, me neither), and whose giant beastie hunting escapades will now form the basis of the new trilogy.
There is a terrible irony here. For years, the Asylum has been churning out cheapo “mockbusters” that borrow ideas wholesale from high-profile movies but deliver them on a fraction of the budget (and usually with a fraction of the production quality). Now Hollywood seems to be looking to Asylum movies such as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and the even more preposterously successful Syfy-commissioned Sharknado series for inspiration. Sure, movies such as King Kong vs Godzilla will be filmed with more cash than their ersatz cousins, and with high-profile, awards season-friendly stars picking up multimillion-dollar paycheques rather than the likes of Tara Reid and Debbie Gibson, but it’s essentially the same setup: find two enormous monstrosities and pitch them together, then attempt to develop a human backstory to fill in the gaping narrative chasms.
The virus has also spread to the superhero subgenre, with next year’s efforts including Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which the caped crusader will face off against the man of steel, and Captain America: Civil War, in which the patriotic super soldier will battle his old pal Iron Man. Not such a shock perhaps, as comic books have always relied on superhero showdowns to keep the presses rolling. But just a few years back, we had relatively sophisticated fare such as The Dark Knight hitting cinemas. If Christopher Nolan’s movie were to be remade today, would it be titled Batman v Joker?
Then there’s the whole mashup genre, based almost entirely upon the cheap thrill factor delivered by a straight-bat movie title with entirely incongruous constituent parts. So it’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (which was initially titled simply Scouts vs Zombies). The title comes first, then the movie is written around it.
All of which is fine, except that providing filmgoers movies that give them exactly what it says on the tin does – to say the least – dampen the sense of wonder at the possibilities of cinema. These titles sound like the ones I make up for my three-year-old son when I try to convince him to watch a film: The Incredibles becomes simply Superheroes, while Mr Peabody and Sherman has been pithily retitled Doggy Daddy, and Where the Wild Things Are is renamed Monsters Island. The job is done, interest is swiftly kindled, but something of the mystery has really been lost. Have filmgoers in 2015 really become so dumb that studios are forced to treat them like toddlers?
If they have, and if it really has become all about mashing together titles and concepts to create the greatest viral hype ever, perhaps we should just go the whole hog and put the movies out there that people really want to see. How about (for starters) Batman Goes to Jurassic World, in which the caped crusader is called in to face down the bastard offspring of T-Rex and Indominus Rex, or perhaps Spider-Man v Godzilla, in which the wisecracking wall crawler must bring down the greatest prehistoric monster to ever walk the earth with only Aunt May’s sage advice to guide him? They could even mashup Aliens and Predator, because we all remember how well that worked.
