Forget Big Ben! Try Telford’s Frog Clock: Why Hollywood should stop destroying the same old landmarks | Film industry

RRealistically, there would never be a good time for a sequel to Greenland in 2020. That’s partly because Greenland was one of those movies where Gerard Butler is running around like he’s desperately trying to catch a giant fart. However, releasing a movie about Americans focusing all their efforts on Greenland at this very moment seems a bit disturbing.

Also, and hopefully this isn’t a spoiler, but it’s kind of weird to be making a Greenland 2 movie when the entire world was destroyed at the end of Greenland 1. In that movie, as you remember, Butler and his family had to get to Greenland because the planet was about to get hit by a meteor.

But hey, at least we can add the Greenland series to the long list of films celebrating the destruction of iconic global landmarks. The trailer for the second film alone contains gorgeous shots of half of the Sydney Opera House and the Eiffel Tower staggered like a large banana.

Depending on your point of view, this is either wonderful or frustrating. For some, seeing a tourist attraction eliminated by an extinction-level event is a decades-old cinematic mainstay. For others, it may start to feel a little tiring. truly? Eiffel tower? once again?

Some new research, conducted by insurance company MS Amplin, rounds up the landmarks that are most often destroyed in movies. If this proves anything at all, it’s that Hollywood has a very shallow imagination.

Before the Greenland movies, for example, the Eiffel Tower was destroyed in Armageddon, Mars Attacks! Team America: Global Police, Class 7: Apocalypse, Consequences: Population Zero, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. And while it’s not part of MS Amlin’s roster, it’s worth noting that the Sydney Opera House has previously been destroyed in X-Men: Apocalypse, Godzilla: Final Wars, and Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark.

However, these are by no means the most destructive monuments on the planet. Big Ben has had it at least nine times before, in films like Reign of Fire, V for Vendetta, London has Fallen, Flood, Gorgo, and Tom & Jerry: The Fast and the Furry. The Golden Gate Bridge has been destroyed at least 13 times, in films including Superman, San Andreas, Terminator: Genisys, Pacific Rim, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, and It Came from Under the Sea.

However, in the foreground is the Statue of Liberty, which has been targeted in (deep breath): The Last War, Planet of the Apes, European National Lampoon Vacation, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Batman Forever, Independence Day, Mars Attacks, Deep Impact, Aftershock: Earthquake in New York, Artificial Intelligence, The Day After Tomorrow, Class 7: Apocalypse, Tom & Jerry: Speed & Instantaneous, Superman II, Transformers, Cloverfield, New York City: Tornado Terror, 2012 and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

This teaches us two things. The first is that we’re all clearly falling asleep on Tom & Jerry: The Fast and the Furry. The second is that the world’s filmmakers urgently need to find new landmarks to explode.

It’s been done in the past. When Harry O. Hoyt chose to destroy something with a dinosaur in 1925, for example, he settled on the Blue Posts bar in Soho. Or when Alfonso Cuarón decided to film on real location to show the untold depths of devastation in Children of Men, he chose Bexhill-on-Sea. And where did Marvel choose to stage its most exciting superhero battle ever when it came to filming Captain America: Civil War? That’s right, Leipzig Airport.

We need more of this, frankly. Movies can no longer rely on blowing up the same old, tired landmarks. Let’s have a little invention. Next time aliens invade, let’s have them train their firepower on the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota. If an out-of-control foreign government decides to train its nuclear arsenal on Europe, let it point its missiles at that little statue of the pissing boy in Brussels. We’ve seen meteors hit Earth a million times before, but have any of them ever destroyed the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway? No, this is exactly why cinema is dead.