“Dont Look Up” versus “West Side Story”: cinema at a turning point

But why? Like any sports champion, Steven Spielberg, the king of the box office must replay the end of 2021 and seek to understand the public's dislike for his "West Side Story". At the end of its first weekend, its 100 million dollar musical had garnered only 10.5 million in the United States. The most profitable director in the history of the cinema knows it from experience: the guillotine of the counters perfectly sharpened, there would be no second round for “West Side Story”. To date, his film has not reached the 60 million dollar mark worldwide. The father of "Indiana Jones" cash his most violent failure since "Sugarland Express" ... in 1974.

However, the audience satisfaction rate is good and the critics (including Les Echos) as a whole praised his work. "West Side Story", which just won the Golden Globe in the musical comedy category, is not unloved; he fails to arouse desire. We can attack a virus that keeps the most fragile away from the rooms. Nevertheless, while "West Side Story" remained rooted to the ground, "Spider-Man: No Way Home" scaled the heights to fill its halls with young viewers and "House of Gucci" managed to find its audience. Admittedly, this old fox of Ridley Scott had the advantage Lady Gaga in its casting whereas Spielberg proposed a film danced by a distribution of young unknowns. Had he been presumptuous in thinking that his name alone represented an infallible guarantee of success? His "Ready Player One" (2018) had earned just over $ 580 million in revenue without any stars. A film that did not describe the world of yesterday, like "West Side Story", but that of tomorrow, through the destiny of a young man who flees a dull reality in the virtual mysteries of a video game. Thus, when he observes the battlefield, the author of "Jurassic Park" must wonder as much about "West Side Story" as about "Don't Look Up" by Adam McKay. In the final week of 2021, humanity will have spent 152.29 million hours watching this eco-apocalyptic comedy. The figures provided by Netflix, producer and broadcaster of the film, are just as dizzying as they are unverifiable.

However, everyone could see it: at the New Year's Eve table or at the buffet on social networks, the loves of Tony and Maria faded away behind a comet that came to pulverize the Earth in the total indifference of its inhabitants. Adam McKay, flanked by a troop of superstars, knew how to achieve a popular work which awakens consciences. Spielbergian ambition par excellence.

An American pantheon

A gifted filmmaker, Spielberg started out on TV. He notably worked there for the “Columbo” series and shot his first feature film “Duel” (1971) at the age of 25. The exceptional quality of this chase between a truck and a car opened theaters to this TV movie. At that time, any ambitious young director considered the small screen as a springboard to the big one. In fifty years of career, Spielberg will chisel in the cinema the keystones of his country. The fight against Nazism (“Indiana Jones”, “Schindler’s List”, “Saving Private Ryan”…), the figure of Lincoln and the fight for civil rights (“The Color Purple”, “Amistad” ), freedom of the press (“The Pentagon Papers”)… “West Side Story”, a Broadway monument against a backdrop of clashes between communities, intended to offer a new pillar to this American pantheon.

Born in 1968, Adam McKay also comes from the cathode ray tube. He has long scripted the legendary NBC show “Saturday Night Live”. It was on these New York sets that he met Will Ferrell. With this prodigious comedian, he took his first steps in Hollywood in a series of brilliant and comical comedies. "Anchorman" (2004) and "Living Legends" (2013), the two episodes of the adventures of "Anchorman" Ron Burgundy, already contain the seeds of the success of "Don't Look Up!" “: a caustic satire of the media and in particular of television. In 2015, it was again for the cinema that McKay shot his best film. "The Big Short: the heist of the century" follows the fate of a few characters who anticipated the subprime crisis when everyone was blinded by intoxicating curves. The film still recycles the influence of television, slipping here and there skits, like so many sketches, where stars in their own roles address the audience.

Adam McKay's career is gaining momentum at a time when the boundaries between big and small screens are blurring. In several countries, “Don't look up” will have been seen simultaneously on smartphone screens and in cinemas. The fate of this film was played out between two models. The scenario simmered within the venerable Paramount before switching to Netflix in 2020. Until now, the platform had developed ambitious series and smaller cinema films. Netflix had already courted Martin Scorsese, Jane Campion, the Coen brothers, David Fincher… So many great, prestigious directors, regulars on the charts, admired by moviegoers and lacking funding for risky projects. "Don't Look Up" was a production of another nature. Adam McKay offered subscribers a great popular comedy bringing together some of the most prominent stars of the moment: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Timothée Chalamet… a type of film that until now belonged to the private theatres.

Reviving the great moments of cinema

In this upset landscape, Steven Spielberg perhaps embodies the figure of the last mogul, the ultimate lord of a dying era when only the majors were able to spreading the images, stories and promises of the American dream around the world. In the cinema, families and friends gathered around great shows. On this subject, last March, Spielberg published a short and moving text in the magazine Empire. He recounts his amazed discovery of "Lawrence Of Arabia" in a room in Phoenix, in the company of his father. Little Steven is as much fascinated by the images of David Lean as by their effect on an audience, silent, hypnotized, cigarettes at the edge of their lips, hanging from Peter O'Toole's horse: "Lawrence, taking all the risks galloping to Gasim's rescue and behind him, the sun grew as if to swallow the audience whole. In its own way, "West Side Story" would have liked to revive these moments of communion, to return to the foundations of the great Hollywood spectacle.

Today, although Netflix has symbolically set up its offices on the mythical Sunset Boulevard, its genealogy does not link it to Hollywood but to Silicon Valley. Like Amazon, the platform remains fundamentally a digital giant and not a “Major Company”. Netflix represents a digital futuristic world that Steven Spielberg knows well and distrusts.

This is evidenced by science fiction films as worried as "A.I. Artificial Intelligence", "Minority Report" and especially the nightmarish end of "Ready Player One", where hordes of passers-by walk riveted to their cell phones, like zombies. In his last images, Spielberg saved his hero from the abyss of pessimism. He pleaded for a return to the happiness of living together, to the flavor of a kiss, to the warmth of a friendship. "Don't Look Up" prefers in a burst of laughter to predict the extinction of a world that does not deserve to be saved.

Adam McKay gave actor Mark Rylance a character that looks like the one he played in "Ready Player One". And the filmmaker says he is readily influenced by “Jaws”… by Steven Spielberg. Its fatal comet would be a reincarnation of the killer shark in which the town hall refuses to take an interest so as not to spoil the tourist season. "Don't Look Up" will have reversed the moral of this horrifying tale, with the idea of ​​a predator who devours children and parents before swimming quietly towards the sunset. In Steven Spielberg's head, among thousands of wonderful stories, such an epilogue had no place. With its grating finale, “Don't Look Up” augurs not only new horizons for platforms but also an evolution of ordinary chatter. From now on, films will interfere in conversations which for several years have only focused on series. In a completely new form, somewhere between elongated and sweet, cinema will return to the coffee machine.