NationStates Jolt Archive

I've been pondering why we have such films now. And I've come to a conclusion (gasp!)

There's nothing epic anymore. I mean, we can inflate the "war on terror," or the "evils" of George Bush only so much. In the end both are piddly. The line between the good guys and the bad guys is so fuzzy I can barely tell them apart sometimes. We don't have the epic struggles of the past. We don't have Nazis to beat, the USSR is gone, the important Civil Rights movement of the '50s and '60s has devolved into bickering with the majority over a few final leftover points.

These films give us an epic struggle and clear cut lines between good and evil. We can see that fine distinction that we so desperately want, and will probably not have for so many years. Even though we cannot participate we still love to see it. We internalize such issues, and make them personal.

Just a few quick thoughts from a psycho.

The line wasn't so clear in the past, either. Speaking of WWII and the Nazis--what about Stalin, who was on the side of the allies, while killing millions of his countrymen himself?

The line is rarely ever clear. It's the same in LotR. Though most of the time, it's obvious who's good and bad, sometimes things begin to blur, as in the case of Boromir.

Ah, well, if you buy into Bush's propoganda we are in an epic battle against the terrorists which will determine the course of this planet for all eternity. A battle that the free world is winning, of course.

These films give us an epic struggle and clear cut lines between good and evil. We can see that fine distinction that we so desperately want, and will probably not have for so many years. Even though we cannot participate we still love to see it.
I actually see this as part of the problem. Life is rarely, if ever, so clear cut. There is often no such fine distinction, and in fact people acting on such "distinctions" often cause more harm to society than not. I'd rather see nuance on the screen simply because that more closely mirrors reality.

Ah, well, if you buy into Bush's propoganda we are in an epic battle against the terrorists which will determine the course of this planet for all eternity. A battle that the free world is winning, of course.
When you get out of your jacket, all the orderlies to dope you up again.

When you get out of your jacket, all the orderlies to dope you up again.
Knock off the baiting, and learn to read your post over once or twice before posting something like 'all the orderlies'.

Is it the job of the cinema to mirror reality?

well, only if the director says it is. overall, modern cinema isn't attempting this, and doubly so for lord of the rings

But lord of the rings is a fable. it is a fable that involves good and evil, but it is really about power and temptation. i think that from that reading, it is still rather aplicable.

ok, so here's the test: find some lord of the rings fans and psychoanalyse them to see why it is that they like lord of the rings. i loved tolkein long before bush was elected, so my views won't be influenced by the war on terror.
maybe someone's will. go ahead and look

Don't be silly. The reason we have films like LOTR now is because up until now we didn't really have the means to portray them. There were some attempts at it with animation, and they were alright, but now we have CGI, and pretty good ones at that.

The same is true for the Narnia books. They've taken a good couple of shots at it, but it really wasn't possible to do them justice until now.

It's not some subversive dramatic agenda. Even Tolkien said that it was nothing to do with WWII. It was a story. A really good story, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't all that much deeper than it appeared on the surface.

We had some pretty epic films back in the day too. Just no computer effects.

Oh, hey, don't get me wrong. I think Ray Harryhausen could have done it too. It would have taken years of stop-motion and a huge budget to do it, but it could have been done. I think a lot of the animators out there could have done it too. Hell, Ralph Bakshi tried too. It's a shame he's always so fixated on the cheesecake girlies, though. That, and he always has this "distressed" look to his characters.

The point is, in order to make a film of it without distracting people because the animations were obvious, and not seamless, they had to wait until the state of the art caught up with the imagery of the story.