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Sunday, February 4, 2018
EDITORIAL
Sustaining Films From Start To Finish The Way Tonight's Super Bowl
Did
Corey
Clement of the Philadelphia Eagles celebrates his team's win at the end of Super
Bowl 52 tonight in Minneapolis.
Getty Images
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Sunday,
February 4,
2018
Who said that this Super Bowl would be a bore? If tonight's Super Bowl, a
frenzied, all-out, end-to-end exciting entertainment extravaganza, could win an
Oscar for best sporting event, it would be richly deserved. The
Philadelphia Eagles outpaced the New England Patriots 41-33 in thrilling fashion
in Minneapolis, and it was a well-deserved victory.
How many films sustain themselves from start to finish the way this incredible
Super Bowl 52 did? Very few, including over half this year's Best Picture
nominees, do. (Sustainers?
"Get Out",
"Phantom Thread",
"The Post",
"Dunkirk" and "Lady Bird".)
In the early part of any New Year -- January through February -- film releases
are usually the worst Hollywood has to offer: cut-your-losses holdovers and
hidden-in-plain-sight disasters. The studios hold their noses until the
stink of their celluloid failures peter out.
Super Bowls are often boring. Enough blowouts offer sufficient evidence.
The AFC and NFC Championship Games preceding Super Bowls are often more
exciting. The last two Super Bowls haven't been boring. Three other
Super Bowls featuring the Patriots haven't either. (Along with last year's
comeback win, there's the Super Bowl win over Seattle, and both New York Giants
wins over the Patriots in 2008 and 2012.) When the hated Tom Brady and co
arrive in the most watched sports event in America on an almost annual basis
these returns are sequels of sorts, appearances in a dynasty by one team.
How about movies? Most sequeled films lack the inventiveness, excitement
or freshness some of these recent, super-charged Super Bowls have.
Super Bowls, like other sporting events, are often compared by sports media
commentators and analysts to movies, specifically Hollywood movies, with
fairy-tale endings, with scripts being pulled out of Miracleland and those Walt
Disney World "I'm going to Disney World" commercials, impromptu events where
out-of-breath delirious Super Bowl MVPs cry, "I'm going to Disney World!"
Those commercials have ended.
The question is, how do we sustain the narrative energy of most films the way
the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots did tonight? Better
writers? Better visions? Different and fresh voices? How?
That is the challenge. Audiences are too smart -- smarter than they are
given credit for. They know what works. They know what doesn't.
Fifty years from now tonight's Super Bowl will still be a watchable event.
How many of this year's Oscar-nominated films will be? For a quick
example, can you see yourself sitting down and watching Best Picture Oscar
winner "Driving Miss Daisy" (1989) right now?
Exactly.
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