[2022 has been a lot. A lot a lot. So for my annual Year in Review series, I wanted to focus mostly on somewhat lighter, pop culture kinds of topics, with just one much more serious exception. Here’s to a better year to come!]
On a problem
and a possibility with our cultural moment of ubiquitous sequels.
A good bit
of the frame for today’s post is parallel to write I wrote in this
prior post about The Force Awakens
(2015), nostalgia, and multi-generational storytelling. So if you don’t mind
checking out that post and then coming back here, I’d appreciate it!
Welcome
back! I haven’t had a chance to see the biggest
blockbuster film of the year, Top
Gun: Maverick, and I don’t know that I will as I believe the original Top Gun (1986) is one
of the worst blockbuster films ever made. That’s a personal opinion, of
course (although as that hyperlinked article reflects, I’m not alone in holding
it), but I do think it illustrates a larger problem with the genuinely ubiquitous
presence of sequels, prequels, reboots, and other uses of existing
intellectual properties in our current pop culture zeitgeist. The more this
kind of cultural product dominates the landscape, the more of these
existing/prior works filmmakers and creators will have to return to—and there
quite simply aren’t that many 1980s films (or works from any decade/moment)
that have enough going on to make a sequel or reboot worthwhile or meaningful. I
don’t think it’s my Star Wars fandom
alone that distinguishes that film franchise, and its truly imaginative
and culture-changing storytelling across so many decades and so many
different media (into all of which a sequel like The Force Awakens slotted thoughtfully, as I argued in that prior
post), from a simplistic and vapid individual blockbuster film like Top Gun.
So no, I
don’t think we needed another Top Gun
film. But from what I can tell (and again, haven’t seen it, so as always I
welcome responses and challenges in comments!), Maverick does do one really interesting thing that is a positive
possibility when it comes to these ubiquitous sequels (and that does link it to
Force Awakens and the entire recent Star Wars trilogy): it actively thinks
about time. That is, despite star Tom
Cruise’s seeming agelessness, he is of course three and a half decades
older than he was in the original film, and thus his character Pete “Maverick”
Mitchell is likewise. Much like the smash hit TV
show Cobra Kai (which I also
haven’t seen, outside of clips here and there, but when does that stop an
AmericanStudier?!), Maverick is thus
able to not just continue the original story, but to reflect actively on the
passage of time, on themes of continuity and change, on the relationships (limiting
and enriching alike) between the past and the present. Maybe I’m biased because
those are the kinds of questions that define every part of my work and career,
but I believe we all can benefit from asking them, of our pop culture stories
and our own identities and everything in between. If even silly blockbusters
can help us do so, then count me in!
Next 2022
reflection tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other parts of 2022 you’d reflect on?
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