Film

Jack Horner and Death

Of the antagonists in The Last wish, these two stand head and shoulders above the rest. But between them who can be argued to be the "better" villain.

Horner is a throwback, an old school villain, evil at his core. Unrepentant and callous his simplicity lends itself to easily understanding why he’s a villain but, that same simplicity could be critique as lazy or unoriginal due to him always taking the worst most inhumane option.

Contrasting him is Death.
Death plays with Puss in Boots but is solely focused on him. It could be argued he is cruel and unfair but he’s literally death and that is his nature. Is his simplicity better than Horner’s due to him being more of a force of nature than an character.

What elements make each villain unique?

The MCU is timeless and well loved by many–both in its decades of comics, and in their evolution to a for-the-screen franchise. Afterall, the MCU was irreversibly expanded with Iron Man’s debut in 2008, and the 30 movies to follow. Amid these movie’s grandness, however, shows such as "Agents of Shield" served to fill in the gaps. They were not necessary for understanding the plot of each new movie, though they added extra glimpses of the MCU that the movies missed. More than this, they helped to tie eager audience’s over while each new movie was in production. In recent years, however, the role of MCU shows seems to have changed.

Without watching "WandaVision", audiences would only have half the story of Wanda’s fall in "Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness." Without "Hawkeye," audiences would lack the entirety of Kate Bishop’s introduction to the MCU. In short, Marvel tv shows no longer seem to be the periphery stories they once were. More and more, the plot points, characters and events in these shows are pivotal to understanding the movie that comes next. One might claim this new emphasis has incited new investment in these shows–a depth of quality necessary for matching their film counterparts. At the same time, is the new weight placed on these shows too great?

One of the most wonderful aspects of watching the Avengers movies, from first to last, was the shared experience for the audience. Each new movie was an event in itself, a key step toward where every arc intersected. But the necessity of MCU shows has created a far less linear path–one that is near impossible to follow without a subscription to DisneyPlus. Have the quality and value of MCU films been diluted by their television counterparts? Were MCU shows more enjoyable without the pressure of their greater plot stakes? Has the MCU simply spread itself too thin? While the MCU’s magic seems to be rooted in its ability to carefully weave many plots into one, have its shows thrown too many threads into the mix? For any franchise to remain in the public eye, it has to keep their attention–though one might wonder if MCU shows are the best way to do this. This article could go in a couple of different directions–both in support, or against MCU shows-examining one, or many. This is just a change I feel has greatly impacted the MCU in recent years, and one that might be interesting to examine.

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.