Contemporary Hollywood Terrorism and ‘London has Fallen’ Cinema

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.