The films i’ll be comparing are:

‘Scott Pilgrim vs. The World’ (Edgar Wright, 2010) and ‘Strike’ (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

I’ll Be looking at the Editing in both of these films, and how Edgar Wright has been influenced by Sergei Einstein.

The films that I have chosen are Blade Runner (1982 , directed by Ridley Scott ) and The Maltese Falcon (1941 , directed by John Huston). I have chosen these two films because they can both be classified as being part of the film noir , although Blade Runner is neo – noir which was inspired by the classic noir movement which the Maltese Falcon is a part of.

Question : Film noir is heavily influenced by the historical context and the historical context of the original noir movement and the neo – noir movement were vastly different and I am going to examine how the historical context effects the narrative of the films.

• The Maltese Falcon was released in the year that America entered into the Second World War and the original film noir movement emerged during and immediately after this period and this historical context influenced the films dark subject matter and cynical outlook and it contains many of the well -known elements and archetypes that have come to be associated with the film noir movement e.g. the private eye , the femme fatale and the mystery elements are all narrative devices that are immediately associated with film noir and this film is one of the most famous examples of this and it helped to establish these conventions.
• Blade Runner was released 41 years after the Maltese Falcon , near the end of the Cold War and the fear of nuclear annihilation gave rise to the neo – noir movement. In addition , Blade Runner is a genre fusion,in this case,it fuses elements of the neo – noir movement with science fiction. This film also contains typical elements of film noir , like a femme fatal and a detective being the main character,but this seems to be a blatant homage to the classic film noir because Blade Runner was inspired by the original film noir movement.

Research Question: To what extent have modern science fiction films changed since the birth of the genre, shown with The War of the Worlds (dir. Byron Haskin, 1953) and The World’s End (dir. Edgar Wright, 2013)?