(Credits: Far Out / TCM / Marvel Studios)
Mon 6 April 2026 11:00, UK
There’s rich irony to be found in the fact that many flashy Hollywood movies bring their productions to deprived areas of the United Kingdom that are a far cry from the glitz and glamour associated with the industry.
Locations rife with poverty and crime are, more often than not, dead ends for those who live there and hope for a career in the arts. The best art has mostly always come from those who have to face restrictions and push against the limitations of their surroundings, but how are you going to become an actor or a filmmaker when the industry is so resistant to anyone who isn’t privately-educated and well-connected?
A 2024 study by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre found that only 8% of those in the UK’s film and TV industry are from working-class backgrounds, with most of this creative landscape dominated by middle and upper-class individuals, many of whom have trained at prestigious schools.
There is a real class divide in the industry, and while British filmmaking has often championed the working-class, such as the kitchen sink movement of the 1960s and, more recently, movies like Fish Tank, Hoard, and Scrapper, there are still obvious disparities.
The ones who become most famous, who quickly find themselves in Hollywood, are usually those who haven’t had to graft in several minimum wage jobs or attend a state school, and this stark class disparity in the industry extends to locations, too. Hollywood movies often seek out underdeveloped, deprived areas in the UK to film certain scenes, but not a penny of the millions these films make will likely be poured back into these struggling locations.
Take Newham, for example, the London borough with a population of 350,626 and a 45% child poverty rate, which makes it the worst in the city. It also has incredibly high levels of homelessness, eviction rates, temporary housing, unemployment, and income deprivation, and yet it features in everything from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun to Spider-Man: Far From Home, Black Mirror, and Final Score.
Despite the fact that this area, which includes the likes of Canning Town, Manor Park, Stratford and West Ham, needs serious reform, Hollywood can’t get enough of it, ignoring the poverty and the homelessness to capture its rundown buildings and streets for their grittiest productions.
Commonly seen onscreen is the Beckton Gasworks, which appeared in Full Metal Jacket as a stand-in for the Vietnamese city of Huế, while also featuring in John Wayne’s Brannigan, Nineteen Eighty Four, and the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only, and interestingly, this is now the location of a shopping centre known as Gallions Reach.
You can hardly blame filmmakers for opting to use real locations such as this; if they have the right look for a scene, then it would be silly not to use them, but it’s also deeply ironic that it’s in London’s most deprived area that Hollywood often comes and takes over, leaving behind a trail of brief cinematic excitement (like when West Silvertown’s Millenium Mills was used in Spider-Man), and little else in terms of upliftment.
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