STEEL DRIVIN' MAN...VS PREDATOR!:

[H]ollywood's gigantism, Lindelof points out, is practically algorithmic--and the effect tendrils all the way down to the storytelling level. When ever-larger sums are spent to make and market ever-fewer, ever-bigger movies, and those movies are aimed at Imax screens, then world-­shattering comic-book I.P. and gigantic special effects are expected, with larger-than-life characters wielding those effects. No one necessarily asks for it; it just kind of happens. It's what Lindelof calls Story Gravity, and dealing with it--whether that means resisting it or simply surfing it skillfully--is the great challenge of writing this new breed of tentpole blockbuster. The question used to be: How do we top ourselves? The new one seems to be: How do we stop ourselves?

"Once you spend more than $100 million on a movie, you have to save the world," explains Lindelof. "And when you start there, and basically say, I have to construct a MacGuffin based on if they shut off this, or they close this portal, or they deactivate this bomb, or they come up with this cure, it will save the world--you are very limited in terms of how you execute that. And in many ways, you can become a slave to it and, again, I make no excuses, I'm just saying you kind of have to start there. In the old days, it was just as satisfying that all Superman has to do was basically save Lois from this earthquake in California. The stakes in that movie are that the San Andreas Fault line opens up and half of California is going to fall in the ocean. That felt big enough, but there is a sense of bigger, better, faster, seen it before, done that."

"It sounds sort of hacky and defensive to say, [but it's] almost inescapable," he continues. "It's almost impossible to, for example, not have a final set piece where the fate of the free world is at stake. You basically work your way backward and say, 'Well, the Avengers aren't going to save Guam, they've got to save the world.' Did Star Trek Into Darkness need to have a gigantic starship crashing into San ­Francisco? I'll never know. But it sure felt like it did."

With that in mind, I've given ­Lindelof--who's written some hugely embiggened pictures and successfully wrestled others down to human scale--a challenge that only a five-star general in Hollywood's elite fantasy screenwriting corps would have the chops to attempt: Pitch us a summer blockbuster based on something very, very unblockbustery, a simple American tall tale. Let's say, the ballad of folk hero John Henry: the nineteenth-century ex-slave who raced a steam-tunneler through a mountain, won, and perished, the first martyr in the great war twixt Man and Machine. Lindelof, not missing a beat, tongue firmly in cheek but mind fully engaged, dives in--no notes, no pauses, barely stopping for breath. Then he goes even further, giving us anticipated revisions as the notes come in, as the blockbuster hormones surge, as Story Gravity takes hold.

"Well, I think the first thing that would happen is you would say the fundamental, most important part of the story is that he dies--[and that] he is victorious, he beats the machine. It's the triumph of the human spirit over technology. But with that comes a price. And all the studio execs would say, 'Absolutely. That's what we love about this story.' Two drafts later somebody would say, 'Does he have to die?' "

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