8. Convoluted, Pseudo-intellectual Stories
Im looking at you, Inception and Looper. So jaded have we become by the intellectual bankruptcy of the usual Hollywood fare, weve invited in a new kind of intellectually bankrupt Hollywood fare. Except this new kind doesnt even have the decency to admit to its intellectual bankruptcy. These films usually have big budgets and big names and centre around a very convoluted concept. Maybe you can go into peoples dreams and steal stuff but there are different layers of the dreams as and when it becomes convenient to the narrative. Perhaps you can send people through time to have them killed by special time killer men who look a bit like Bruce Willies but not really. Perhaps theres a magic carrot which, if you put it in a washing machine for exactly twenty-four minutes, transports you to another dimension full of ugly old unwanted carpets, but these carpets arent bound by the rules of the space time continuum, so you can ride the carpets directly into the consciousness of Chris Tarrant. Or something. Either way, theyre hugely popular (so I look forward to the comments), but they take themselves incredibly bloody seriously, and arent nearly as intelligent as they appear. Generally, theyre just reasonably simple, badly handled concepts, with poor screenwriting being responsible for poor exposition. Theres nothing clever about the concept of Inception, really, its just altered whenever the plot requires it to be altered, so its hard to keep up with the latest convenient change. Liking Inception because its an exciting action film is one thing (and an exciting action film it is) but to insist on how superior and highbrow and intelligent it is compared to Transformers is just a bit spurious. But because we like to feel intelligent, part of some special club that understands complex and abstract conceptualism in cinema, we welcome it.