2012 was quite a year for Disney. Not content with owning the lion’s share of the Marvel Universe, crafting an intricate series of interconnected films and then delivering one of the biggest hits of this or any other year in the shape of The Avengers, the company then announced that they’d snapped up Lucasfilm, securing both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises along the way. Throw in the successful reintroduction of the Muppets to the cinematic stage, and Disney enjoyed a year so successful that even the abysmal box office performance of the much-underappreciated John Carter couldn’t dampen their spirits. Who cares about even a catastrophic failure when you’ve got Iron Man, Luke Skywalker and Kermit the Frog on your side?

The success of Disney’s acquisitions has come at a cost though. So significant have these live action films been that the company’s bread and butter – its animated output – is being overlooked. Their latest offering, the wonderful Wreck-It Ralph, did well in the United States last year, and it looks set to repeat that performance now it’s released here, but it certainly won’t do Avengers numbers, and it’s unlikely to garner the same level of nostalgic love as The Muppets, despite the film trading heavily on the same rose-tinted retroism. As a result it’ll take a back seat to its live action counterparts, and that’s a real shame, because Wreck-It Ralph is a better film than both The Avengers and The Muppets, and the best film of what is gradually seeming like a new Disney Golden Age.

Unlike the Golden Ages of 1937-66 and 1989-2000, this new Golden Age did not begin with the seismic shift of a Snow White and the Seven Dwarves or Beauty and the Beast, but with a small yapping dog. 2008′s Bolt will not go down as one of Disney’s all-time masterpieces, but it’s a smart, sweet little film that is both modern and traditional and, more importantly, shored the company up following a period of unremarkable efforts such as Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons and Home on the Range.

A year later, it was followed by The Princess and the Frog, another film that blended the traditional and the modern. A hand-drawn fairy tale, it was the company’s first princess film since 1998′s Mulan and the first to feature a black princess. It may lack the epic sweep of Beauty and the Beast, the emotional clout of The Lion King and the tunes of The Little Mermaid, but it showed that Disney had found its feet again, and when it was joined by clever Rapunzal tale Tangled in 2010, Disney had strung together a hat-trick of films that were traditional enough to fit neatly into their established canon, but modern enough to appeal a mass audience. The emperor had found a new groove.

As good as those films are, Wreck-It Ralph tops all three of them. A film that’s as brilliant as it is bold, it was a pretty sizeable risk following the dismal performance of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which also relied heavily on rose-tinted 8-bit memories. It could have alienated as many as it entertained, and with the wrong marketing it could have easily gone the same was as John Carter. Appeal too much to the boys who’ll thrill to the Hero’s Duty scenes and you’ll risk losing the girls who’ll lap up girl racer Vanellope von Schweetz; appeal too much to the girls and the boys will stay at home with their Playstation 3s. In its own way, Wreck-It Ralph is as big a risk as ‘Disney’s Folly’ was back in 1937.

Gladly, it pays off. Wreck-It Ralph is a charming, funny and surprisingly moving film. Its visuals are striking, its characters involving and its references beautifully judged. Not everyone knows who Q*bert and Zangief are, but you don’t need any insider knowledge to feel sorry for the little orange guy who’s homeless because his game is no longer popular or laugh at the lovely crack about the Street Fighter villain’s very, very short shorts. This is a film that shuns the exclusivity that has marred ‘geek culture’ for years, and makes a hero out of a girl gamer who wants to play in the boys’ world but is treated like a glitch.

Indeed, surprisingly for a film called Wreck-It Ralph, this really does prove to be Vanellope’s story, and a liberating one it is too. Not only does it condemn video game culture’s treatment of women, it also smartly updates the fairy tale into something new and gender progressive. Vanellope is a princess who has been banished from her kingdom and replaced by an evil villain disguised as a benevolent king. She hides in a giant cola bottle that stands tall over the land of Sugar Rush like Rapunzel’s tower or the biggest spire of the Disney castle. And she is introduced to a knight in shining armour who arrives on the scene to save her.

Except Ralph isn’t a knight in shining armour – he’s the bad guy. And instead of saving her, she saves him by accepting him for what he is rather than labelling him as a villain. And when her true identity is revealed, she too shakes off the label by refusing the princess dress and royal crown, declaring instead that the independent girl racer we’ve seen for most of the film is who she really is. To quote the zombie from the film’s brilliant Villain’s Anonymous sequence, “Good, bad, urrghghhgh! Labels not make you happy. You must love you.”

That Wreck-It Ralph tells this story in the context of the fairy tale, where everybody is a label (good guy, bad guy, evil witch, damsel in distress, knight in shining armour), shows its brilliance and its foresight. Instead of the tedious in-jokes and savage parody that has blighted the fairy tale genre since Shrek, director Rich Moore has aimed for something much higher and much more rewarding. He’s dusted the cobwebs off an old form of storytelling, reminded us of what made those stories so powerful in the first place, and shown how to keep telling those stories in a new and relevant form.

In doing so, he’s helped continue Disney’s impressive recent run and raised the bar in what could well become the company’s third great golden age.

Brighton’s greatest ever community-led festival of digital culture confirms more than 100 events will take place this September. The Brighton Digital Festival brings together the city’s arts and digital sector for a diverse range of events including exhibitions, performances, conferences, activities and workshops.

More than 40,000 visitors are expected this year and a number of well-established conferences and workshops in the festival, such as dConstruct and Reasons to be Creative (previously Flash on the Beach), which attract an international audience, have already sold out.

The Brighton Digital Festival presents leading digital artists, designers and writers such as David Blandy with his Odysseys exhibition and Nancy Mauro-Flude in Error_In_Time(), plus influential digital professionals including Ethan Marcotte, Remy Sharp, Lyza Gardner and Jonathan Snook. The confirmed schedule of events is online at www.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk.

The festival covers a range of themes that bridge the art and digital worlds, such as pervasive gaming, shifting our perception of reality through digital art, perspectives from a female ‘geek’ and consumer demands of technology. The Brighton Digital Festival also features opportunities for people in the city to participate in activities such as the festival’s opening event on Sunday 2 September, PixelPyro created by artist Seb Lee De-Lisle, in which the audience trigger a digital firework display projected onto Jubilee Library.

Family orientated, interactive events throughout the festival include the return of last year’s immensely popular Mini Maker Faire. Celebrating the Maker movement, this inventive and creative faire asks those attending to explore the do-it-yourself creation desk and discover new digital inventions. Bigger than last year and even more exciting, the Mini Maker Faire promises to be a highlight of the Festival. The iSpy Brighton Family Treasure Hunt also invites families to a treasure hunt around Brighton using the iTreasure app and GPS.

Embedded at the heart of the festival is an integrated education programme, with workshops devised by Lighthouse and the extraordinary Cherokee Nation, a project developed by Wired Sussex which links young people in Brighton with young people within the Cherokee Nations. A teacher-led event TeachMeet shares great teaching ideas through digital technologies in order to engage students and support learning.

The festival also has its fair share of social entertainment, such as the science fiction and fantasy pub quiz Geekest Link, which invites a variety of digital festival goers to celebrate all things digital and explore their inner-geek.

Essentially a grass-root led, community-run celebration of digital culture, the Brighton Digital Festival is organised by an array of arts organisations, creative digital companies, individual designers, developers, artists and community groups from Brighton and beyond. The festival reflects Brighton’s unique culture and strong community spirit, alongside its immense cluster of digital businesses, which brings together companies, professional digital workers and artists. This year’s festival is supported with an Arts Council England Grants for the arts award.

Sally Abbott, Regional Director, South East, Arts Council England, said: ‘I’m delighted that we are supporting the Brighton Digital Festival for another two years through Arts Council England’s National Lottery-funded Grants for the arts scheme. In the space of a year, the festival has galvanised the arts and digital communities into action and has matured into a major event for the digital sector: bringing together the world’s leading arts and digital practitioners, thinkers, makers and activists as part of this month-long international digital culture festival.

We are especially pleased to support the Festival’s innovative arts and education programme, which aims to support the national curriculum by inspiring young people to use digital creativity and offering teachers new opportunities to learn digital skills. The Arts Council has a firm commitment to the digital agenda and the opportunities it brings to artists and arts organisations to present and promote the arts in new and inspiring ways, and we are excited that the Brighton Digital Festival will continue to cement the South East’s reputation as a leader in digital culture.’

Laurence Hill from Wired Sussex and Festival Manager for the Brighton Digital Festival stated ‘this is the second year of the Brighton Digital Festival and it’s bigger and better than ever. I have been overwhelmed by the response of the arts and digital communities in Brighton to our call out for events.

With over a hundred events during September there are amazing opportunities for people to get involved, learn, play and generally be inspired. I couldn’t be more excited about what’s coming up and I want to say a huge thank you to all organisers of the individual events. Without their enthusiasm, excitement and willingness to develop their ideas into fully-formed events, the Festival wouldn’t happen.

The arts and digital communities in Brighton are world class and the Festival gives them the opportunity to come together, recognize their value to each other, their worth to the city and create a genuinely unique and fantastic showcase for themselves and Brighton.’

Highlights of the Brighton Digital Festival are below, visit www.brightondigitalfestival.co.uk for more information:

Odysseys by David Blandy
1-23 September, 11am-6pm @ Phoenix Brighton
http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/programme/david-blandy-odysseys
Lighthouse and Phoenix Brighton will present recent works by David Blandy (http://www.davidblandy.co.uk) in a special exhibition curated for the Brighton Digital Festival. Blandy is a contemporary artist based in Brighton and London who uses video, performance, digital technology, animation and comics to investigate the form and content of popular culture today.

The iSpy Brighton Family Treasure Hunt
1–30 September, All day @ North Laine and South Lanes
http://www.thebrightontreasurehuntcompany.co.uk/catalog/public-events/ispy-family-treasure-hunt-digital-festival-2012
The iSpy treasure hunt is a location-based game that uses GPS and questions to help you explore Brighton’s North Laine and South Lanes. Using the iTreasure app (http://www.itreasure-hunt.com), your mission is to find art, sculpture, objects and buildings around Brighton. When targets are located, players must answer questions to receive points and move on to the next clue in order to complete the game in the fastest time, and in turn win a prize at the end of the festival.

Error In Time by Nancy Mauro-Flude & Launch of e-Permanent
2 September, 2pm @ Phoenix Brighton (Green Room)
Is there a place for women inside a ‘Geek Space’ and what news might a female hacker bring back for the rest of us? Error in Time by Nancy Mauro-Flude gives a compelling insight into geek space from the perspective of a female media hacker. Error in Time uses live code manipulations to explore the intimate workings of computer/human interfaces, surveillance and social media. The work accompanies the launch of e-Permanent, a new online exhibition space from Brighton’s Permanent gallery.

Reasons to be Creative
3–5 September, 10am-9pm @ The Dome
http://reasonstobecreative.com/
Reasons to be Creative is brought to you by the same people who created the acclaimed Flash on the Beach conference and New York’s Geeky by Nature conference in 2011. FOTB ran for over five years and became one of the biggest and best loved ‘Flash-centric’ conferences in the world. The conference includes inspiring international speakers who will present talks about art, design, film, processing, photography, animation and coding. Sold out.

Improving Reality
6 September, 12pm-5.30pm @ Pavilion Theatre
http://www.lighthouse.org.uk/programme/improving-reality-2012
Improving Reality 2012 is a half-day conference which playfully and critically looks at how designers, artists, and makers are using various technologies to shift our perceptions of reality. This collection of inspiring talks features comic-book star, Warren Ellis and artists, designers and provocateurs, including Usman Haque, Luke Jerram, Anab Jain, Nelly Ben Hayoun, Leila Johnston and Rebekka Kill.

dConstruct
7 September, 9am-5pm @ The Dome
http://2012.dconstruct.org/
dConstruct, curated by Clearleft, is one of the festival’s most popular tickets. Aimed at web designers and developers, the annual, internationally renowned conference gathers some of the brightest minds in the design community to explore big issues in the digital industry today. Sold out on day one.
Brighton Mini Maker Faire
8 September, All day @ Corn Exchange

http://www.makerfairebrighton.com/

This free, interactive festival was one of the most popular events of 2011. It’s a family-friendly showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement. Plenty of Makers and exhibitors will present what they are making, and share what they are learning. Activities (for all ages) include arts and crafts, robots and engineering, wood and metalwork, electronics, science, tech, music and other do-it-yourself creations.

Flash Lit Fiction
16 September, 7pm-10pm @ Green Door Store
Flash Lit Fiction is a flash fiction ‘slam’ joined by a Twitter story competition, which involves reading short, snappy stories to a live audience. The night explores all things literary and digital and will include short live art performances, visuals, presentations and comedy. The main feature is 12 to 16 of Brighton’s best literary competitors battling it out before an esteemed panel of judges including Vicky Blunden from Myriad Editions.

Is Reality Broken?
19 September, 5.30pm for 6pm @ Grand Parade
Jane McGonigal is a game designer specialising in pervasive gaming and alternate reality games. She claims in her recent book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, that gamers are retreating into virtual worlds and that their skills and talents go to waste. At this event, jointly hosted by the University of Brighton’s Faculty of Arts, Business School and the School of Computing, Engineering & Mathematics, practitioners, students and academics will debate the nature of reality on Jane McGonigal’s terms.

Quick Fictions
24 September, 6.30pm @ The Latest Music Bar
Quick Fictions is an interactive flash fictions app, exploring new ways to curate fiction through this evolving digital format. A collaboration between the University of Sussex, Aimer Media and Myriad Editions, Quick Fictions will be a night of short fiction where every story is under 300 words including the app’s best-loved stories along with famous quick fictions by Hemingway, Kafka and other well-known contemporary authors. Recordings of authors and actors reading stories will be integrated with live performances and illustrative projections.

International TeachMeet
27 September, 4pm-7pm @ City College Brighton and Hove
http://tmbton.eventbrite.com/
TeachMeet Brighton, coordinated by Digital Education Brighton is inviting everyone involved in education to take part. This free event will include presentations, not just from Brighton and Hove, but from educators in the Cherokee Nation, Canada and Australia. TeachMeets are teacher-led events with teachers, tutors and lecturers sharing ideas about what works in practice. They are a fun and informal way to share teaching ideas, with over 100 educators from the city and beyond attending the last event.

Meaning
1 October, 9am-5pm @ The Corn Exchange
http://meaningconference.co.uk/
Meaning conference is the annual gathering for people who believe business can and must be better in the 21st century. The purpose of Meaning is to build awareness and community around the practical possibilities of progressive business so that the world becomes a better place. Speakers are international thinkers and doers from business, academia and activism, each bringing their view of the challenges and opportunities available.

First up is Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Supremacy…

If The Bourne Identity is about Jason Bourne’s attempt to reclaim his life, The Bourne Supremacy is about his bid to reclaim his humanity. The film is markedly darker than its predecessor, with Greengrass exploring Bourne’s past as an assassin and, specifically, his killing of Russian politician Vladimir Neski. Bourne killed both Neski and his wife and made it look like a murder-suicide – a story which was accepted by all, including the Neskis’ young daughter, Irina. By the film’s conclusion, Bourne reveals to Irina the true nature of her parents’ death and regains his humanity, but before that comes this scene…

Bourne’s journey has taken him to New York. He wants to arrange a meeting with former Treadstone technician Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) and calls CIA Deputy Director Pamela Landy to force the issue. Landy is evasive at first, telling Bourne that it won’t be easy to track Parsons down. Bourne, however, knows this not to be the case. He knows that Parsons is stood right next to Landy as he’s watching her office, sniper rifle in hand, from a nearby building. He lets her know this at the end of the scene.

Greengrass was hired to direct The Bourne Supremacy because producer Patrick Crowley admired his “sense of the camera as participatory viewer” and that certainly shows in this scene. The viewer is given Bourne’s point of view and therefore his advantage over Landy. Greengrass shoots much of the scene through the crosshairs of Bourne’s rifle as it pans from Landy to Nicky and back again. To reinforce our power, we see the scene primarily through high-angle shots, looking down at Landy’s office.

As the scene continues, the audience becomes complicit in Bourne’s threatened violence. We feel the excitement of the potential revenge of a man who has been wronged by Landy and her organisation and will him on. The tables have turned – the hunted has become the hunter, and for the audience, as well as for Bourne, it’s a thrilling reversal.

The tension that has been slowly building throughout the scene is finally released when Bourne lets his position be known. The secret out, Landy turns around and looks out the window, trying to find Bourne’s position. In doing so, she breaks the fourth wall, staring straight into the camera twice. Greengrass shoots the first shot at Landy’s eye level, despite the fact it doesn’t match up with Bourne’s previously-established POV, and the second shot in close-up, again breaking the illusion that we’re seeing events through Bourne’s eyes.

We’ve been spotted! Our part in Bourne’s scheme has been exposed and our alignment with Bourne has been broken. Suddenly it seems that Landy was never the hunter – we were. We’ve been playing both sides against each other, willing Bourne to commit against the CIA agents exactly the kind of violence we’re so outraged they’ve been committing against him. We’re as bad as they are, and now we’re being punished – we’re the hunted! It’s Greengrass’s most thrilling reversal in this masterful cat-and-mouse game.

The scene is echoed at the end of the film, when Bourne, having cleared his name, returns to New York and again tracks down Landy. Greengrass’s set-up is the same, though this time Bourne doesn’t have a rifle and we don’t see Landy through any crosshairs. Bourne calls Landy, who is again unaware that he is watching her. She apologises to Bourne and tells him his real name – David Webb. “Get some rest, Pam,” he tells her in conclusion. “You look tired.”

Landy again spins around, again trying to pinpoint Bourne’s location. This time though, she doesn’t break the fourth wall. Her eyes roam around the camera, but not directly into it. Bourne has made peace with his past, found his humanity and finally found a route to a brighter future. He doesn’t need to resort to violence and won’t suffer the guilt that comes with it. We are in the same position.

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It’s amazing to think that the man entrusted with Britain’s biggest night in decades was Danny Boyle – amazing and appropriate. This is an unassuming man who will never hog the limelight and yet who makes some of British cinema’s most uncompromising and outstanding films. They focus the darker side of life – crime, drug addiction, poverty – but manage to find light amongst that darkness. They are visceral and at times brutal, smacking the audience out of complacency with an intoxicating cocktail of sound and vision, but then soothing the resulting bruises with heart and humanity.

They are, ultimately, the films of a man totally representative of a nation looking for a shaft of light among the darkness of financial and social turmoil.

The opening ceremony was a Boyle film without the celluloid and projector. There was cool music, stunning visuals, a warm sense of humour and an electrifying energy. At times, it was like watching the opening Lust for Life sequence from Trainspotting – only it was four hours long and was taking place with the Queen and Prime Minister watching on. Sound and vision collided in one especially impressive sequence when lights in the crowd were programmed to form a massive graphic equaliser and again in the closing segment, which celebrated British pop culture with references to pretty much every great band, TV show or film Britain has created. Any serious exploration of Boyle’s work should now include a passage on this ceremony – it was a truly aueter event.

Generally the ceremony was greeted the same kind of praise Boyle’s film get, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and it’s no surprise that some were unimpressed. Many on the right side of the political spectrum complained that the show was too left wing, and perhaps it was. This was a show that included nods towards the Suffragette movement and the Jarrow March, which painted captains of Industry (clad in black and looking panto villain-esque with their smug smiles and shifty demeanours) in a particularly negative light and which – quite literally – made a song and dance out of the National Health Service.

Is that left-wing? In this political climate, perhaps, but in general, no. This ceremony celebrated Britain not as a flag or a political concept, but as a philosophy. This is a land of justice and freedom, Boyle argued, one which will stand up against those who threaten them. It is a land of fairness and equality, one which will create an entire system to ensure that everyone, everywhere, regardless of social standing or financial might, has access to the basic right to health care. It is a land where everyone, rich and poor, black and white, can gather around a TV on a Saturday night to share in our culture.

That is neither right-wing nor left-wing. It transcends politics. It’s universal.

Towards the end of the night, the words ‘This is for everyone’ scrolled across the stadium. They were originally spoken by Tim Berners-Lee, the Brit who devised the internet, but here they captured a spirit. It’s a spirit that’s been espoused in so many Boyle films – by the young boys who use stolen money to help the homeless in Millions and the space crew who sacrifice themselves to reignite the sun in Sunshine – and at the Olympic Stadium it was communicated on a global scale.

If cinema is about the communal experience, Boyle created the greatest film of all time.

To celebrate the joint occasion of my birthday and the release of The Dark Knight Rises, a friend and I undertook a Batman marathon, beginning with Batman Begins at 9.00 in the morning and concluding with a showing of TDKR at 4.30 that afternoon. Watching Christopher Nolan’s three films in one go was a fantastic experience. It reminded me how much fun movie marathons are, re-asserted just what a brilliant and rare film-maker Nolan is and revealed a few interesting things about his Bat-trilogy, which I’ll expand upon a little here.

Nostalgia

Nolan’s Batman films are tough, bleak and cynical – certainly not films you’d expect to get all misty-eyed and sentimental over. That’s not going to stop me though. Watching Batman Begins I realised just how nostalgic I am for a film that was released at a pretty important time in my life. In 2005, I’d just finished university and was lucky enough to go straight into a great job. Batman Begins was one of the big three summer movies of that year (Revenge of the Sith and War of the Worlds were the other two) and I was exposed to it every day on my way to work courtesy of a big, brooding billboard that featured Batman swooping towards camera covered in a swarm of bats.

I saw the film on opening day and was foolish enough to pre-book a ticket for a 5.30 showing (I finished work at 5). So that meant a desperate scramble across the city to make the screening in time – which, gladly, I did. Worth the effort? No doubt. Though I had some issues with the film (I wasn’t initially taken by the first act’s non-chronological storytelling), I loved Bale’s performance as Bruce Wayne, the (now surely iconic) Tumbler chase and Nolan’s bold visual sense. I left the cinema dazzled and slightly dazed, making all that anticipation well worth while. Batman Begins remains my favourite of the three films because of that.

Bruce Wayne

Begins is not just a subjective favourite though; I reckon it’s objectively the best of the trilogy too and that’s because of Bruce Wayne. In 2005, Nolan started his Batman trilogy with one goal in mind: to make a film about Bruce Wayne. Not Batman and not the villains. Plain and simple, Bruce Wayne. He achieved that with aplomb in Begins because all of his big themes (more of which later) play directly into Wayne’s emotional journey: Bruce starts out scared but eventually masters his fear and channels it into something productive.

In the sequel, however, Nolan lost track of that somewhat. The Dark Knight isn’t about Bruce Wayne – it’s not even about Batman. Nope, The Dark Knight is firmly Harvey Dent’s film, and so Wayne is pushed back into the shadows, making the centrepiece of the trilogy something of an empty shell compared with Batman Begins. Though Wayne returns to the front and centre in The Dark Knight Rises, the spectre of his parents’ deaths is largely forgotten and as a result, the film never quite punches as hard as sections of Batman Begins did.

Big Themes

Fear, anarchy, power… All are repeatedly referenced during Nolan’s Bat-trilogy and while I sometimes think the director’s interest in big themes overshadows his characters (the same thing happened on Inception), these films represent some of the smartest and most complex tentpole movies Hollywood has ever released.

The Dark Knight Rises is arguably the richest and most complex of the three and the idea of power the most intriguing of all the themes it explores. In the film’s first act, a confrontation between Bane and scheming businessman John Daggett ends with Bane simply placing a hand on Daggett’s shoulder to reassert his dominance over the conversation. Daggett only has money to fight back with and it proves a pitiful defence against someone of Bane’s physical prowess.

Strength wins there then, but throughout the film it’s suggested that Wayne made a mistake in becoming Batman. What could Wayne have achieved if he’d never donned the cape and cowl and instead used his fantastic wealth to fund the police force, build hospitals or, as cop John Blake points out, ensure that orphaned boys receive care beyond the age of 16? One such boy is found dead in a sewer, his death a result of his involvement in organised crime that he may have stayed away from had he been given the kind of care Wayne’s philanthropic endeavours are supposed to supply. Money well spent is what Gotham truly needed, not Batman.

The Knight of the Right

A number of critics have suggested that The Dark Knight Rises is right wing in its politics because of its nods to the Occupy movement. It’s an intriguing point and the film does indeed trade heavily in Occupy imagery, from the concluding face-off to Selina Kyle’s warning that Wayne will wonder “how you and your friends could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us”. But there’s one very important caveat. Bane and his army aren’t protestors, they’re criminals. Batman fights and defeats them because they are a danger to all society, not just its upper echelons.

The film references Occupy imagery not to draw a clear line between right and left; far from it in fact. Instead, Nolan uses the Occupy movement to muddy the water. Evil like Bane can have just cause and good intentions sometimes have negative consequences. Just look at at the end of Batman Begins, which suggests that Wayne’s creation of Batman spawned The Joker, Dent’s turn at the end of The Dark Knight or the chaos Selina causes in her pursuit of a fresh start. Life is rarely black and white.

The only way to achieve happiness is to find balance, and that’s the watchword of Nolan’s trilogy. Ra’s Al Ghul seeks to restore balance to Gotham in Batman Begins, Talia Al Ghul and Bane seek to do the same in The Dark Knight Rises and in The Dark Knight The Joker revels in the balance he and Batman share. “I don’t want to kill you! What would I do without you?…You… you… complete me,” he says. The Joker also has arguably the most important line of the entire trilogy when he tells Batman that “you and I are destined to do this forever.”

That is the only way true balance can be achieved. Chaos without order becomes anarchy, order without a bit of anarchy turns, in John Blake’s words, a system into shackles. The only path to success is a balance between those two binary opposites, and Bruce Wayne’s triumph at the end of the trilogy is not in beating Bane or even saving Gotham, but in finding a way to help his city and maintain a life of his own.

Women

This is probably the single greatest flaw of Nolan’s Bat-films. In Begins, Rachel Dawes is a smart, resourceful woman who knows her own mind well enough to reject Bruce at the end of the film and move on to dating Harvey at the start of The Dark Knight. Had she continued in this vein, she’d probably be the best female character in any comic book film; sadly she didn’t. By her death in The Dark Knight, she’s just a plot device designed to tip Harvey over the edge. Forget failing The Bechdel Test; Rachel wouldn’t even be allowed to take it.

The same is true of both Miranda Tate and Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Rises. Tate is pure plot device for the first two acts, and when her true identity is revealed in the third act, there’s not enough time to show us who she really is beyond a few soundbites about revenge. Selina Kyle, meanwhile, seems to have been added solely to give Bruce a reason to live his life beyond Batman. Their relationship is pitifully under-written (and hugely undermined by Bruce’s earlier romance with Miranda) and Selina’s desire for a clean slate is not enough to maintain her character throughout the film, especially as she at one point steals from a man for no reason other than a petty vendetta.

Nolan hasn’t created a truly compelling female character since Memento, and while that in itself isn’t a condemning criticism, it is a huge problem in a film that has two strong women (and great actresses) in prominent roles.

Gotham

This may be the most controversial of my points, and it’s one that even I myself am a little torn on, but in The Dark Knight Rises, I found Nolan’s Gotham disinteresting. Batman’s home city has become progressively more real across the three films, going from the sepia-tinted slum of Begins to New York by another name in The Dark Knight Rises. Gotham should be more. It should be a living, breathing entity eaten from the inside by the corrupt and violence it produces. It doesn’t need to be the art deco world of the Burton films, but it needs to have an element of fantasy to it, it needs to feel like a character. Nolan’s Gotham never does.

Overall

Nolan’s Batman films are cinematic landmarks that are as entertaining as they are thought-provoking. But while I respect and enjoy the films, I can only say I love Batman Begins. No matter how smart, complex and culturally relevant these films are, they lack the heart that, for me at least, is crucial to all stories. That may sound overly sentimental and it may seem like heart has no place in films are as dark and gritty as these, but if you don’t care about the characters why should you care about the film?

That was a major problem as The Dark Knight Rises moved into its big finale. It’s technically brilliant, surprisingly bruising and epic on a scale rare seen, but was I on the edge of my seat? Was my heart thumping? Not really. The Dark Knight rose and rose high, but only rarely did he truly soar.

The lack of such films is as surprising as it is disappointing. Genre movies are more popular now than they’ve ever been before and most of this summer’s major blockbusters have sci-fi/fantasy elements woven into their DNA. If hulking green monsters and brooding dark knights aren’t your thing, the last few years have also produced more cerebral SF courtesy of Another Earth, Melancholia and Moon. Problem is, while these films concern space, only one is actually set in space (Moon) and that uses the cosmos as a backdrop for the drama rather than the driving force of it. The few to really venture where no man has gone before include Apollo documentary In the Shadow of the Moon, Danny Boyle’s Sunshine and, going way back to the 90s, Contact, Event Horizon and the Mars duo of Mission to Mars and Red Planet.

So why the lack? Well, let’s deal with the Death Star in the room first. Yep, Star Wars, that familiar scapegoat for modern cinema’s woes, has to line up to be the punching bag once again. I’m not going to argue that George Lucas infantalised cinema or subject him to any of the usual tired old critical cliches, but it can’t be denied that Star Wars shifted the boundaries of cinema’s depiction of space. What was once just a gigantic black void tailor-made for philosophical explorations of the dark heart of man (2001, Silent Running) became a playground for X-Wing dogfights and lightsaber battles. Exploration became uncool and, most importantly, unprofitable.

So that’s that then. George Lucas, you fiend, you’ve ruined it for everyone! Again! Well, not quite. There’s far more to cinema’s current disinterest in serious space films than just Jar Jar Binks – it’s also a sociological thing. The massive leaps in technology we’ve taken over the last decade or two have shifted our scientific focus. The space programme has taken a back seat, and now the focus is on the internet, mobile phones and tablet devices. All the technological power we could ever want sits at the tip of our fingers – literally. Why would we want to bother concerning ourselves with the cosmos when we can play Angry Birds?

Of course, there’s still a fascination with space, as seen in the response to the recent pictures of the Transit of Venus across the sun, but it’s nothing more than surface deep. We don’t want or need to know what the Transit of Venus is, just that’s it’s happening and it looks incredibly beautiful. Nothing wrong with that, of course, it was indeed very, very pretty, and I marveled at the pictures along with everyone else. But the interest in the spectacle rather than the speculation of space has rubbed off on cinema and now we seem as far away from another 2001 as 2001 did back in 1968.

The good news is that despite Prometheus‘s mixed reception, it is going down well at the box office. Sunshine did the same back in 2007 and Contact was similarly popular ten years prior. There is a hunger for space movies then, but they need what those three films and the likes of 2001 had: a director with genuine vision. Scott, Boyle, Zemeckis and Kubrick all turned style into substance by making opulent pictures that captured the wonder and terror of space visually. Sunshine, to expand on one example, evokes the power of the sun so perfectly it almost feels like the celluloid itself will wither and burn.

Film-makers need to embrace similar techniques because there’s so much potential in space films that remains untapped. Done well, they can become both great spectacle and speculation, appealing to those who just want to look up in wonder and those who want to ask questions. As we become ever-more technically competent and conquer the mysteries of the world, looking to space reminds us of our miniscule size and lack of knowledge in the grand scheme of things, and that’s something we need to keep sight of. Hopefully with Prometheus‘s box office success, Hollywood will realise that there is life (or at least money) on other planets and help us do that.

This is going to be a slightly curious piece of criticism because I’m not sure I even want to write it. As the title suggests, it’s about Prometheus, which I came out of about an hour and a half ago. I normally try to avoid writing snap reviews, but in this case I think it’s justified. That’s because Prometheus is so strange, so different, so, just, well, ‘I dunno’ that it’s worthwhile capturing a visceral, immediate (and probably error-strewn) reaction to it and seeing how it changes over time and after repeat viewings. Basically, it’s a little experiment in how I’ve taken the film in, and while it could be completely pointless, it may well be very interesting.

So, first things first, what did I think of Prometheus? Well, I don’t know (told you it could be pointless). The thing is, the film-makers don’t know either. Before release, Ridley Scott and Damon Lindelof spent months teasing and taunting the audience with hints about what exactly the film is. It’s an Alien prequel, it’s not an Alien prequel, it “shares the film’s DNA”. Well, let’s be clear about this. Prometheus is an Alien prequel. It doesn’t share DNA, it shares an entire bloodline, along with character tropes, creatures and sets from the 1979 film. 

This would have been great had Scott and Lindelof had the courage of their convictions. But they don’t. Prometheus delights in being an Alien film, but is much too concerned with not being an Alien film, and being an original story instead. So ultimately, it’s a bit of a mutation. It is and it isn’t an Alien film. It’s a thought-provoking existential sci-fi film and a nasty, visceral horror film (and a very good one at that). If you’re looking for a clear comparison, it’s as if Scott has mashed together Alien and Blade Runner and come up with a film as intense, beautiful and uneven as that would suggest.

It’s the sci-fi elements that are hurt the most. As per the title, Prometheus tries to be a cautionary tale of man’s hubris and the futility of our search for answers. It throws issues of religion, free will and technological endeavour in there for good measure, but so bound is it to the terrifying tone of Alien that these issues develop into nothing more than crude soundbites and clunking symbols. For example, the lead character carries with her a cross, and her faith in God is repeatedly referred to, but what is Lindelof trying to say with that? Is the search for meaning an assault on God? Is the belief in God an attack on the search for meaning? I’m not sure and I don’t think the film is either.

It’s worthwhile comparing Prometheus‘s existential elements to those seen in Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, which is also inspired by both Alien and Blade Runner and is superior to Prometheus. It is every bit as visceral as Prometheus is (in fact, Scott’s final act reminded me a lot of the end of Sunshine), but the build up is slow, considered and thoughtful, like the first two acts of Alien and the whole of Blade Runner. That means the big questions it poses are engaging because the film can breathe and is therefore allowed to provide you with clear information about the plot. Prometheus never does the same.

Look at the character at the start of the film. Who is he? Why is he drinking that strange black liquid? What is that strange black liquid? Why is it transforming him? Why does it appear later? Why does it turn worms into weird alien snakes? What are those weird alien snakes? What the hell is going on?! Prometheus does everything in its power not to tell you and ends, infuriatingly, by suggesting that you’ll get to know in another film. This isn’t mystery, it’s bad storytelling and while it succeeds in leaving you with questions, they’re all about the film’s basic plot mechanics and not its themes.

If this all sounds gloomy that’s not really my intention. As I mentioned, I’m writing this on the fly – a stream of consciousness rather than a considered opinion – and I’m focusing on the film’s negatives because they seem more apparent than the positives. The good news is that there are positives. Many of them in fact. I was enthralled by the masterful first act and left breathless at the second and third acts. It’s a thrilling film and from first minute to last I had a sense of genuine terror that I haven’t experienced at the cinema in a long time. Quite simply, I didn’t know what was coming next, and while that may well be a result of the film’s confused storytelling, it’s still something to be treasured.

I just wish there were more to be treasured. Prometheus is not a bad film. In fact, it’s a very good film. But Prometheus is not a very good film. In fact, it’s a very bad film. It’s a masterpiece disguised as a mess and a mess disguised as a masterpiece and at time of writing, I’m really not sure which disguise is most convincing. But maybe that’ll change with repeat viewings. Maybe the plot points will become clearer and those thematic soundbites will develop into full-blown speeches. A masterpiece is just quality given time to blossom. Prometheus just about has the quality and for the moment at least, it has my time. I just hope it deserves it.

UPDATE 1: As I suggested at the start, I’ll update this with random thoughts as I go along. This is the first batch and it’s not really good. I discussed the film with a friend after he had returned from seeing it and we both agree that it’s a bit of a mess. The film’s plot holes and conveniences became more apparent as we were talking. Why do Fifield and Milburn return to the egg chamber that they vehemently refused to enter earlier in the film? Why do they then approach the alien snakes, despite seeming so cowardly earlier? Why do Vickers and Janek sleep together when Fifield and Milburn are still out on an alien planet alone? The answer is because the plot needs them to. No other reason.

So many of the film’s flaws boil down to Lindelof’s script, and while I can forgive many of them (those aforementioned contrivances, bad dialogue, cliche characterisation, clunky exposition), I’m finding it difficult to forgive the seeming pointlessness of it all. Watching Prometheus is like watching the most frustrating of frustrating Lost episodes. The end of the film leaves you no more illuminated than you were at the start of it and fittingly for a man who cut his teeth on TV, Lindelof’s concluding teases feel like they were born out of serialised drama. Tune in next week for more! Except you can’t. Prometheus 2 won’t be out for another 3-4 years, if it comes out at all.

That said, I do want more. I want Prometheus 2 and I want to see Prometheus again, even if the more I think about it, the more like a cynical attempt at trilogy-building it seems. I want to explore more of the Prometheus myth and I want to see how it ties into the film and how the film ties into Alien. I also desperately want to find a point. All I’m coming up with at the moment is the futility and destructiveness of man’s search for answers. That’s why the film offers no real solutions, that’s why it ends in the same place it begins – with Shaw searching. Answers are not easy to find, but we’ll risk destroying ourselves trying to find them.

So the morning after the night before, I remain as intrigued and frustrated by Prometheus as I was last night. I’ll probably catch the film again at the cinema and I’ll definitely buy it on Blu-Ray, but at the moment, after sleeping on it, my impressions are more negative than positive. It’s a five-star horror film and a three-star sci-fi film, battling for supremacy and ultimately knocking each other out.

UPDATE 2: After viewings of Alien and Alien 3, Prometheus seems even messier and even less satisfying. Alien, of course, is a masterpiece and comparisons between the two are a little unfair because they are trying to achieve such different goals (Alien is straight-up horror, Prometheus cerebral sci-fi). What jumps out at you, however, is just how well-drawn the characters in Alien are. We’re told so little about their lives, but the tension and interplay between the actors brings each person to life. It’s so minimalist, but so perfect, and Prometheus never really comes close to it.

Alien 3 is perhaps a more appropriate comparison, with both films being messy sci-fi experiments with cliched characters and good ideas that never quite gel. Alien 3, however, is more focused in its ideas and while it remains as flawed as its ever been you can draw conclusions from it in a way you can’t from Prometheus.

UPDATE 3: You know all that stuff I said before? Forget it. Well, not all of it. A second viewing of Prometheus reveals many of the same script problems remain: the characters are still cliches, they still do inexplicably stupid things, and they still spout clunky, expository dialogue. Lindelof’s script is just not as good as it should be, and whatever I say over the next few paragraphs, that’s not going to change.

However, on second viewing, many of the concepts the film deals with become clearer. It seems to me now that we’re thinking of the wrong story when we consider the film’s title – it’s not the original god Prometheus, but Frankenstein that the title refers to (Mary Shelley’s novel is sub-titled ‘The Modern Prometheus’). In the world of the film then, Prometheus isn’t so much Weyland (who wants to ‘steal fire – in other words, the stuff of life -  from the gods’), but the Engineers who, like Frankenstein, bid to create life.

The guy at the start of the film, for example, is making a concerted attempt to create life and not bidding to become a sort of Superman, as I had previously thought. The fact his DNA merges with water to create humans is no accident – we are, of course, made up primarily of water. I got the impression from this scene that these Engineers travel across the universe merging their DNA with the natural elements of whatever planet they’re on. So, if they’re on a sandy planet, they’ll make creatures that thrive in sand, if they’re on a jungle planet, they’ll make creatures that thrive in the jungle. In Ash’s words, they’re creating “the perfect organism”.

They then create a species on LV-223 that proves too perfect. They can’t control what they’ve created and decide to kill it, along with all the other species they’ve made, including humans, in fear that they too will rise up. It’s a classic hubris story, and while some of the plot holes still aren’t resolved (why invite humans to LV-223 when they can just hop in a spaceship and attack Earth?), it makes for compelling viewing. I just couldn’t see it first time, because I was focusing on the idea of the humans being the arrogant ones.

What next? Hopefully we’ll find out the answers to some of the burning questions. Just what inspired the Engineers’ arrogance? If they created us, who created them? Was it the black goo? If so, what is it and where did it come from? These issues should be answered in Prometheus 2/3, but I remain adamant that they shouldn’t need to be. If Prometheus has one over-riding problem, it’s that it plays too much like a TV show, dangling mysteries in front of us and expecting us to return next time for more. This is fine when ‘next time’ is weeks/months away, but Prometheus 2 won’t arrive for at least another 3 years and that’s a heck of a long wait.

So what’s the overall verdict? Despite its many flaws, Prometheus is compelling, thought-provoking and original sci-fi. It really is unlike anything we’ve seen before and I’m not sure we’ll see the like of it again (barring Prometheus 2/3). As for my experiment in film reviewing, I’ve learned that snap reviews are interesting but not very accurate. Reviewing any film, not least one as complicated as Prometheus, so soon after seeing it is a bad idea and I’m intrigued to see if the hastily-written write-ups that appeared in the press last week change when the film is released on DVD.

Whatever happens, Prometheus proves one thing: the Alien franchise’s hold over us is as strong today as it’s ever been. And with the debate around Prometheus producing some polarised opinions, that doesn’t look like it’ll change any time soon.

Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s beautiful shooting style certainly does make Dartmoor a character in War Horse, but the film is by no means the first time the director has used land and nature so symbolically or significantly. Beginning with Duel and continuing through to both War Horse and his other 2011 film, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, Spielberg has often presented nature as a visual symbol of his characters’ emotional journeys. A few of the most important examples are given below…

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

When the aliens descend in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, they do so against rich rural backdrops. Roy Neary’s first encounter comes when he’s called out by work. Leaving his suffocating suburban home, he heads out into the wide open country and Spielberg shows us an extreme wide shot of Neary’s car set against a beautiful starry sky. In the top left-hand corner of the screen, a small star moves, following Neary across the frame.

Later, we see Jillian Guiler and her three-year-old son, Barry. Her house is isolated from suburbia and surrounded by natural beauty – similar to the location Neary occupies during his encounter. The aliens take Barry in a sequence that, through their actions alone, seems terrifying. But Spielberg’s use of warm, sun-like light establishes it as the opposite. This is a moment of wonder that is taking place, yet again, amongst nature.

The aliens plant an image in Roy and Jillian’s minds and it’s only when Roy constructs the image out of mud and soil (in other words, the Earth itself) that he understands what it is: Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. A gigantic natural wonder, Devil’s Tower draws humanity together in a moment of communal bonding. The aliens’ arrival has helped us connect not only with other planets, but also our own.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Spielberg’s follow-up alien film uses nature to represent escape and maturation. Here though, the natural symbols are not mud and dirt but the sun and moon. Speaking to interviewer Michael Sragow in 1982, Spielberg discussed his use of night in the film, saying, “Remember in Fantasia, Mother Night flying over with her cape, covering a daylight sky?…I wanted the opening of E.T. to be that kind of Mother Night.”

‘Mother Night’ also appears in one of the film’s most beloved sequences – E.T. and Elliott’s moonlit bike ride. It is one of the few purely fantastical scenes in a film that rarely breaks out of suburbia and marks the pinnacle of E.T. and Elliott’s connection. The alien has not only helped his friend forget his parents’ divorce, but enabled him to transcend the laws of gravity and fly (literally) into the comforting arms of ‘Mother Night’.

The sequence is echoed later in the film, when E.T. and Elliott take off again. This time though, their bike ride is set against the sun, which, as in so many Spielberg films, symbolises truth and emotional realisation. By this point, E.T. has died and been reborn, forcing Elliott to experience pain and understand the need for his friend to return home. He has matured and the sunset ride represents both the end of ‘Mother Night’ comfort and the beginning of adult responsibility.

Always (1989)

Always is based on 1943 melodrama A Guy Named Joe, but Spielberg changes the story’s context significantly, so it focuses not on WWII pilots, but aerial firefighters. That single change shifts the film’s themes too, making this tale of a deceased pilot (Pete) who returns as a ghost to help his partner (Dorinda) cope with her grief, another exploration of man’s relationship with nature.

Before his death, Pete is a childish man who takes unnecessary risks, hypocritically refuses to let Dorinda do the same and possesses a sense of dominion over nature, mastering flight and quenching fires when they run out of control. When he dies (literally becoming at one with the Earth), Pete is guided by a spirit called Hap, who is frequently associated with nature and is first seen in an oasis of floral tranquility within the remains of a burned-out forest.

She tells Pete that he must provide Spiritus (“the divine breath”) for a pilot called Ted, who is Dorinda’s new love interest. It’s a difficult and painful journey, but during its course Pete sees Dorinda’s potential, and in the film’s conclusion his new maturity is put to the test when he has to help Dorinda navigate a forest fire. The fire is slowly put out and Dorinda guides the plane through the billowing smoke and towards a clear and starry night. The craft eventually runs out of fuel and falls into the sea, taking Dorinda and Pete from one natural extreme to another. It’s a moment that echoes their emotional journeys, with both characters gaining a sense of clarity and a purifying fresh start. Dorinda can begin a new life with Ted, Pete can bring a satisfying conclusion to his.

Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1993, 1997)

Spielberg’s Jurassic Park movies share themes in common with Duel and Jaws and complete his Monster Series. Like those films, both Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park are about man’s tussle with primal nature, but here our bid for power is taken to God-like levels, with John Hammond not only hoping to control primitive beasts, but create them.

Of course, the forces of nature and chaos theory eventually put paid to those hopes and Spielberg highlights nature’s triumph with a neat shot that shows a mud-scarred Jurassic Park logo. The characters then escape the island in a helicopter and are joined in their flight by a flock of pelicans. This, Spielberg says, is the natural order; the descendants of dinosaurs (or so the film argues) alongside, and not merged with, man-made technology.

The film was made around the same time as Schindler’s List and it also says important things about the roles of fantasy and reality in our lives. This point is picked up on and evolved in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, where the existence of a second island (Site B) is revealed. Here dinosaurs are allowed to run free, so the island is a sort of man-made natural paradise. Hammond’s nephew, Peter Ludlow, wants to bring that paradise to the mainland (again to make money), but his aspirations come to an end when a T-Rex rampages through San Diego.

The film concludes with footage of dinosaurs once again roaming free on Site B. Hammond gives an interview in which he explains that it is imperative man stay away from the island to allow the creatures to flourish. Spielberg, who would follow the film up with historical dramas Amistad and Saving Private Ryan and not return to escapist blockbusters until Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, is saying the same about fantasy. Sometimes we must leave dreams behind and embrace reality. Life, real life, must be allowed to find a way.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Spielberg uses nature sparingly but effectively in Saving Private Ryan by suggesting that war infects the natural world in three key sequences. The first comes after the men embark upon their mission to recover the title character. Rain has started to fall and Spielberg cuts to close-ups of raindrops hitting leaves and puddles. However, the sound of splashing is quickly replaced by that of gunfire and explosions. The characters cannot escape the war. Even the Earth itself has been poisoned by it.

Spielberg echoes this point later in the film. Caparzo has become the first member of the team to be killed and Spielberg symbolises the tragedy of his death with an extreme wide shot that pictures the men marching across a horizon. The scene is completely black with only exploding bombs illuminating the way. All life has been removed from the world. The only features that remain are the ones created by gunpowder and man’s wrath.

Nature isn’t always used to reflect the misery of conflict though. As I’ve discussed, the sun is a key element of Spielberg’s mise-en-scene, and while it’s largely absent (or muted) in Saving Private Ryan, it’s put to significant use in the scene at the German machine gun turret. Another man dies – the company’s medic Wade – and infighting ensues as the men argue over what to do with the German gunner who killed him. The bickering eventually stops thanks to Captain Miller’s interjection and the soldiers get to burying their colleague. While doing so, they are lit by a setting sun and seen only in silhouette. Spielberg then cuts to identical one-shots of each man against a green field. Their bond is strong again, and nature is reflecting this. It may be fleeting, but colour – life! – is restored to the film.

The campaign for Prometheus has been by far the most innovative and popular. Along with the standard Twitter feed and Facebook page, the film’s studio, Fox, have ploughed a huge amount of time, effort and money into the production of several viral videos that have spread across social media channels like wildfire. They’ve also whipped up a storm of activity around the release of the film’s trailers, previewing excerpts of the ads and showcasing exclusive interviews with director Ridley Scott. This continued on Sunday night when Channel 4 aired the premiere of the latest promo together with a hashtag viewers could use to discuss it on Twitter. Half an hour later another advert appeared, this one featuring a (rather small) selection of the tweets.

Batman and Spider-Man are also taking advantage of social media, though their campaigns are less innovative. The Dark Knight Rises got out of the traps first, starting its viral campaign back in May 2011 (fourteen months before the release of the film) with a mechanism that allowed users to unveil the first image of the film’s villain Bane through Tweets. Promotional packages to magazines and websites, and a micro-site offering tickets to worldwide sneak previews of the film’s opening sequence, have followed, both gaining the movie further online exposure. Sony have done the same with The Amazing Spider-Man, with screenings of key scenes taking place across the globe in February 2012. Viral videos, viral websites and frequent Tweets have also been part of the strategy and they’ve all been geared at not just promoting the film but actively involving the audience in that promotion.

It’s a smart move. Over the last decade, film fans have turned to message boards, blogs and fansites to find the latest news on their favourite upcoming blockbusters. Every part of the film-making process is dissected on these sites, from merchandise and posters to shots of the actors on set and snatches of the script. Obviously studios don’t want those things getting out (not without official approval anyway), so they’ve got creative in an attempt to take back control of brand awareness. The viral campaigns they’re creating are giving fans an idea of the content of the film, but aren’t actually showing them much of what will be in the finished product. Entertained, fans then take to Facebook and Twitter to discuss it, thereby performing the same function they did on the fansites and messageboards, but with official blessing and on an even wider scale. The living room, and not the boardroom, is now the apex of movie marketing.

Where exactly will the socialisation of cinema stop though? This week, David Lieberman of Deadline New York asked if it was time for theatre owners to let audiences text during films and, presumably, that would include allowing them to use social networks too. The article was inspired by a debate held at last week’s high-profile CinemaCon event, where President and Chairman of Filmed Entertainment at IMAX Greg Foster said: “We want them [teenagers] to pay $12 to $14 to come into an auditorium and watch a movie. But they’ve become accustomed to controlling their own existence.” Younger generations “feel handcuffed” at the movies, Foster added, and removing those shackles could help bump up attendances. He may be right.

Control is key in the digital age. Control over what we create, what we consume, and how we react to what we consume. In seconds, we can jump onto our computer to see the latest movie trailer, complain about the latest act of Hollywood stupidity or discuss a film we’re watching at home. It’s this sense of control that is making viral marketing and streaming so enticing and the prospect of actually going to the cinema an awful lot less enticing. Who wants to sit silently in a dark room for two hours when you can watch a movie through your Netflix account, crunch on as much noisy popcorn as you like and use your phone to your heart’s content? In the age of Facebook, cinema is one of the last truly anti-social networks.

It won’t be for much longer though; indeed the short, sad road to Social Cinema is already being paved. Last King of Scotland director Kevin MacDonald’s new film, Marley, has recently broken the mould by streaming on Facebook concurrently with its theatrical release, and the traditional distribution schedule has long since been altered, with some films debuting at the cinema on a Friday and then hitting DVD the following Monday. Are such solutions the future of cinema? Will we start turning to Facebook to watch the latest releases? If we do, what for the cinemas themselves?  Will they become so underused that they start closing down and eventually die out altogether?

It’s a dramatic and gladly unimaginable scenario. Even in the world of social media, smartphones and streaming, the silver screen is too good to resist and studios and cinema chains know that. So they’ll simply adapt. It’d begin slowly at first, with special ‘Text and Tweet’ screenings, but eventually evolve to include in-screen Twitter feeds and Facebook timelines. Teenagers would get their sense of control back, cinema owners would get their customers back and movie studios would get their profit margins back. Hardcore cineastes would be put out, of course, but they’re few in number and less likely to spend money on lucrative snacks and drinks. In other words, they’re disposable.

I count myself as one of those cineastes and obviously I think Social Cinema is an utterly risible idea that should be stamped out immediately. But it won’t be and it would work. Even I, despite my resistance, have taken part in film-based tweetalongs (at home and with movies I’ve already seen, mind you) and, in fact, I’m writing this while watching a film and occasionally commenting about it on Facebook. I also watched on Thursday night as Twitter users discussed the early screenings of Avengers Assemble. These tweets dominated my feed – and they were all made after the film was over. Imagine how many more would be sent if in-cinema mobile use was permitted. Film tweets would be as ubiquitous as TV show tweets are and instead of just discussing the film in general, users could highlight particularly exciting moments. “Thor just PWNED Loki!”, “Hulk is totes amazeballs!”. It’d be the death of the cinema (and the English language), but also its potential rebirth.

The internet has shown film studios a new way to make their product a must-see, now the challenge is to get the audience off the internet and make it a must-see at the cinema. Social cinema, painfully, shamefully, may well be the answer.