The Cynic Express(ed) 1.34: A Bad Year for Disasters

     It's been a bad year so far for disasters. Disaster movies, that is. And I am not talking about the receipts at the box office, although I am sure many people at Sony are disappointed that Godzilla, whose size and number of opening screens only mattered in that its mediocrity was not readily apparent. No, I am talking about the comets and giant lizards that are not faring so well in wiping out a version of humanity that frightens me more than doom.

     Cases in point: Deep Impact and Godzilla. Both present a terror that could end life as we (or at least those in New York City) know it. But by the second act, I am rooting for the disasters.

     In Deep Impact, we are presented with the up-and-coming Jenny Lerner as our heroine. Oft maligned and neglected at the station where she works, she catches wind of a story, a sex scandal involving a cabinet member. She tracks it down, being entirely wrong about the meaning of the mysterious name, Ellie, pursuing the cabinet member to his home. In a particular moment of journalistic integrity and all-American do-goodedness, she bothers the child daughter of the secretary and confronts him, on video camera, with charges of his infidelity and his wife's alcoholism-rumors she garnered by letting a married man take her to dinner and leading him on. Ah, the very media verve that is turning my stomach right now. The studio, DreamWorks SKG, presents this clueless and ruthless scion of "integrity" as the heroine whom we, the audience, are expected to identify with her and hope for her eventual success. Sorry, boys, but I was rooting for the rock. I was happier to watch her die than to watch the redemption of humanity in the Messiah, a ship which, like its predecessor, died so that a flawed humanity could continue living petty lives.

     Of course, Godzilla presents us with a different vision of humanity. In it, Matthew Broderick's "the worm guy" carries a torch for a college love. The government visits him dramatically as he studies worms at Chernobyl and whisks him off to study the giant lizard they seem to be tracking. Broderick is an outcast on a team of scientists who throughout the movie contribute nothing scientific. I can only assume they are too busy gathering contacts for later careers as lobbyists. And for the shocking twist of fate, we find the worm guy's college flame as an oft-maligned and neglected researcher for a local news station who is told she will never get ahead because she is too nice. Personally, I expect it is because she is childish and ditzy. Catching wind of a story, or at least the thought that she can use her past relationship with the worm guy to get inside information, she pursues the case with journalistic elan matching that of Jenny Lerner. She forges a press ID (atta girl!), regains TWG's confidence (after all, she dumped him somewhat unkindly), and steals a videocassette marked "Top Secret" from his tent. She films a special report (she's gonna be a star!), but her boss cuts her out and takes the story himself. We are supposed to feel sympathy for her because she, the nice girl, was trumped. The humanity saved when the monster is defeated consists of nice girls who use other peoples' affections for their own personal gains, weak scientists who love said nice girls anyway, opportunistic politicos, military personnel who think it is a good battle plan to fire heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles at a lizard (although they meet deserved ends-I was just sad to see them take millions of dollars of equipment with them), and a member of French Intelligence (who really had no visible character deficiencies aside from his nationality; I am still upset by the Ira Eirhorn thing). And they come together to defeat Godzilla.

     The cynicism sometimes demonstrated in this column does not match that demonstrated by the motion picture makers who present us with movies wherein the heroes are not heroic, but deeply flawed and redeemed only through love with some other deeply flawed person. I could find nothing in any of the heroes presented by Deep Impact and Godzilla to which I aspired and quite a bit I despise. I am not sure which would worse-the movie makers believing that this is humanity or the moviemakers throwing these characters because the moviemakers think we will identify with the flawed humanity of it all.

     Give me a decent hero, someone with moral integrity. Brash, wisecracking, or veteran inspiring respect, but someone I can aspire to be or someone whom I can recognize something good in me in him or her. Or else I am going to continue to walk away from movies, disappointed that life as they know it, goes on and their vision of humanity survives.