Classics slip away as nerd power takes over world

I WAS always impressed by the way 40s film producer Val Lewton managed to insert a degree of subtle literacy into the schlocky projects he was handed by those above him.

Lewton was the guy who was told to make a movie called I Walked with a Zombie. He did, and borrowed wholesale the plot from Jane Eyre, transplanting it to a far-off land and smothering the whole film in voodoo. The studio chiefs loved it. So did Lewton. They hadn’t read the book; had probably never heard about it, but they had the horror flick they wanted. And Lewton had quietly triumphed.

Lewton had class. He had style. And he had intelligence enough to subvert dross and turn it into movies that have stood the test of time.

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Seventy years ago studios and producers believed the secret of a good movie was a good book. For almost the first 50 years of the talkies filmmakers went back to the classics in the search for a meaty drama.

Things have certainly changed. Today’s movies are all too often based not on a novel – who reads books these days, anyway? – but on a comic. And comic superheroes rule when it comes to box office appeal.

Take the imminent Avengers Assemble. This much-anticipated blockbuster combines a gaggle of superheroes representing significant star wattage.

Each of the superheroes on display has had at least one outing already in his or her own franchise. Those that haven’t have been referenced in the others’ movies. And the link has been Samuel L Jackson, popping up like the playground tease to hint at what was to come.

So this new film represents the ultimate in nerd power.

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There have been six prior movies including Iron Man and its sequel, Hulk and its remake, Thor and Captain America. Yet all of them have arguably been just trailers for The Big One: Avengers Assemble.

This, then, represents film literature for the 21st-century. Millions and millions and millions of dollars are thrown at pictures like this with the likes of Kenneth (Thor) Branagh queuing up to direct them. Get used to it, folks: comics and graphic novels have transplanted novels and plays in youth consciousness.

If 50 is the new 40, then comics and teen fiction are the new literature. Begone Shakespeare. Get thee hence, Tolstoy. Clear off, Pasternak, Rostand, Ibsen, Twain and your dusty, fusty pals. If you don’t wear a spandex costume and fire bolts of lightning from your fingertips, you ain’t cool.

It’s becoming terribly unfashionable to be a bookworm. And there’s the irony: for years it was the height of pariahdom to be a geek; now they’re taking over the world via movies like Avengers Assemble. Even smash hits of 20 or even 10 years ago are being remade – Batman, Spiderman – such is the demand.

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Where will it all end? If the big studios are prepared to make six movies to launch one mega franchise, what price the humble novel? What of the timeless stories that have been passed on from generation to generation?

The answer is that they have been smashed into the dust by the Incredible Hulk and his cohorts. No more will we witness spectaculars like Ben Hur, Lawrence of Arabia or Gone with the Wind. Progress in the form of nerd power will render them obsolete. David Lean must be turning in his grave.

The days of the epic are dead. Long live the comic.

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