Steven Spielberg has revealed that his next film will likely involve neither the perspective of a small child, nor any moments of slapstick comic relief involving objects running away from hapless pursuers just as they appear ready to catch them, sparking concern for the future viability of the universe at a leading European scientific research institute.
Lincoln, a biopic of the 16th President of the United States starring Daniel Day Lewis, was said by insiders to be “largely adult-focused” and “pretty serious” in its treatment of the American Civil War, despite the copious opportunities presented by the subject matter for children to play innocently among wartime ruins while earnestly questioning why men do such terrible things to other men. The $50 million feature, currently in post-production after shooting in Illinois, was also said to have “totally rejected” the potential to exploit bearded, banjo-playing Confederate soldiers whose trousers fall during combat.
CERN, the Swiss-based European nuclear research institute, last night informed alarmed science ministries across its twenty member states that Spielberg’s decision contained the “very real possibility” of disrupting or even completely destroying the space-time continuum and thus all known space, matter and time in the universe. One expert told Movie-Rumors that, combined with CERN’s own sub-atomic particle research at its Large Hadron Collider on the Franco-Swiss border, Lincoln had dramatically increased the possibility of imminent apocalypse. “The chances of all creation being annihilated at the speed of light in a gigantic ball of fire before Lincoln releases are now about one in four”, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Or it could just get very, very cold. The truth is we just don’t know.”
Spielberg, the Academy Award-winning director and producer of films such as Jaws and Schindler’s List, was reported in US media as having welcomed the increased risk associated with such a radical artistic vision, claiming that cinema “needs to be more challenging to audiences and the fundamental forces governing the cosmos.” Industry moguls have recently appeared to concur, giving green lights to Spielberg projects Jurassic Park IV and the fifth Indiana Jones feature, as well as funding three Transformers films, co-produced with Yale philosophy professor Michael Bay.
European science ministers were today expected to issue a joint statement condemning the move, while seeking urgent discussions with their US counterparts. Although First Amendment law expressly prevents Washington from censoring American creative industries, it was thought likely that the Obama Administration would seek to exert pressure on production companies Amblin Entertainment and Dreamworks to film additional material in which President Lincoln’s stovepipe hat falls off at an awkward moment, or a small child finds military detritus that could be adapted for use as a simple toy amid the devastation of Gettysburg or Antietam. Even the inclusion of this footage in a deleted scene compendium on the subsequent DVD and Blu Ray release was said by experts to decrease significantly the possibility of impending Armageddon.
This is not the first time that the 65-year-old filmmaker has endangered the existence of everything. In 2005 CERN also warned of Spielberg’s Munich (above), a relentlessly-innocent child-free tale of Israeli special forces’ pursuit of the Black September organisation responsible for the massacre of athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games. Despite the discipline shown by Spielberg in maintaining an unflinching eye on the brutality of revenge and its self-perpetuating and self-defeating destructiveness, the universe survived intact. Scientists have since theorised that the elusive nature of the protagonists’ enemies, ever evading their increasingly exasperated grasp, was in fact a metaphor, cleverly smuggled in by Spielberg, for a ping pong ball bouncing down a set of steps, always slightly beyond the desperate clutches of a hapless hero, engendering mirth and momentary relief in all who watch it. Along with the scene in which Israeli agents wear women’s clothing in order to infiltrate an enemy compound, this comic imagery was thus thought to negate Munich’s catastrophic potential and CERN lifted its alert before the release of the two-disc Collector’s Edition in 2006.
Professor Brian Cox spoke with insipid wonderment today on the certainty that a world exists where every movie is a Police Academy movie.
