Film

Digital de-aging has been around in the film industry for some time now, but its use has increased substantially as CGI technology continues to improve. Age-acceleration is also used, but winding back the clock instead is usually the more difficult feat to pull off well. What was once laughably unconvincing has now become an eerily good imitation. Instead of relying on younger actors to portray popular characters in flashback scenes, one can simply strip away the wrinkles and keep the visuals of the original actors intact. Think of a de-aged Johnny Depp for flashbacks of his character Jack Sparrow in The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales or Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones in the recent Dial of Destiny film, for example. Beyond that, one can digitally resurrect lost talent whether their deaths were abruptly in the midst of shooting a film or they passed away long ago (and never would’ve imagined such technology could exist). When Carrie Fisher unexpectedly passed, existing footage was apparently salvaged and cobbled together with CGI to fill in the gaps to reproduce Princess Leia for The Rise of Skywalker film. For a Dove Chocolate commercial, a likeness of deceased Hollywood icon Audrey Hepburn was used. Give some examples of films that successfully handled digital de-aging or resurrection as well as others that missed the mark. What went wrong and what went right? Before this technology was ever imagined and accessible, how did films handle the aging and deaths of actors? What does this mean for the future of the film industry, in terms of actors and production companies, etc.?

Fantastic Racism is the term for writers creating a non-human race – aliens from outer space, vampires, werewolves, mutants, elves, orcs, etc. – and then using that race as a metaphor for real-world demographics that are the target of prejudice. The strength of this metaphor is that it can potentially be used in place of any minority group.

In the world of X-Men, mutants have served as a metaphor for various real-world minorities over the decades, from Jewish people to Black people to LGBT’s.

In many fantasy worlds, orcs are seen as barbaric, monstrous outsiders. A plot requiring humans and orcs to put aside their differences – such as the film Warcraft – can be used as a metaphor for international conflicts as well as domestic diversity. Meanwhile, in Max Landis’ urban fantasy world of Bright, orcs become a metaphor for any group with an antagonistic relationship with the police, due to poverty, ethnicity, or culture.

Other examples include Skyrim, Supergirl, True Blood, and even Harry Potter. Analyze these and other examples of Fantastic Racism. Do some work better as metaphors than others? Can we learn different lessons from these stories that we may not see in stories about real-world human minority groups?

In looking at how film entertainment has evolved over the years, an especially drastic shift can be seen in the boom of streaming services that followed the Covid-19 Pandemic. At first, these services appeared to be a saving grace of comfort and convenience–allowing one the ability to still bring the luxury of a movie theater into their own home, allowing one to catch up on the newest flicks with a subscription and a click. Though as the world now struggles to mesh the “New Normal” with the normal we all used to know, these streaming services show no signs of slowing down. According to CNBC, the U.S. has given up around 3,000 theater screens since 2019–and those that remain are now tasked with finding ways to remain relevant. In short, the public seems reluctant to dive fully back into the old movie magic of the theater. But what have these screens been traded for?

Each streaming service is a world tasked with populating itself full of movies and shows to keep its audience’s attention–but what do these services sacrifice in the process? Have streaming services begun to trade quality for content, pushing titles with big names and no stories just to fill their slots? What has been lost in the experience of seeing a movie for the first time in theaters now that everything can be watched from one’s couch? Are these changes beneficial, or a deficit to the quality of modern entertainment? This article could go in a number of directions–exploring particular movie franchises, or the evolution of certain streaming services overall. This just seems to be a relatively new phenomenon of the last decade, but one that has altered what and how we watch in extremely poignant ways.

Analyse how Richard Linklater’s debut film Slacker reflects the attitudes of slacker culture (e.g. lack of motivation, the attitude of detachment, disregard for authority and traditional attitudes). Use that as the springboard for a larger discussion of how Gen-X slacker attitudes influenced independent filmmaking from the 90s (Clerks is a good example of a 90s slacker film) to the present day.

With the rising discontent with the MCU as seen on many social networking apps and film and television critics, a revisiting of the last truly dominant Genre of Westerns which held control of the box office landscape never before seen and only really eclipsed by the current superhero/comic adaptation market.

What in particular made the western so popular and what in specific lead to the box office death of the genre? What were the politics behind the genre, the economics, and actors both in a gamesmanship context and a performative context.

While AI scientists and technology specialists are signalling AI’s ambiguous and unpredictable consequences, they constantly stress that we should not be anxious about AI. However, movies and media narratives sometimes promote AI phobia. The embedded messages of many films are how human flaws destroy civilizations through AI. But the collective focus of the audience may see AI as an entity causing massive anxiety and fear. We can discuss how AI is portrayed in films and media, especially now that AI tools like ChatGPT are causing interesting discussions worldwide.

Examine the vein in various film media (especially Black Swan and Whiplash) suggesting pronounced suffering to produce great art. Both films, to this writer, state or otherwise imply that our protagonists must suffer under harsh instructors (especially in the case of Whiplash) to be successful in their respective fields. This ideology comes off as very unsettling, especially in an era where mental health and personal agency (especially for women) are becoming more recognized. A potential goal for the topic is to examine how movies of this sort condition young artists to burn themselves out in the pursuit of making art. Another film to examine could be “Lust For Life,” on the life of infamous tortured artist Van Gogh.

The goal in proposing this topic is not to condemn any movie mentioned wholesale, but to, instead, offer examination of less than wholesome implications in media that have not been fully explored for those purposes.

It will be necessary to explore mental health expertise to give structure to the topic. An important video to the formulation of this topic was the YouTube video “‘Rise and Grind’ Film Culture: A Rant” from content creator coldcrashpictures. Potential writers may find material for additional definition for this topic in said video.

Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy ends with Adam being confronted by a giant spider in the bedroom. In a film that otherwise adheres to realism–despite its occasionally surreal quality–the scene stands out. Like most viewers, Adam is initially shocked, but then he lets out what can be best described as a smirk-sigh. Does he know something about the spider that viewers do not? The spider motif is not something that comes abruptly at the end; it exists throughout. So, what does the spider represent?