Article title: Contemporary Hollywood Terrorism and ‘London has fallen’ cinema
Author: Christopher Holliday
Journal: The London Journal
DOI: 10.1080/03058034.2019.1649515
The London Journal recognizes that this article, first published online on 21st October 2019, failed to include the Abstract and keywords in the article. The author has acknowledged these errors and the online version has been updated with these changes.
Below are the paragraphs where we have included to the online version:
Abstract
A number of popular Hollywood films have coalesced around images of terrorist devastation wrought upon London as an eminent, if highly fallible, global city. Films such as V for Vendetta (The Wachowskis, 2005), Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006), Closed Circuit (John Crowley, 2008), G.I. Joe: Retaliation (Jon M. Chu, 2013), Survivor (James McTeigue 2015), London Has Fallen (Babak Najafi, 2016) and Unlocked (Michael Apted, 2017) all mine the visual spectacle of London's identity as a ‘fallen' city, refiguring the capital as collateral damage within terrorist narratives rooted in urban disintegration and chaos. This article examines how such films function within a contemporary Hollywood that has worked to re-stage London's skyline as a backdrop for brutal bombardment. The subjecting of London's monumental spaces to architectural trauma via terrorist activity is, as this article argues, part of a wider trend in U.S. cinema showing London's destruction that is predicated on the ability of digital imagery to persuasively simulate the ruination of the city in a post-7/7 climate. Updating what Ian Conrich (1999) has termed the 1950s “trashing London” monster movies that tapped into wartime imaginaries of London, this article discusses how the reactionary and politically-charged “London has fallen” cycle leans heavily on ⊢ and is informed by – the iconography of the July 2005 terror atrocities. By examining how footage from these mainstream ‘terrorsploitation’ films have since been repurposed in propagandist videos by pro-terrorist broadcasters, this article unpacks the complex contribution and ambivalent sensitivity of Hollywood in framing terrorism in London as a blockbuster spectacle.
KEYWORDS Hollywood, Terrorism, London, action, digital, disaster