Harmony Korine is focused on the future of the film and games industry believing the two can be combined to make something new.
At least that’s what he and his start-up company EDGLRD (pronounced edgelord) are trying to do. In an interview with GQ the Spring Breakers director expressed his increasing tiredness towards making traditional movies. In fact, he’s turned his back on old school filmmaking entirely now, (he said he’d only return to work on a Terrence Malick script). The modern approach from many studios nowadays clearly frustrates the director.
“They just all feel like they’ve been so processed. Even the dialogue, it all sounds like it’s written by the same person. Everyone speaks exactly the same.”
In fairness, he kind of has a point there, mainstream movies have been lacking in originality and personality for a while, Marvel is on a downward slope and other big franchise productions like Indiana Jones 5 have majorly disappointed lately. But what exactly does Korine’s solution to these problems entail?
Well, the director has chosen to look at the whole medium of entertainment to try and find the answer, creating a new aesthetic labeled “gamecore” for example his latest project, AGGRO DR1FT starring Travis Scott looks to be a Frankenstein’s monster of a film; it’s shot in infrared and is a mish-mash of different ideas, aesthetics and entertainment mediums. It’s something completely new.
“How do you take the whole idea of entertainment, of live-action gaming, and create something new? The obsession here is that there’s something else after where we’ve been—that one thing is dying, and something new is being born right now.”
Obviously video games are a huge part of what Korine’s trying to push for here, interactive entertainment that falls somewhere between a movie and a game. Looking to modern video games the director compares the Call of Duty trailers to the work of Steven Spielberg.
“You could look at the Call of Duty trailer now, and it looks better than anything that Spielberg’s ever done.”
If you want to know what he’s talking about, you can watch the latest trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and decide for yourself if you think he’s talking sense.
Personally I think it still looks like video games are trying to replicate the cinematic nature of movies. That’s not to say that video games haven’t come a long way or that they’re not capable of being cinematic; they undoubtedly are, but Korine’s take seems like a bit of a stretch,
The idea that film is dying and that the future lies in some weird amalgamation between games and movies is a bold stance to take. Harmony Korine is one of the few people pioneering this idea right now and whilst he might be right about the gaming industry taking over, it’s clear that cinema isn’t dead just yet, in fact, we’ve been treated to some of the best movies in years recently what with Barbie, Oppenheimer and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse. The movie industry is still going strong.