I thought the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, would change things, that movies and audiences would turn serious and that people would come together in a common understanding that life is worth living and things are worth doing. But I was way off. If anything, American movies are more cynical and despairing than before. Their implicit message: People are garbage and the world is terrifying.
If that is an accurate reflection of the American soul, well, that is terrifying. Until now, American cinema has always expressed faith either in the sanctity and splendor of the individual or in the rightness of American institutions. Today both faiths are absent. The result is that we're getting precisely the kinds of movies that George Orwell might have imagined, not for 1984, but for 1980 or so: Movies for scared, uncertain people who are about two seconds (or one terrorist disaster) away from welcoming Big Brother.