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| Review by Lily Fierro |
Warning: Much to my own embarrassment, I must admit I have not read any of 2000AD. Yes, it is part of a canon I’m still tackling, but alas, I have yet to get to it. I promise I’ll get to it soon….
For the past four years, I have attended the Independent Film Festival of Boston to see a marathon of films across a week. Ranging from personal narrative features to experimental films, IFFBoston offers an extended tasting of films covering a wide range of plots, topics, and themes.
Undoubtedly, over the years, plenty of narrative films have remained in my mind as stars of the festival, but the films that have a warm and fuzzy place in my heart are the documentaries, specifically ones focused on a specific person or a specific project. Downeast, Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, and The Overnighters were all documentaries that I recall with great fondness if I had to name a few.
Why documentaries?
Sure, there’s a plethora of documentaries out there that exist to make people aware of “serious” world problems; I the greatly fear and largely spite these “cause documentaries” that merely touch on some controversial topic in order to provoke some sense of pathos and ethos without ever fully explaining the context and the complexities of the topic. Those are not the documentaries I am speaking about.
The best documentaries can accomplish one of two things:
- Balance interviews and nuanced footage to develop an intimate story and study of characters while deftly conveying statements about life with small gestures and quiet moments OR
- Shed light on a person/place/thing with a thorough and engaging study of the central topic through the characters involved
Consequently, during the impressively diverse lineup for IFFBoston 2015, I was thrilled to see a documentary on the iconic series, 2000AD.
As warned before, I have not read any of the series, and went into the film as naively as possible. As a result, I hoped to see the film to learn more about the series’ creators and in turn better understand 2000AD’s context and the series itself.
Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD documents the origin, history, and arc of the beloved and revered comic book series 2000AD. It begins with a beautiful opening animation of some of the panels of 2000AD and then launches into a fascinating segment on the culture of England in the late 70s.
Sadly, these first two parts, totaling in 15 minutes of the 100 minute film, stand as the strongest parts.
The rest of the documentary contains a skeleton of a plot which reveals the rise and fall and eventual rebirth of the series, but for the most part, this skeleton is fleshed with thick fat made of rosy-eyed reflections of nostalgia interrupted by a few jagged pieces of regret from the series’ creators. As a result, the most alluring parts of the film beyond the opening are those of 2000AD’s star early creators, including Neil Gaiman, Pat Mills, and John Wagner, speaking about their role in the series, but unfortunately, even these moments lose their charm after the sixth interview with another comic book writer or illustrator ends up saying the same thing as the person before them: “2000AD was great because it was violent, subversive, and intelligently satirical.”
Sure, it is fine for the creators of a cultural work to bask in the golden days of their careers, but when every creator of 2000AD makes a similar statement as the other, their individual identities begin to get fuzzy as their comments and statements repeat. As a result, each character’s story and contribution fades out, and the documentary derails into a video of memories that you would expect to see at a high school reunion but with a few more facile political observations about the “Establishment.”
Beyond the repetition, the lack of the actual comics from the series makes Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD even more difficult to stay engaged with.
For well over an hour, you hear from many talking heads about the greatness of 2000AD without ever seeing a full page of it. This makes all of the interviews and comments about 2000AD even less exciting and more trivial, for you never get a full sense of why the comic was so subversive or innovative, since you never get to see and interpret the work that everyone heralds.
In addition, since you never see a page of the comics, you never understand how 2000AD‘s political commentary has changed over the course of the series, given the enormous significance but now obsoleteness of late 70s politics in late 70s England. Future Shock! assumes every person who will see the film has read and enjoyed the glory days of the series, and this is an imprudent assumption.
Okay, perhaps I would have enjoyed Future Shock! more as a fangirl; however, a documentary made just for fans and no one else is a bad idea. Why?
I’ll explain.
A film like Future Shock! and other documentaries made only for fans will not ask the hard questions required to allow a viewer to make his/her own judgment and interpretation on the topic. Future Shock! fails to offer any alternate perspectives on the series and on the major events of its rise and fall, leading to only a euphemistic, saccharine story of 2000AD and its creators.
By the end of this film aimed to only stir up warm memories and admiration for the series, you are only left with the same positive opinion (if you had it) of 2000AD before you sat down to watch, and what knowledge you did see and hear in the documentary did not vary too far off from a Wikipedia page about the the series. And, if you are a naive viewer and reader, you learn a few details about the 2000AD and know some of the faces attached to it.
Future Shock! does not promote a complex understanding and judgement of 2000AD; it just throws out the series at you and tells you about why it is great just like parents trying to convince a young child to eat veggies on a plate. All I was left with when I finished the film was, “Read this. It’s really good. Read it. It’s really smart. You do not need me to explain why you should, but you should read it. If you don’t read it and like it, then you’re a square most likely in line with the Establishment.”
Future Shock! fails to complete a study on its own topic, and worst of all, fails to create an intelligent argument to why a naive reader should run to 2000AD after seeing the film.
Future Shock! would have seriously benefited from introducing people who objected 2000AD and slimming down the number of creators interviewed to focus specifically on a handful of the people to get a intimate and rich perspective on the iconic series.
Wouldn’t you want to see an intimate day-to-day study of Pat Mills, an original creator of 2000AD, counterbalanced with a day-to-day study of the lawyer in charge of the copyright infringement case that resulted in banning issues of 2000AD in England? I know I would.
In summary, my experience with seeing 2000AD left me with the same sentiment I had after seeing the highly disappointing Veronica Mars film (yes, of course I saw it): let’s stop making films created only for fans.
They seem to abandon the strength of film to storytell and delve into a character or topic for the sake of substantiating and basking in fans’ admiration of the characters or the topics themselves.
