The ultimate disaster movie

No, not with Disney either. Nor Universal Pictures. Nor New Line Cinema. Nor even 21st century F***-ups, as would have been altogether more appropriate. It seems that none of the major names in the motion picture business want to touch anything even remotely connected with the international public transport service from Hell. And I can't really say I blame them. Everything else that came into contact with Arriva in recent years - including a certain former Nationalist administration of government, as well as one or two farmhouses in Zebbug - seems to have ended up a smouldering wreck as a result.

So despite the enormous propensity for blockbuster material - quite literally, I might add: a couple of blocks down my street were 'bus-ted' just the other week - there will be no 'Arriva: The Ultimate Disaster Movie' hitting the big screens any time soon. There may, however, be a few other things hitting them instead... especially if they're situated too close to a hairpin bend, and it keeps raining.

What a pity, though. We were only just starting to make a name for ourselves in the international disaster movie business. And this one would have been by far the most disastrous since... Oh, Adormidera, I suppose. Just think about the potential for a moment. Not only do you have the same high-octane blend of Wild West bravado and emotionally charged vehicular violence last seen in The Fast and the Furious... but there's also pathos, drama, suspense... subtle (and unsubtle) political undertones... scenes of mass unrest and civil disorder... not to mention treachery, blackmail, fraud, daylight robbery... all in a movie that's only two and a half years long.

And it's all high quality movie material, too. I have no doubt that Steven Spielberg would simply jump at the idea if it were properly pitched to him. Just tell him that the entire plot revolves around the plight of a woefully oppressed and abused minority - the Maltese commuter - which faces injustice, discrimination and orchestrated humiliation on a daily basis. Invite him to picture the massive crowd sequences (all easily filmed on location in Msida) in which thousands of fully-grown men are seen weeping and gnashing their teeth, as they wait for an Arriva bus that never actually arrives. Or, when it does finally arrive, will be the first of three consecutive buses of the same number, all equally overloaded and unable to take in any more passengers, while the next scheduled stop is tomorrow morning at nine...

Not since Schindler's List has so much human misery and gut-wrenching desperation been encapsulated in a single cinematic experience.

Come to think of it, Mel Gibson might be interested too. Just tell him it contains scenes of grueling, grisly violence, in which every last drop of an entire population's patience and endurance is slowly wrung out of it by means of an impossibly sadistic medieval torture device known as The Malta Transport Authority. Describe to him an imaginary scene which follows an increasingly tortuous route divided into a number of 'stages', only to culminate in the graphic crucifixion of an entire road network. Why, he'd be so excited he'd probably change the name of his own Biblical epic to The Passenger of the Chrysler...

But you'd need a Jerry Bruckheimer for the action sequences: someone who can effortlessly balance suspense and horror with well-timed comic relief. Who else can pull off a live action stunt in which no fewer than three buses spontaneously combust when full of passengers, resulting in panicky evacuations in mid-traffic? And what other screenwriter can concoct such beauties as the immortal line: "I can assure you that at no time was the health and safety of any passengers ever at risk?" (placed in the mouth of Arriva's public relations officer, as yet another bus catches fire in the background)?

But by far the most advantageous selling point for 'Arriva: the Movie' is its practically limitless scope for future sequels and spin-offs. Look at it this way. Even as Arriva itself prepares to pull out of Malta, producers are already poised to take over the service and unleash another laboratory-created monster into our midst. And guess what? They're the same producers who engineered the last bungling mess of a bus service: Transport Malta, authors of the original script to which Arriva had no choice but to adapt... and which proved so utterly disastrous when enacted on our streets over the past two years.

Even as I write this article the same Transport Malta is hastily cobbling a second script together at very short notice... with a deadline for 14 January. And they have a reputation to defend, too, as architects of arguably the greatest ever public transport turkey in movie history. So I'd keep my car off the road if I were you. We seem to be more or less guaranteed at least one other epic smash-hit in the near future.

Admittedly, production details are being kept tightly under wraps for the present. We haven't seen any trailers yet... though Transport Minister Joe Mizzi did recently let slip that he has a cunning 'Plan B from Outer Space' in the event of an Arriva pull-out. Meanwhile there are a few indications of what the sequel may or may not contain. So if you're one of those fortunate souls who possess their own means of transportation, and were therefore never actually forced to watch the first movie at all - as I was for six whole weeks this year - I feel I ought to warn you. Spoiler alert! The following paragraphs will ruin any future Arriva-esque experience you may have been planning to enjoy after the imminent takeover... though they will contain few surprises for the already initiated.

OK, let's start with the basics. As already mentioned we don't as yet know the name of the movie company or director, or even if any auditions have begun. We do, however, have very good reason to believe that the main actors will be exactly the same as in the first film. Arriva the company may be pulling out; but the stars of the show have now been bought by the government, and will remain on our streets for a while yet. And they're some pretty big names in the business, too.

Names like 'King Long': a contemporary Asian variant of the classic monster-movie ape that once left a trail of destruction on the streets of New York City... only bigger, more out of control, and altogether hairier (if you know what I mean).

Leaving aside the dubious wisdom of actually purchasing a fleet of vehicles that have a proven track record - in a least two countries, by the way - of simply bursting into flames every now and again... what this also means is that, in at least one detail, the new film is unlikely to be an improvement over the original at all (though to be fair sequels very rarely are, as the last film itself also unwittingly proved). Many of the constant issues that have dogged the Arriva service since its inception were a direct cause of the unwieldy size of the buses themselves; so unless the existing routes are reinvented beyond recognition, so that these same buses no longer have to squeeze through streets that were once considered too narrow for horses... well, we can only expect those issues to persist under the new regime.

But as with all good disaster movies, there's a twist to the plot. The script for the sequel is being written by the same Labour government that had torn the original movie to shreds, when wearing its earlier garb of Opposition cinema critic. So - no pressure or anything - by the same standards that they themselves exacted from the previous administration, their own replacement bus service had better be pretty damn excellent in every respect.

The same screenwriters are also on record declaring that the problem with the old service was the new routes imposed on Arriva by Transport Malta. This means that Transport Malta must now either revert to the original routes it had replaced in 2011, or else redesign the bus network from scratch, under the directorship of a political appointee who may be preconditioned to make the new routes as unlike the old, unpopular ones as possible.

Hence the almost unavoidable catastrophe in the making. If the routes are reverted, we will have simply gone back to an earlier system which - though everyone seems to have forgotten this detail over the past two years - was just as heavily criticised at the time. It would be a straight reversal of the Back to the Future motif, only with the bus hitching a ride on the skateboard instead of the other way round. And while some may even applaud the move, on paper it would be nothing but an admission of abject failure on the part of a government which had promised change... and not regression to the same old unreliable systems of yesteryear.

If, on the other hand, Malta's public transport system does undergo another radical overhaul in the next two weeks, chances are we would have a repeat of the chaos we all saw in July 2011. Part of what made the Arriva transition such a bumpy ride in the first place was the fact that a bewildered public had to suddenly acclimatise - with hardly anything in the way of information campaigns - to a much more complicated system that bore almost no resemblance to the one they were used to.

So even if the new revised system turns out to be an overwhelming improvement over the last one (which, let's face it, shouldn't be too hard) there is simply not enough time for the public to be properly informed on how to use it. It would be a straight rehash of Austin Gatt's admission that his only mistake as transport minister was to expect an ignorant public to actually understand a transport concept that was, by his own avowal, "too avant-garde".

All of which, I need hardly add, is very good news indeed, as it means that whatever happens after 14 January we are almost certainly guaranteed entertainment all round. So book your travel passes now, and get the popcorn ready... but just remember: no smoking is permitted in the auditorium. These aren't the law courts, you know...