On May 19, 2021, I attended a splashy, big-screen, Century City, California event with notable guests like Arnold Schwarzenegger, J.J. Abrams, Maggie Q, Janicza Bravo, Sam Richardson, and just about every distribution executive from every major American film studio. The goal of this creative crew? To get us feeling excited — and safe — about heading back to watch movies on a theater screen. In proof of this point, we all gathered in an AMC theater located in the Century City mall, where these Hollywood luminaries gave Steven Soderbergh Oscar ceremony-esque speeches about the connective power of the movies, then showed us footage from the upcoming 2021 theatrical slate.
The event as a whole was a mixed popcorn bag at best. My colleague Steve Weintraub needled its flaws quite succinctly, but I'll simply point out that too much of the footage was literal trailers we've all already seen before, leaving us feeling less "excited about the future of cinema" and more "tired of seeing the same damn trailers for way too long before every AMC movie." "The Big Screen Is Back," they called the event. "It feels so good to be in a theater," they kept telling us. Don't they know that screen storytelling 101 is to show, not tell?
To avoid this out-and-out slide into grumpiness over an objectively good thing — going to movie theaters rules! — I do want to highlight some of the best "actually new footage" we saw, and one key ingredient that glued them all together.
There was no sense of self-consciousness, of tongue in cheek, of early-MCU-style jokiness in any of the films previewed at the event, even (especially) when the events shown on screen were deliberately larger than life. Seemingly taking their cue from the heartfelt sincerity of the participants' speeches, every film clip that popped did so with a wholly committed sense of earnestness. F9 showed off an extended action sequence involving Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez swinging a car from a rickety rope bridge and landing on the other side. It did so with barely any jokes; even resident voice of reason Tyrese Gibson mostly screamed instead of wisecracked. Instead, it presented this piece as the completely natural emotional extension of the drama between Diesel and Rodriguez's characters, daring us to call its stone-faced bluff and laugh at it.
In fact, I did laugh at it. This means the best of the new footage seen at this event wasn't just luxuriating in earnestness. These clips were so earnest, so intentional, so wholly committed to their strikes of gonzo energy, that they swung around like a muscle car on a cracked rope into that sublime sensation of camp. Abrams mentioned that we go to the movies to be taken care of like a parent takes care of a child. In this case, this parent is making us all wear matching novelty t-shirts and not even thinking for a second that we look silly. This parent gets gawked at by cooler-than-thou teenagers, but this parent is adored by wholesomer-than-thou pre-teens who "don't know better." And yes, in this campy metaphor, these pre-teens are us.
In the Heights, the pre-Hamilton musical from a master of "so earnest it borders on camp," Lin-Manuel Miranda, showed off an extended look at its propulsive rap-meets-Broadway opening number. Director Jon M. Chu is making choices here, throwing reality-busting devices like direct address, a framing structure where star Anthony Ramos looks exactly like Miranda, and Miranda himself making an ostentatious cameo up against a grimy, sweaty milieu he wants to feel authentic. Obviously, a piece fueled by song-and-dance is going to need to be earnest-and-almost-campy to work, but In the Heights pops over that line with an unprecedented lack of need for holding our hand or telling us "why"; even La La Land smoothed out its musicality by using a musician as its main character. I was enthralled the entire time, laughing at its unawarely campy moments while simultaneously being impressed by its sheer spectacle, craft, willingness to go there.
The Green Knight, one of the most hotly anticipated upcoming films (emphasis on hotly), showed off a first look that I would opine is "daring to be laughed at." With gorgeous production design and prestige-friendly color correction, we watched as Sean Harris turned King Arthur into a seething, brooding, villainous snake of a character; we watched as a goddamn tree monster made its way into the Round Table; and we watched as Dev Patel took a sword, turned to this tree monster, and said, "Have at me, Green Knight." I felt my adrenaline rise as I cackled, literally pumped my fist, and shouted "Yeah!" like this was the next F9 set piece. For A24's big cineaste play to feel this bald-facedly crowd-pleasing, this boldly melodramatic felt like a tonic of the highest order.
Don't Breathe 2, an upcoming Sony sequel I simply had no interest in, is now near the top of my "must-see list" thanks to this one operatic clip. I like the original Don't Breathe fine enough; it's a grimy, nasty horror flick with a provocative premise ("what if the monster was blind?"), a pummeling performance from Stephen Lang, and a buckwild twist involving a turkey baster. Did I need to revisit this world? I know my answer now, after seeing a tour-de-force one-take sequence from Don't Breathe 2. Rodo Sayagues, making his directorial debut, turns the low-budget grindhouse appeal of this premise into a breath-grabbing, Brian De Palma-esque exploration of voyeurism, violence, madness, and survival. It did more for me than any and every A Quiet Place Part II piece of footage seen thus far, including the one shown at this very event. It seems to ask, "Why can't every movie take things this seriously?"
And finally, there is Pig. The movie I imagine when I hear this premise — Nicolas Cage's prized truffle pig/best friend is stolen, and Cage must venture into the underworld of his past to get it back — is not the movie Michael Sarnoski is interested in making, thank God for that. Gone is the Cage of self-aware genre pummels like Mandy or the upcoming Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (the latter of which had just one, less-than-a-second feature in the Lionsgate presentation; in that brief moment, I became very excited). Instead, Cage seems to have dug deep into this character, delivering an interior, sad, and very quiet performance motivated primarily by love and regret, rather than rage and lunacy. Despite its laugh-inducing images of Cage whistling to call his beloved pig to him — or Cage, recently beaten up, trying in vain to whistle to call his beloved pig to him — Pig itself seems uninterested in joking. Instead, like its peers at this event, the Neon-distributed film exists wholly as itself, and if you want to wink at it, that's up to you, not it.
Hollywood always has a streak of self-seriousness. It was clear and present in every facet of this "Big Screen Is Back" event, from the verbal messaging to the clips blasted on screen. But the difference in effectiveness became clear. When serious people talk seriously about something somewhat silly, it's easy to tune out, denigrate, and get snarky about. But when serious people make a serious movie about something spectacularly silly, it becomes an elevated piece of pop art, a thing worth time and attention, a wild display of humanity worth blasting on these big screens that are so insistently back. The best component of a truly campy pleasure is that it's unaware of its status; it's simply doing its damndest to entertain you, letting the audience do the rest of the work. Going to the movies always requires this dance; the movie may lead, but the audience has to follow. It's hard to follow when the leader won't shut up about how important this dance is; it's much easier to just do the dance and trust we're along for the ride.