Explosions, fights, fast love and more explosions are a few of the tropes of high-budget blockbuster franchise films of the 2000s such as Michael Bay’s Transformers.

In an attempt to intellectualise such action blockbusters, American academic and culture critic, Steven Shaviro, initially filed these works under ‘post-continuity’ cinema. Stating that post-continuity filmmaking is a style in which ‘immediate effects trump any concern for broader continuity on a shot-by-shot level, or on that of the overall narrative’ – Shaviro began expressing his disliking to such works (Shaviro, 2010).

Interestingly, Shaviro’s lengthy passages discussing the explosive works of Tony Scott and Michael Bay are in fact forgiving in comparison to other critics of the 21^st century’s action blockbusters. Critics: David Bordwell, Matthias Stork and Bruce Reid, all have their dislike for this style of filmmaking in common.

Out of all the critiques by those mentioned above, Stork’s comments describing the action-packed stuck with me. The epithet ‘Chaos Cinema’ was given to this intense filmmaking style by Stork (2013) – but I find this to be unfair. Calling post-continuity cinema, ‘chaos’ connotes a lack of planning and consideration. For one to stamp the hard work of Scott and Bay as “chaotic” implies that the director did not do enough. In 2000, Bruce Reid even went as far as calling Michael Bay ‘crushingly untalented’.

Reid’s comments demonstrate a disregard for Bay’s billion-dollar box office returns, the talents of the post-production team, and finally, the fact that the majority of cinema includes chaos – whether in emotion, camera movement or editing technique, chaos can be found everywhere, if looked for.

I agree with Shaviro’s opinion that ‘post-continuity is a new structure of feeling’. However, the general rhetoric of these critics is reminiscent of early sceptics of TV that believed watching too much would turn eyes square. Yes, maybe the general public has reached a point of desensitisation that has left them longing for hyper-simulative media, but if this is the case then directors such as Bay and Scott should be celebrated for their ability to cater for their audiences. The first step in giving kudos should be by eradicating the use of names like ‘Chaos Cinema’ and reinstating Shaviro’s more forgiving ‘post-continuity’ and ‘intensified-continuity’.

BY ELORM KWESI AHORSU

24/10/2022