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| Left to right: Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum in 22 Jump Street |
This weekend marks the debut of "the sequel about sequels" known as 22 Jump Street. For many, the surprise success of the first one indicated a new rise in meta humor and the start of something exciting. With the unlikely pairing of actors Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, the original 21 Jump Street became a surprise hit. With the sequel, commenting on its status as being more expensive is the normality and pointing out all of the concept's flaws is its main course. It eats it up. While the film may not seem the part, things slowly began to become clear. There was something familiar about this meta-sequel premise that seemed forced. 22 Jump Street is essentially Scream 2, but less funny.
The initial comment does not make sense at a distance. How is a slasher film similar to that of a cop comedy? Well, there's the obvious: both exist in a world where its characters are self-aware of films and other pop culture landmarks while subverting tropes. Even the first 10 minutes of both films seem eerily similar with each film's biggest nudge at the audience. In Scream 2, the killer Ghostface attacks at a screening of Stab, based on the killings depicted in Scream. In 22 Jump Street, Deputy Hardy (Nick Offerman) references how nobody expected the reboot (the first film's mission, or the first film in general) to actually be successful. From there, the comparisons continue to thicken and soon, everything makes sense.
It isn't that 22 Jump Street is plagiarizing the Wes Craven classic. It simply is presenting the exact same concepts to a new generation. In the 1996 original, nobody was ready for a film that broke the fourth wall. Meant to be a parody of slasher films, Scream became one of the touchstones of horror for its decision to be self-referencing. It included entire scenes where characters spoke about bad movie tropes and the order of how characters died. It was subversive and impressive to the point that it was obliged to keep doing it. The sequel attacked sequels and even upped the creativity in the villain's motives. Few films prior had done something so audacious as to wink at the camera for an entire film while producing a fully engaging story. Sure, there were comedies such as Airplane! that did this, but there wasn't really a franchise until Scream came along.
The reason that Scream is still remembered as a horror classic, besides being well produced, is because it came out at the right moment. 90's culture was obsessed with horror culture and murderers in general. There was an uncertainty to everything and even entertainment became obsessed with it. Silence of the Lambs won Best Picture at the Oscars. The X-Files mixed murder stories with monsters of the week episodes. Even Natural Born Killers highlighted America's fascination with sadistic killers. Horror had long been about the darkest tendencies and thus it seemed right that A Nightmare on Elm Street director Wes Craven would encapsulate the zeitgeist with the equally disaffected youth of the time.
True, the body count between Scream and 21 Jump Street is impressively different. They aren't going for the same thing, technically. Yes, both feature teenagers partying and getting high. There are some casualties and heightened sense of awareness. There's even cameo from genre regulars with Craven and Linda Blair appearing in Scream and Johnny Depp appearing in 21 Jump Street. There's subversion that only those with textbook knowledge of those genres will likely understand. Even then, 21 Jump Street was an update on Scream because of a singular reason: understanding the zeitgeist.
When you think back to 2012, what was popular then? In general, cinema's obsession has turned to familiar retreaded territory. That year alone produced The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, easily two of the most successful comic book adaptations. It may have been developing since the early 00's, but the culture of reboot has become Hollywood's normality. The idea that studios have run out of ideas has been a running joke as well as a definitive fact in some cases. Even the biggest blockbusters of this year (Godzilla, Captain America: Winter Soldier) are based in some respects off of decades-old material. Even if Tropic Thunder satirized cinematic culture more effectively, 21 Jump Street came out in a time when reboot culture is more embraced.
Thus the decision to have actors Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum run through a series of gags analyzing the ridiculous car chases and explosions replaced Ghostface killing teenagers. The target moved from murderers to more specifically audiences. 22 Jump Street never hid the fact that their ideas were ridiculous and contrived in much the same way that Scream 2 referenced horror sequels' infallible flaws. Now audiences were pointing out how stupid 22 Jump Street's plot was through a crowd of actors. It is way more subversive and frankly less inspired.
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| Scream 2 |
It would be easy to go down the line of individual tropes that each film possess that connects them. Overall though, they are the same films in that each one is "pandering" to a demographic of popular trends. It just happens that they are doing it successfully at the box office. It highlights what exactly is wrong with cinematic culture at their times and creates a time capsule of original stories. Where Scream is less muddled in the feel of "meta for the sake of meta," 22 Jump Street thrives on being overly aware. Of course, subtlety in cinema has gone down and thus so does the potential of doing satire to a target audience. As it stands, 22 Jump Street's targets (action films, sequels) does come off as a lazy retread compared to something like Hot Fuzz. It doesn't feel fresh or exciting, but its low brow meets high concept structure does hide its vapidness to most audiences.
Both Scream 2 and 22 Jump Street can be accused of going too far. There's even the connection that the villains are multiple people. The mystery isn't quite as interesting, but what Scream 2 did right was making the media coverage of murders have an immediacy to them. There isn't anything that feels tangible about 22 Jump Street's attack on its subject matter. Yes, it is aware to the point that the credits satirize potential sequels. However, there isn't really any punch to the jokes when it feels like they exist solely for the idea of "Hey, this is ridiculous. You should be laughing." It masks the flaws, but strips away the substance. Both are meta, but Scream 2 actually commits to doing something creative with it.
While it doesn't seem likely that a potential 23 Jump Street/Scream 3 comparison piece will be in order, I do feel like the idea of heralding this film as an innovative, hilarious film is ludicrous. I don't even think that it will age all that well, especially as the references become more dated. It is true that Scream and its franchise's references (Showgirls anyone?) are equally dated, but the story came first. In 22 Jump Street, the gags came before even establishing the characters as something tangible and interesting. It TELLS you that things are supposed to be ridiculous. Because of this, I feel that these two franchises, despite being rooted in two different genres, are the exact same thing down to their literal juvenile humor.
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