This has been another banner year for movies in which great cities get pulped. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, for the umpteenth time, New York gets trashed by malignant creatures with extraordinary powers, all of them destructive. In Godzilla, it is San Francisco that takes it on the chin. In Edge of Tomorrow, it is the Eiffel tower that ends up lying on its side, and the Louvre that gets pistol-whipped on an epic scale.
For reasons too obvious to mention, when Hollywood decides to go to town on a great city, it usually sets its sights on New York first. Spider-Man 2, soon out on DVD, is a typical example. Here it is Manhattan, more photogenic and "iconic" than the four other boroughs, that bears the brunt of the assault, as well it should. Brooklyn, for all its shameless self-promotion, lacks those instantly recognisable buildings and legendary thoroughfares – the Empire State Building, Grand Central Station, the Great White Way – that make it clear precisely what is being smashed to pieces, and where. Brooklyn has the Academy of Music; Manhattan has Carnegie Hall. Brooklyn has Grand Army Plaza; Manhattan has Times Square. Game, set and match to the Big Guy.
As for mobilising monsters to do a tune on dowdy, down-at-the-heels Queens or Staten Island or Da Bronx, forget it. If disaster strikes, if monsters loom, if armageddon is nigh – and when was the last time armageddon was not nigh? – it's Manhattan's assignment to take a pasting. Manhattan has been doing this stuff for a long, long time. Manhattan never fails to answer the bell. So, in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, skyscrapers topple, bridges collapse, the power grid goes down, chaos reigns. And, of course, a sea of blue-and-white police cruisers pile up in one of those massive NYPD car crashes we have all been watching for decades.
This is pretty much the same thing that happened in The Avengers and Cloverfield and Deep Impact and Independence Day and Escape from New York and The Day After Tomorrow and any number of other films, going all the way back to the original King Kong. Not to mention Ghostbusters. The cinematic despoliation of New York City is as kneejerk a cliche as the unvarying portrayal of the LAPD as unspeakably corrupt and uncompromisingly evil (LA Confidential, Training Day, Dark Blue, Internal Affairs) or at least not very nice (Gangster Squad, Mulholland Falls, Crash.) It's as predictable as making films – usually starring Colm Meaney – in which rustic Scots or Welsh or Hibernians are portrayed as canny. Or films in which Tilda Swinton plays somebody strange.
It's like the running joke in Scream that no one in horror movies has ever seen a horror movie. In this case, no character in a film where Manhattan gets trashed has ever seen a film where Manhattan gets trashed. Nobody in The Amazing Spider Man 2 has ever seen Independence Day. They may not even have seen The Amazing Spider Man 1. Otherwise, they would size up the situation and head out to the Hamptons until this thing blew over. Indeed, the overwhelming evidence suggests that no one who has ever made a film in which New York gets trashed has ever seen a film in which New York gets trashed. It's as if directors and screenwriters are working in a parallel universe where everyone is an idiot. As opposed to Hollywood.
Obviously, other great cities have taken their on-screen lumps from time to time; like any other sentient creature, monsters get tired of dreary routines. In Transformers 4, it is Beijing that gets smacked around. In Godzilla, a cadre of resourceful monsters first wreck various parts of Japan, then obliterate large chunks of Hawaii, then put Las Vegas to the sword, before finally settling in to demolish San Francisco, previously ransacked in any number of films. Paris gets pulverised in Edge of Tomorrow, London gets a good walloping in Reign of Fire and 28 Days Later, and in World War Z, Jerusalem gets absolutely hammered by feisty, marauding vampires. Finally, in the lowly, earnestly cheesy Sharknado, killer flying sharks lay waste to the City of Angels. And there's not a damn thing the LAPD can do about it. Because the entire police force is busy elsewhere, being unspeakably corrupt.
High-profile cities with instantly recognisable landmarks get attacked over and over and over again in the movies. Hollywood never gets tired of wreaking rack and ruin on the planet's most famous urban centres because it helps the audience get their bearings. Even little kids can say: Oh, the Eiffel Tower. That's in France. Whereas, if a film were set in Belfast, the little tykes would be at sea. The only reason no one has thought of devoting an entire film to destroying Buenos Aires on screen is because Buenos Aires is the most famous city in the world that doesn't have anything famous in it. Blow up Buenos Aires on screen and people could easily confuse it with Santiago or Caracas. Maybe even Lima. At least, unsophisticated moviegoers would. The kind of moviegoer who needs subtitles at the bottom of the screen reading:
London, England
Moscow, Russia
Africa
Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I like to watch New York and Los Angeles and Tokyo get blown up as much as the next guy. You wanna smash self-absorbed, self-adulating, holier-than-thou San Francisco to smithereens? Be my guest. But isn't this municipal-mayhem gambit getting a bit tired? Do we really need to see Manhattan destroyed again? Really? Just to give the rest of us a change from the same old, same old, couldn't some enterprising young director move all the gore and destruction away from the Big Apple and Vegas and the City of Lights to cities that could badly use the publicity? Cities that have never once been devastated on the screen? Or, even better, cities that a lot of moviegoers would like to see destroyed? Cities that really deserve to have the hammer brought down on them?
Suggestions? I have never forgiven Dallas for killing my president back in 1963. The experts always say that the murder was the work of a deranged commie marksman or the CIA or the Mafia or Fidel Castro, but I'm not buying it: it was the city of Dallas that killed my charming, Catholic, Irish-American president. They were all in on it. So I would love to see the Transformers waltz right in there and give that lowbrow burgh a full-service ream job. Or maybe some of those disgusting insects from Edge of Tomorrow – via Starship Troopers – could stop by to mete out a quick dose of what Genghis Khan buffs refer to as urbicide.
What other cities could benefit from a proper onscreen pasting? Toronto is another preening, self-infatuated city that has a huge chip on its shoulder. It's Brooklyn with More Ice. God, would I love to see that city get taken into the back alley for a good, long ass-kicking. Oh yes, in Godzilla 2, I'd love to see Mothra and Ronin take this baby down. And then come back in Godzilla 3 to do it again. And then in Godzilla 4, just to show that they're serious about this, come back yet a fourth time and totally shred that fiercely annoying, self-worshipping yuppie metropolis.
I know I'll be in the minority on this one, but I'd also love to see Edinburgh go down for the count. Twee, picture-perfect, pathologically self-congratulatory, Edinburgh is the kind of high-class tourist trap that could really benefit from a first-class pummeling, courtesy of some down-and-dirty extraterrestrials. Like Seattle and Austin and maybe even Seville, Edinburgh imagines itself as a world-class city. But if it was really a city on a par with Berlin, Rome and New York, monsters would have stomped it decades ago.
I would also love to see monsters, preferably from outer space, destroy cities on the silver screen that have already been destroyed in real life. They could call the film Re-Destroyers. Think of it as a weird brand of extraterrestrial urban renewal. Bloodthirsty drug cartels started the job in Trenton, Detroit and New Orleans; now Godzilla and Ronin are coming in to finish the job. I am not sure why I want this. Perhaps I am merely being ironic.
Some cities have unfairly been overlooked by the film industry. Amsterdam would be a perfect target for monsters. Ditto Cairo. I'm sure there are even some second-tier cities – Marseille, Birmingham, Atlanta – that would actually pay film crews to pulverise their city on camera. On a personal note, one of my proudest moments as a film-goer was when I saw Philadelphia get totally jacked up by unpredictable zombies early in World War Z. As far as I can tell, my hometown had never been annihilated on the big screen and I was happy to see the City of Brotherly Love step up to the plate and get thumped like the big boys.
Lots of people from second-tier cities probably feel the same way. Why don't weird creatures with thousands of tendrils ever take their anger out on Bristol? Or Liverpool? When was the last time monsters did a number on Oslo or Helsinki? And isn't it high time Reykjavik got a damned good thrashing?
Finally, I know it's asking a lot, but I've spent a lot of time in the Cotswolds, and I would be beholden to Hollywood if it would take out Stroud. And when I say "take it out", I mean, take it out the right way. Take it out with extreme prejudice.
Who's going to complain about that?
