Original subtitles

So far in this series, I've traced cinema's evolution

from exciting ape films to exciting shark films.

Now an intoxicating mix of thrilling spectaculars,

ironic-cool, computer graphic wizardry

and genre-bending weirdness brings us right up to the present.

But in the 21st century,

battered by scandal and under threat from AI,

will movie-making survive as we know it

or die as we don't?

Do you think the age of the blockbuster is over?

Not at all.

Are you sure? Cos there were two Blockbusters near me.

One does vapes now and the other is a Turkish barber's.

This is Cunk On Cinema.

Now...

..just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water,

the legend continues.

Jaws was such a big hit, it inspired a string of underwhelming sequels

so implausible, they jumped themselves.

But something even bigger was coming.

This man - Lucas George.

Lucas George was a film school graduate

who started out making arty, dystopian sci-fi,

then found success with nostalgic comedy drama American Graffiti.

But it was a fusion of sci-fi and nostalgia

that would make his name.

He took his love of Japanese Kurosawa epics,

mixed it with his love of old-school Hollywood serials,

and came up with something completely original -

if you ignore what I just said -

and that something was Star Wars.

Star Wars blended the history of cinema into one big, thrilling remix.

As well as clean-cut heroes straight out of a vintage movie serial,

and the story structure and samurai-inspired

aesthetic of Kurosawa,

it had desert landscapes that evoked classic Westerns,

a humanoid robot like the one from Metropolis,

bombastic visuals akin to the Triumph of the Will,

edge-of-your-seat dogfights reminiscent of war movies,

and the whole thing culminated with a massive on-screen climax,

like the one in Deep Throat,

which I can't show you.

Star Wars wasn't born in Hollywood, but in Elstree, London,

hence why there's so many British actors in the Star Wars universe,

not to mention British stunt performers.

- You fell off a balcony in Star Wars, didn't you? - Yeah.

That must have been embarrassing.

Did they have to retake it?

No.

- What, that...? - Because it was intentional.

- That was on purpose? - Absolutely.

If I'd fallen off the balcony from that height

and I hadn't had a rig down below, it would have killed me.

Shit.

The success of Star Wars also turbo-charged

a whole new cinematic art form -

artless merchandising.

Merchandising, often shortened to merch

to give people more time to sell things,

saw the launch of an entire universe of tie-in products -

action figures, comic books, arcade games, breakfast cereals

and, of course, biscuits.

From the outside, it looks like an ordinary packet of biscuits.

But inside, Luke Skywalker is fighting for his life.

From now on, films had to be easily marketable,

high-concept films whose plots could be summed up

in one easy-to-grasp sentence,

like Die Hard Up A Tree or Top Gun With Ghosts.

The result was a string of mainstream sci-fi blockbusters

that dominated the box office.

Perhaps the most successful was Steven Spielberg's E Dot T Dot.

E Dot T Dot is the moving tale

of a forbidden age-gap relationship between a young boy

and a wizened old creature who claims to have magic fingers.

In one famously spellbinding scene, in a break with tradition,

it's the boy who lures the older party into his home using sweets.

The pair form a loving bond in secret,

but when their relationship is exposed,

the authorities try to break them apart.

In a tear-jerking climax, E Dot T Dot evades capture

by absconding into the sky, which beats a life in prison,

having boiling water chucked in his face by the other inmates.

It's a bittersweet ending.

E Dot T Dot's free to explore other planets

and meet other intergalactic boys,

while Elliot is left behind with nothing more than fond memories

of the stolen summer they enjoyed together -

memories which will probably harden into traumatic ones

when he undergoes therapy in 30 years' time.

With a string of blockbuster successes,

cinema was riding high,

but the empire of television was about to strike back.

Thanks to cable,

there were now almost too many channels to choose from,

but one of these was extremely influential -

Mm Tov.

MTV Music Television in stereo.

The advent of music television saw ageing rock stars

shoved down the throats of impressionable kids.

It was a different time.

A lot of '80s movies were influenced by music videos,

with all quick edits and sort of upbeat musical montage sequences,

apart from the film Sophie's Choice. Why was that?

Yeah. So Sophie's Choice is a very tragic story,

a very dark story about human suffering.

So I think maybe there was a feeling that sort of jaunty, quick edits

might be out of keeping with that tone.

Actually, one of the researchers got an AI thing to make

a version of Sophie's Choice that turned it into an '80s music video.

It was better, actually, because you still got the gist of it,

and it was only three minutes long and less depressing.

She's just dancing with both kids in sort of aerobics gear.

MTV's cycle of high-energy mini movies

was also the perfect training ground

for many successful directors of the future.

You started out making music videos, didn't you?

Yeah.

Have you ever seen the music video for Pump Up the Jam by Technotronic?

I don't know if I even have.

I don't even know what it is.

Um... Cos I think we're going to watch a clip of that right now.

OK.

# Pump up the jam, pump it up

# While your feet are stompin'

# And the jam is pumpin'

# Look ahead, the crowd is jumpin'

# Pump it up a little more

# Get the party goin' on the dance floor

# See, cos that's where the party's at

# And you'll find out if you do that

# Awa, a place to stay

# Get your booty on the floor tonight... #

All of this was a distraction from the ongoing terror of the Cold War.

The constant background threat of extermination

led to a spate of big action movies

starring biceps with humans attached in a supporting role.

Thanks to full-blooded movies

in which fists and feet had most of the best lines,

former Mr Universe Arnold Schwarzenegger became huge,

which he was already.

Action films also demanded the work of professional stunt performers,

who the stars were allowed to beat up on camera

because they were made of a cheaper cut of meat.

If you're filming a fight scene and an argument breaks out,

how can you tell?

Cos if you veer off the script, somebody gets hurt.

But what if there's no script? What if it's just "Ugh! Ah! Ugh!"?

It was always scripted.

Welcome to the party, pal.

Arguably the most well-scripted action movie ever is Die Hard,

in which relatable US hero Bruce Willis

battles snarling Euro baddy Alan Rickman.

All those years ago,

when you were writing the screenplay for Die Hard,

did you have any inkling at all that it would turn out to be a film?

Um... Well, yeah, of course.

That was the goal going in.

Shoot the glass.

John McClane's got no shoes on in Die Hard.

Was that on purpose, or did you forget to mention them in the script,

so he just didn't put any on?

No, that's creating quite a handicap for him,

because he's, like, barefooted for much of the movie

and it makes him more of an underdog.

I have to say, I found it relatable,

because I have to take my shoes off when I go to see my Aunt Carol.

Is it true that in an early draft of the film,

Hans Gruber threatens to cut a cat's head off with a bread knife

unless John McClane can balance a small new potato

on the end of his erect penis for 16 minutes?

Um, no. That's...

I don't know where you got that.

Was that Die Hard 2?

As action movies grew increasingly violent,

some claimed they desensitised viewers to the grim reality

of how hilarious scenarios like this would actually play out.

In action movies, there's loads of terrifying stuff happening -

guns going off and explosions.

How come you never see anyone pissing or shitting themselves?

Because that's what would really happen.

People really don't want to see that.

You're trying to get the slices of life

and you cut out stuff that is not part of the story.

My mate Paul was asleep on a night bus

and someone set off a party popper in his ear

and he got explosive diarrhoea.

- OK. - The worst thing is he was coming back

from a Halloween thing dressed as a sort of cheap mummy,

and he'd just wrapped himself from head to toe

in white tissue paper.

So he stood up, but the bus was still moving,

so he just tumbled down the aisle

with all the shit and paper going everywhere.

And when he finally got to his feet,

he thought this woman was taking a picture of him on her phone.

So he tried to knock it out of her hand,

- but he missed and slapped her on the cheek. - Mm-hm.

So then her boyfriend, who was much bigger than Paul,

got him in a headlock...

- OK. - ..and made him eat the shitty wet bandages

while people on the bus were sort of sitting around,

cheering and filming it.

That's one of the more horrifying stories I've heard.

All-American action movies were big business.

And then suddenly, in 1989, the Cold War was won nonviolently

as the Berlin Wall collapsed in a textbook example

of shoddy Communist workmanship.

Thousands of frantic East Berliners rushed across the border,

desperate to see Three Men And A Little Lady

before it left Western cinemas.

Some historians called it the end of history,

thereby making the job of historian a thing of the past,

which it was anyway.

Without a clear baddie to hate or a big idea to believe in,

ironic detachment became the default mood in the '90s,

which was just as well because a new sensibility was about to...

This is a VHS home videotape.

You might have some at home in that box your dad has in the attic

that he doesn't want you looking through,

maybe with your mum's name written on them in Biro.

Home video changed the way people watch movies

and where they watch them,

and whether they wore trousers as they did so.

The studios were terrified it might kill their business,

but as video stores boomed, it gave them a new lease of life.

Video stores didn't just provide a source of income for the studios,

but for the otherwise unemployable.

Video shop nerds could perform the same role

record shop nerds had for decades -

sitting behind the counter, sneering at your appalling taste.

And for some of these nerds,

the video shop became an eclectic film school

where grindhouse horror rubbed shoulders with French New Wave

and British classics jostled for position

with neorealist German erotica.

One of the first video store graduates was Quentin Tarantino,

which is Italian for five spiders.

After breaking through with graphic crime thriller Reservoir Dogs,

he created Pulp Fiction,

a daring remix of grindhouse tropes, Hollywood iconography

and unnecessary shots of feet.

Tarantino was a new kind of auteur director,

one who didn't think he was more important than the writer

because he was the writer.

Ultimately, the writer decides what the on-screen talent will say and do.

For example, it's a writer who's making me stop walking,

look you in the eye and call you a cunt right now,

and I'm powerless to stop it.

When you're preparing for a film, how important is the script?

- The script is very important. - Mm. - Yes.

And do you read the whole of the script or just enough to get a gist?

Usually you read the whole of the script.

How much detail does it go into? Does it say in the script,

"Benedict puts his foot out and then shifts his weight onto it,

"and then puts his right foot out and shifts his weight onto that,

"after which he then puts his left foot out again

"and puts his weight on that,

"and then it's back to the right foot after he shifts his weight once more,

"and then we repeat the action again with the left foot,

"and by now he's at the doorway,"

or does it just say, "He walks across the room"?

- "Walks across the room". - "Walks across the room".

A good screenplay can change hands for millions of dollars,

as can a bad one.

That's why there's a whole industry devoted

to teaching people the secrets of screenwriting.

How do you get started on a script?

Do you watch the film and then write down everything that happens?

No, it's the other direction.

One of the biggest rules of screenwriting is "show, not tell".

- Do you agree with that? - Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

So how come you told me that instead of showing me?

In the mid-'90s, computers changed the way writers worked.

Instead of sitting at their typewriter,

staring at a blank sheet of paper,

writers could sit at their laptop, watching pornography.

But the biggest digital shift came in 1995.

Howdy. My name is Woody, and this is Andy's room.

Packed with colour, excitement and stellar voice acting,

Toy Story is notable for two reasons -

it was the first film to be entirely shot on location inside a hard drive,

and it's the only movie in cinema history

where a toy comes alive and doesn't kill anyone.

Resume your positions now!

Andy's coming, everybody! Back to your places. Hurry!

Why do the toys in Toy Story have to play dead

whenever Andy comes in the room?

And then he just sort of fiddles with them.

It makes him seem like a necrophile, doesn't it?

It didn't strike me that he was a necrophile when I watched that film.

I think it's a more innocent thing than that.

They're just trying to talk about an imagination that

goes to sleep and then comes awake.

The great thing about Toy Story is the characters are so relatable,

even though they're toys.

Like, whenever my nephew comes in the room, I completely freeze up.

Like, I don't have a single thing to say to that child.

Toy Story unleashed a wave of computer-animated movies

that became instantly iconic -

timeless classics like Shrek and Frozen

and Roblox and Microsoft Excel.

And computers didn't just change animated films,

they changed live action ones too...

..by making them more like animated films.

CGI made anything visually possible, like Jurassic Park,

the thrilling story of children

pursued by ancient predators on a private island.

Basically a dramatisation of the Epstein files.

CGI brought in a host of huge-scale disaster movies,

packed with dazzling visuals

that spoke to the audience's existential dread.

Films like James Cameron's Tit An Nic,

an ecological disaster movie

about a boat that selfishly assaults an iceberg,

then litters the ocean with corpses.

Or Michael Bay's peerless Armageddon.

Why do people like watching things explode in films?

Are they just fucking sick of cars and buildings,

so they're like, "Thank God that's gone"?

They look for extreme stuff.

It's called entertainment.

People like things that go boom, sometimes.

I would say I've exploded more than most people.

Have you ever thought of not having things explode in your films,

maybe for just, like, ten minutes, just to see what it's like?

Depends how the story is written.

So have you thought about doing that, just for ten minutes,

just to give people's ears a fucking rest?

The assault on eardrums continued into the 21st century,

with the Marvel Cinematic Universe,

a series of mega-budget blockbusters

jam-packed with incredible action sequences.

As well as promoting clear moral values

and easily attainable body shapes,

Marvel superhero films were eco-friendly.

By painstakingly recycling story points and characters,

they could make 33 blockbusters using just one plot.

The stories may have been straightforward,

but there was no doubting the technical expertise required,

which attracted serious movie-making talent.

You shot Ah-vengers, didn't you?

- The Avengers, yes. - Marvelle Ah-vengers.

- The Avengers. - Oh, it's pronounced Avengers? - Yes.

I've literally never heard anyone say it out loud.

Like the word lemon.

My whole life, I thought it was pronounced "lee-mon" until last week.

I was watching a cookery show and I thought,

"Wow, I've been saying it wrong this whole time."

What a daft coont I am.

Popular though superhero films were,

they weren't the kind of movies that dominated awards season.

That's the domain of the highbrow movie,

often a searing examination of an issue

in which an actor will portray an ugly person

mired in grinding poverty,

so they can dress in designer clothing

and be handed a golden statue.

How come if an actor wants to win an Oscar,

they have to play a poor person with dry hair or blotchy skin?

Is it in the rules,

like, they have to play someone below a certain level of poverty

or above a certain level of ugliness, or they get disqualified?

Yeah. No, it's not at all part of the requirements.

But very often, when an actor is playing a character that's

very far from themselves, they have to change the way they look.

That's what's partially rewarded, is their ability to transform.

What's Oscarbation?

I can't imagine what that is, but it doesn't sound very nice.

It's something film people do, like, they Oscarbate.

Perhaps a popular actor might be considered Oscar bait.

Right. So it's not...

They're not, like...

They're not, like, sticking the statue...

- No. - ..somewhere where they shouldn't?

- No. - Cos it looks...

It looks like it's the right sort of shape.

You know, of all the awards, it's the one

that most looks like it could...

- Yeah. - ..go up someone. - I'm really not prepared to address that.

But it is, though, isn't it? You know, out of all of them.

That one.

No?

But while Hollywood celebrated high artistry and film-making,

TV was catching up.

Now you could have a big screen in a living room,

perfect to leave on in the background while watching your phone.

And the shows themselves had got better,

thanks to the rise of prestige TV.

Viewers could spend hours in the company of complex, horrible men,

then go home and watch Breaking Bad.

But cinema had its own uncomfortable story about a complex, horrible man.

Every day, this city is hearing fresh testimony about

Harvey Weinstein's predatory behaviour

and the ways in which he abused his power.

For years, rumours of sleazy movieland practices

like the casting couch had been simply shrugged off,

like a producer's dressing gown in a hotel room.

Then The New York Times ran a report revealing Harvey Weinstein,

perhaps Hollywood's most influential and powerful manatee impersonator,

was a sex criminal, something absolutely no-one -

except lots of women - had known until then.

But his downfall kick-started

the most shocking sequel in Hollywood history,

#MeToo,

which featured a galaxy of familiar faces

taking on the role of villain for the first time.

And it had real impact.

In fact, within weeks of Weinstein's imprisonment,

the whole of Hollywood shut down.

Not because of #MeToo, but because of Covid-19.

The pandemic felt like the world's dullest disaster movie,

a sort of slow, boring 9/11 of coughs.

With cinemas closed, people turned to streaming services,

which were launching at a rate of ten a minute.

Streaming platforms offered endless choice,

from true-crime documentaries

to programmes about real-life murder.

They also featured dramas

with cinematic production values made by huge teams.

You know, at the start of TV shows,

you see names of people coming up.

Are those real people or just words on a screen?

They are real people who are doing the jobs

of directing those episodes on that TV show.

Who's Skip Intro?

And how come his name's in the opening credits of

just about every TV show these days?

Yeah, I hadn't thought that it sounded like a name, Skip Intro,

but basically, that's a button you can push

so you can move past all those names and just start in the show.

Oh, right. So if you click that, you don't have to watch the credits?

- Yeah. - Fuck.

Once cinemas reopened their doors,

Hollywood had to fight harder than ever for an audience.

The pulling power of celebrity had never been more important.

- A big name can make or break a film, can't they? - Yes.

Which Hollywood star do you reckon has the biggest box orifice?

I think you mean the biggest box office,

which means the most bankable star.

And which one enjoyed the widest opening?

Again, what you mean is, "which star had the biggest box office?"

Like, Tom Cruise probably is the star...

Margot Robbie.

- Margot Robbie. - She's got a wide opening.

Well, her movies are very successful, and she is very...

Does that mean she's got a wide opening?

Los Angeles continues to be a Mecca for aspiring actors,

who flock here, hoping to become the next silver screen idol.

It's a place where many dream, but few sadly make it.

They sent me to Los Angeles for this,

and when we weren't filming, I went to diners and restaurants,

and it seems like every waiter is a struggling actor

who'd dream of being offered a part in a movie.

Have you ever turned down a role?

Yeah.

Why's that?

Timing, other commitments.

No, I mean a roll in a restaurant.

- You mean like a bread roll? - Yeah.

At the start of the meal, when they say,

"Would you like some bread?"

and it's granary rolls or sourdough rolls or whatever,

- have you ever turned down one of those? - Yeah.

What about a roll in a film?

Er...

I've turned down bread in films, yes.

Yeah. Why?

Because it didn't make sense to eat it in that moment.

No. I mean, have you ever played a bread roll in a film?

Have I played a bread roll? No, I've not played a piece of food.

No. How would you approach that if you were to play a bread roll?

Would yeast help?

Today, Hollywood stands at a crossroads.

Like I'm doing in this clever visual metaphor.

It's fought back against the streamers

by releasing interesting films,

and attracted younger audiences

by embracing new themes and new talents.

Still, the industry itself is struggling.

For over 100 years, movie-making has been labour-intensive and expensive.

But now an exciting new technology

promises to simplify the process forever.

A1.

After you've written a script,

is there a button you press to turn it into a film?

Well, the button is the studio, you know,

greenlighting the movie and hiring people,

both behind and in front of the camera.

Right. So how long does it take you to write a script and then

have it become a finished film?

It depends on the circumstances.

For example, The Flintstones - seven years went by before that got made.

It's much quicker these days, isn't it?

Like, I typed a sentence into an AI thing and it made a whole film. Look.

- It's a big chicken running after... - Oh, yeah, yeah. No.

That's not a film. That's a shot.

You would have 1,000 shots before you had a film.

Yeah, well, I could make it longer.

Well, yeah, but making that longer is just...

There's no need to have a go at it.

Well, except you're letting AI do it, so...

Well, I have to give it the instructions.

It wouldn't be able to do it without me.

I'm a screenwriter now.

Today, thanks to technology, literally anyone can make a movie

twice as good as The Odyssey

in less time than it takes to lay off a film crew.

After 100 years, the art of cinema has finally been perfected,

here, in the palm of my hand.

It's movie-making in its purest form - punchy, visually exciting,

and you don't have to think while you watch it.

In fact, while looking at this, it's impossible to think

anything at all for hours or even days afterwards.

But this new art form comes at a cost.

Human creatives are struggling,

and Hollywood, once a thriving citadel of glamorous cool,

is now in crisis, with many sound stages standing dormant.

Walking between these anonymous buildings full of modern CGI,

it's hard to remember how glamorous

the studio system was in its golden age.

This was a bustling dream factory,

but if you can imagine, you can almost hear it.

The buzz of golf buggies zipping by, ferrying cast members to set.

The clickety-clack of a tap-dance troupe rehearsing a number,

echoing from an upstairs window.

Over here, an extra dressed as a gladiator shares a cigarette

with another one dressed in Native American costume

that was very much a product of its time.

Just then, from the sound stage,

we hear a director yelling, "Cut!" through a loud-hailer

at a woman with cripplingly low self-esteem.

In a back room, a teenage actress

is handed amphetamines by a quack doctor,

while a stuntman stands off to one side,

hopping impatiently from foot to foot,

waiting to beg him for painkillers.

Listen closely and you'll hear a producer

zipping up his flies as he leaves a starlet's trailer.

And, yes, the flutter of paper

as he hands a tear-stained NDA to his ashen-faced assistant.

Listen even closer, and you might just make out

a leading man hanging himself at home

24 hours after being outed by a tabloid sting operation,

and a studio head smiling

as thousands of people are diddled out of their share of the profits

thanks to creative accounting.

All of it, part of the timeless magic of the movies.

How tragic to think it might all be replaced

by the silent hum of an AI data centre.

To learn more about how AI will improve cinema by destroying it,

I sat down with Hal Jutterhole,

CEO of world-threatening AI company AIEIO.

How do you think AI will change the film industry?

Oh, completely.

And much faster than the industry is prepared to admit.

Right now, films are constrained by logistics -

money, crews, actors, locations, union rules, and so forth.

AI removes most of those constraints.

Soon, the first version of a film won't be a script,

but a generated film.

- Right, but... - Studios will still exist,

but instead of greenlighting ten scripts,

they'll generate 1,000 films internally,

simulate audience response,

and only produce the ones that show strong signals,

if they even need to physically produce them at all.

Now, actors will still exist, but as data.

So once a performer licenses their likeness,

their voice, their emotional range, that becomes a reusable asset.

Writers are a place where people get most emotional,

but most professional screenwriting is pattern recognition.

Structure, pacing, reversals, character arcs.

These are learnable systems.

Our models already internalise those patterns at scale.

They don't get tired.

VOICE GLITCHES

That doesn't mean that humans stop creating,

but the bulk of global content will be machine-generated

because it's simply more efficient.