Death of narrative cinema

Mark Kermode labelled the film Ice Age 2 as "the death of narrative cinema", and he encouraged people to utter the phrase when leaving screenings of the film.

Mark criticised this particular film for consisting of nothing more "a collection of sketches that have no join-up." Dr Kermode gives a fuller description of why we are all doomed in this article, which appeared in his beloved Guardian.

While Ice Age 2 is remembered as the film that sparked the phrase, it was actually Silent Hill that had really bothered Mark (as the linked article suggests). Mark's theory was that while computer games have plenty of plot, they do not have narrative arc. Simon asked Mark to explain the difference, but unfortunately there was not much time left in the show and it had to be boiled down to "plot is a whole bunch of things... narrative is an evolution of a narrative over a certain period of time."

When Mark asked the listeners to suggest something to shout at the 90-minute mark of The Guardian - aka Bottom Gun (and not to be confused with the only newspaper Mark reads) - the suggestion was "the death of maritime cinema."

Thou Shalt Not Be The Death Of Narrative Cinema As We Know It was the first of the 10 Commandments of Wittertainment.

Of note is the fact that it was seeing Ice Age 2's threequel, Ice Age 3: Dine Of The Dawnosaurs, that made Mark certain he was right about 3D being simply a money-making gimmick.

In July 2016 came Ice Age: Collision Course, a film which according to Mark now makes him "look back at that glorious heyday of Ice Age 2 and going - would that it were so simple - would that we now had the level of dramatic coherence that we had then, now."