The Ordinary World:
Jones is introduced attempting to retrieve a valuable Idol from an ancient, booby trapped ruin. He retrieves the Idol but has it stolen shortly after by Dr. Rene Belloq, leading the local Hovitos tribe. He narrowly escapes with his life and expresses his that he is still upset at the loss of the statue to his Archeology class. In some ways, this is also the “Road Back” from a previous adventure and establishes Indy as already being a hero while many other narratives develop the hero along the way.
The Call to Adventure:
This occurs when two army officers approach Indy and his friend Marcus, stating that the Nazi’s have discovered the possbile location of the Ark of the Covenant which holds great power. However, the only way to find it is with the Staff of Ra.
Refusal of the Call:
There isn’t really a refusal of the call, probably due to the fact that Indy is already an established hero figure.
Meeting with the Mentor:
In this film, Indy doesn’t meet with a mentor, possibly due to the fact that he is already an established hero doesn’t need someone to guide him on his adventure.
Crossing the Threshold and Tests, Allies and Enemies:
These two events occur simultaneously. Indy travels to Nepal with Marcus hoping to meet his old teacher/friend Abner Ravenwood to try and seek out the Staff of Ra. He is followed by a Nazi agent by the name of Toht. He travels to Abner’s daughter, Marion’s bar, who also happens to be Indy’s ex. He reveals that he needs the headpiece of the Staff of Ra and she reluctantly gives it to him after she is promised $3,000 and more on their return. It is at this point where Nazi soldiers enter the bar and a fight ensues. Afterwards, Indy and Marion travel to Egypt to meet with one of Indy’s friends, Sallah who is known as one of the country’s most renowned excavators.
The Ordeal:
Indy actually goes through two ordeals in the film. The ordeal consists of Indy believing that Marion has died after being attacked by Arabs and Nazis. There is no reward after the ordeal as Indy drowns his sorrows in alcohol.
The Approach:
Indy infiltrates the Nazi digsite and uses the headpiece of the Staff of Ra to find the location of the Well of Souls, the area where the Ark of the covenant is buried. He finds Marion tied up. He realizes he can’t free her without revealing his location.
The Ordeal and The Reward:
Later, he leads a digging party of his own into the Well of Souls which is filled with snakes, something that Indy despises. Indy and Sallah eventually retrieve the Ark but Indy is sealed in the hole where they found it by Belloq and Toht. Marion is also thrown into the hole do die and the Nazis flee with the Ark. The hero loses the treasure but is driven to retrieve it.
The Road Back:
Indy is driven to retrieve the Ark and escapes the chamber with Marion and a fight ensues on a plane between Indy, Marion and Nazi soldiers. The plane explodes but Indy and Marion are able to escape.
The Resurrection:
Indy and Marrion are eventually captured by a Nazi submarine and taken to a ritual site atop a mountain. At this point Indy and Marion are tied up and forced to watch as the Nazis open the Ark and attempt to harness its power. Indy orders Marion to close her eyes as the spirits are freed from the Ark, resulting in all the Nazi’s dying while Indy and Marion survive, although gravely weakened.
Return with the Elixir:
At this point in the story, Indy is changed by the events of his adventure, however, he was never able to retrieve the Ark as it was taken by the government and sealed in a warehouse containing several other similar crates.
Wikepedia
IMDB
Chris Jones Filmmaker Blog
Raiders of the Lost Ark and New Hope Films
YouTube – MovieClips Channel
Screenwriter Lobdell of HDD explains that he wanted to change the concept of the final girl by subverting the basic idea to create a cruel character whose acts are justifiable and a strong theme of character development to run throughout the film
‘Every slasher film opens with the mean girl getting killed and the good girl living till the end. And i thought, how can i make the mean girl and the good girl the same person?’
The character of Tree changes the idea of a final girl. Prior to the modern generation, final girls were typically the strong sole survivor who faces a usually successful final showdown with their antagonist
How the female gaze may differ in both films due to the social context of what is happening e.g. Alien is filmed at a time where Mulvey had just conceived her idea so would be used as an early representation
‘Females are represented as the object of a male’s desire and fear whilst watching horror films through the use of the female gaze. Alien shows this idea through the extended 10 minute clip of Ripley walking around in her underwear which suggest that female characters only exist for male pleasure. Since the film was released during the early era of second wave feminism, the idea of female characters standing alone and representing strength was only recently introduced. Therefore, it is justifiable that Alien would still represent elements of the male gaze because the theory had not been implemented for long.
Whereas Happy Death Day neglects to show such scenes and keeps sexual focus at a minimum, to represent the development of strong female characters but also the removal of the male gaze. This is shown when Tree is an embodiment of a sarcastic, rude yet strong and emotionally developing character as we follow her journey rather than a sexual object for male desire to be projected on throughout the film.
Question: How does a large budget impact the way an action film is made, and is a large budget necessary to make a film more enjoyable.
Script:
Budget obviously plays a large role in the film industry, but I want to compare whether a higher budget makes a film more objectively enjoyable. Baby Driver (2017, Dir. Edgar Wright) takes a more story heavy approach to a narrative as its lower budget means that it can’t always rely on action set-pieces like much more mainstream and higher budget films like Furious 7 (2015, Dir. James Wan). This ability to use high octane stunts and action scenes is something that many films will use to draw in an audience, especially for the Fast and Furious franchise; with each entry spending more money than the last, it is like each movie is trying to one-up the previous entry. This is where I think a lot of potential is lost for narrative and story development. In Furious 7, every time the plot advances, it just feels like an excuse to move onto the next action scene, where as Baby Driver is much more focused on narrative, character arcs, and plot, with the occasional action scene thrown in to keep the audience excited as well as advancing the plot.
Another incredibly important part of a films budget focuses on advertising, and for a film like Furious 7, advertising was key. Without the massive advertising campaign, the movie wouldn’t have brought in nearly as much money as it did. similarly for Baby Driver, Many people would have bought tickets simply because it was directed by Edgar Wright. Furious 7’s budget also meant that it could hire more mainstream/big-name celebrities, and even though Baby Driver stared slightly more well known actors than some of Wright’s other films, (Which usually star Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, both of which Wright thrust into stardom) it’s stars are still much less famous than almost the entirety of the main cast in Furious 7. Baby Driver is also Wright’s 2nd highest budget film, following the $85 million ‘Scott Pilgrim Vs The World’ (however Baby Driver Was more of a success in the box office), In fact, all of the films that Wright has directed thus far cost less than the entire production of Furious 7, with all of his credited films only costing around $155 million in total, as opposed to Furious 7’s $190 million. The whole film industry is focused on making money, which is why there are so many franchises in Hollywood.
David Hesmondhalgh says that the media is being commodified in the cultural industries (which means everything is turning into something that can either be bought or sold). Therefore studios will commission several sequels to films that have done well at the box office.The first film in the franchise usually has a fairly small budget, and if the series continues to have a large box office profit, more sequels will be made with a higher budget in the hope to make even more money than the previous film. At the time of this recording, Baby Driver is still a stand-alone film, however there are rumors of a sequel being discussed, with Wright even teasing the movie early in 2019, saying “A first draft of Baby Driver 2 exists”. Wright has said that he initially didn’t think about a sequel, but after the massive commercial success of the film, (Grossing more than all of Wright’s previous films combined at the box office) decided to go along with the idea. This is an example of the commercial and profit-driven studios of Hollywood. Wrights films take years of careful writing and planning, even before he gets to the filming stage, as all of his films were more or less entirely controlled by him. James Wan on the other hand, has directorial credits in over 29 films; Compare this to Wright’s 8 films, and you can begin to see how Wan makes movies that studios ask him to direct, where as Wright takes a much more independent approach to film making, only making the films he wants to make, and changing some minor details for the studio.
Before Wan was working on action films with gigantic budgets, he was very influential to the horror genre, most notably, he directed the first 6 “Saw” films, as well as “The Conjuring” and “Insidious” Which all have relatively small budget. In total contrast to this, he is currently working on films like “Aquaman 2” Rumored to have a budget of over $200 million. This is completely different to Wrights way of film making, as he carefully crafts Writes, directs and produces his films at the expense of not making as much of a potential profit, whereas Wan is constantly churning out a steady stream of either high budget action blockbusters or very low budget horror films in order to make the studio as much money as possible, which follows along with Hesmondhalgh’s media theory about commodification. Through the use of commodification, Wan has been commissioned to make several low budget films for different studios in order for maximum profit, working with studios famous for this, such as Blumhouse Productions. Wan’s films are typically more successful than Wright’s movies, Giving Wan a net worth of around $50 million. Compare this to Wrights estimated $10 million and it is clear that Wan’s films are aimed at a very wide audience to sell more tickets, where as Wright has a fairly niche fan-base, due to his films being on a more intellectual level that you have to pay attention to to get the most out of them. For this reason Wright’s films are usually given higher praise, as they are targeted more towards film fans, rather than a casual audience. Both directors were born within 4 years of each other and both started their line of work as a director at around the same time in the late 90’s, but considering Wan’s number of films, he was the obvious choice for studios.
The large budget of Furious 7 definitely helped the film become more accessible to a large audience all over the world, however, it was also due to the films BBFC and MPAA classification of the film as a 12A and PG-13 respectively, meaning the film is much more accessible for younger children and families. This means there are a lot more potential profit simply due to the number of people that can access the movie. Compare this to Baby Driver, which is Rated R in America a 15 in the UK and you can see that Wrights film was at a clear disadvantage for potential profit from the outset. films are often filmed as 15’s, and then changed in post production and editing in order to get the film rated as a 12 or 12A so that it is much more accessible to people as well as so it will make a larger profit. Because of this potential loss of profit, most of the very expensive, stereotypical, Hollywood blockbuster films will be rated as a PG-13 or 12A, in order to make back as much of their budget as possible, and turn a profit. This also means that films with a higher rating are typically less successful in the box office, which is why so many of Wan’s horror films have such a small budget of only a few million dollars. This means that Budget is much tighter in a film like Baby Driver, as it doesn’t have an established franchise that will draw people in, or a seemingly infinite amount of money being given to them by the studio, because the studio cannot be sure that it would make the money back in the box office.
In conclusion, Budget can have a huge impact on the way a film is made; from the action scenes, all the way down to the final product that gets made due to the rating it might receive. However, I do not think that it makes a film objectively ‘better’. From the box office sales alone, Furious 7 looks like a much better film because more people went to see it in the cinema, however using data from Metacritic, The 50 or so reviewers found Baby Driver much more enjoyable, giving at an average rating of 86%. Compare this to Furious 7’s 67% and it is clear that audiences actually found Baby Driver to be a more enjoyable film, despite having a fraction of the box office sales.
The War of the Worlds
– released 15th August, 1953
– directed by Byron Haskin
– based on the 1898 novel by HG Welles
– starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson
– produced by Paramount Pictures
– had a budget of $2 million
– made $2 million at the box office
– it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2011 for being culturally, historically or aesthetically significant
The World’s End
– released in 10th July 2013
– directed by Edgar Wright
– starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost
– part of the Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy – known as the ‘green’ film
– had a budget of $20 million
– made $46.1 million at the box office
– Simon Pegg said the idea came from “the notion of alienation from your hometown taken to its literal conclusion”
Alien was released in 1979, a time period where second wave feminism was in full force after the introduction during the early-mid 1960’s. This influenced the types of characters being made and produced in films, because there was a greater need for stronger female characters. Script writer Dan O’Bannon focused on writing a diverse range of characters to really resonate with the audience. As a result, the characters included in Alien were older than the typical characters included in a horror film and there was also a gender mix. Since most of the characters get killed off fairly early on within the film, keeping Ripley as the sole survivor although she is a female, was a bold move to represent a strong female character. But this was needed drastically at the time to prove that the second wave feminism was moving in the right direction, so the character of Ripley represents the necessity of strong women for the movement of second wave feminism.
Second wave feminism developed the interpretation of a female character in horror films. The movement showed the implied inferiority of women to men, and the unfair systems implemented. In horror film, women were typically portrayed as ‘damsels in distress’ and usually saved by men. An example of this prior to the second wave feminism movement is the character Lila Crane from Psycho (1960, by Alfred Hitchcock) who relies on Sam Loomis to save her. But second wave feminism argued to change this, and during the late 1960’s there was a resurgence of new, strong and empowered female characters. ‘Alien’ was produced towards the end of the movement, which had resulted in the introduction of many new strong female characters. Over the period of the movement, there became a development of female characters from victims to survivors, which led to Clover defining the term ‘final girl’.
Although there are several examples of ‘final girls’ evident in horror during the early 1970’s, many of these lack actual development from survivors to heroines and although there was a resurgence of female empowerment; they typically just make it to the end without facing off with their antagonist. An example of this is Sally Hardesty from ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ (1974, by Tobe Hooper). Although she is cited as one of the earliest examples of a ‘final girl’ and displays some qualities: she does not avenge against Leather face or the family and is eventually rescued at the end of the film, by a man.
Ultimately, second wave feminism inspired a new wave of strong female characters. There was a slow but visible decline in overly-sexualized female characters, and a growth in female protagonist who began to survive towards the end of the film. However, there was still an emphasis on survival. This represented women still as victims, who barely clung on to their lives and were typically rescued by men (see Hardesty and Strode) instead of taking revenge on their pursuers. Arguably, Ripley is one of the earliest examples of a strong ‘final girl’, she outlives her (mainly male) crew by fighting to survive and finally defeats the alien alone with no assistance from anyone. The development of ‘final girls’ were slow, but stemmed from the second wave feminism movement, many showed strong qualities during the early 1970’s but Alien is one of the first horrors which actually shows a strong heroine who does not rely on anyone aside from herself to survive but also defeat the alien.
The particularly later half of the 1970’s was a major decade for film, most specifically horror and sci-fi. From horror we got: ‘Halloween’ (1978, by John Carpenter) and ‘Black Christmas’ (by Bob Clark, also 1974). All of these films utilized the final girl trope, and were a major success. They all showed a strong female character at the forefront of each plot, not only surviving but battling against the antagonist; usually male. These films were also influenced by second wave feminism, which showed the immediate impact that the movement had on filmmakers and the horror industry has a whole because it led to the creation of strong female protagonists rather than just helpless victims. Similarly, science fiction was enjoying a major run at arguably the top of the film industry perhaps due to the massive success of ‘Star Wars’ (1977, by George Lucas). The influence of such success in both genres from the hybrid would have a profound impact on Alien as there was a large target audience for Alien who would’ve been willing to see the film based on the other successful horror and sci-fi films released at the same time.
Both films are similar in that they put a spin on the concept of ‘genre’ with combining around three different genres as a whole. The concept was accurately coined a ‘hybrid-genre’ (also known as cross-genre) where multiple elements from a genre are combined to create a new style of a film. ‘Black comedy’ was introduced into the arts by surrealist André Breton in 1935 who actually coined the term in his 1940 book ‘Anthologie de l’humour noirafter’, wrote after he acknowledged the merging of comedic and dark elements in particularly the work of poet Jonathan Swift. Within film, the first strong example comes from director Billy Wilder, with the 1940 academy award hit ‘Sunset Boulevard’ which utilized elements from comedy but also had quite a dark tone.
As film revolutionized, ‘Black Comedy’ became more popular, with around 88 films being produced after 2010 compared with only 20 in the 1980’s. this shows the growth in popularity of the genre mix because many people are wanting to see it onscreen. ‘Happy Death Day’ successfully employs elements from this hybrid by maintaining a dark and somber tone usually seen in horror films with the killer stalking Tree but also the nature of some of the killings. But this is juxtaposed with a lighter mood, with constant jokes and ridiculous moments. The film takes inspiration from ‘Scream’ (1996, by Wes Craven) to combine comedy and a dark mood to create a contemporary, successful black comedy
Whereas, arguably sci-fi horror is a much larger and more popular area. There is debate over whether or not the genre combination is actually a hybrid, due to the similarities in genre it can be difficult to actually define whether or not a film is a sci fi or horror because many science fiction films can unintentionally create fear and horror can typically rely on science for justification. So as a result, many films can be referred to as ‘sci fi – horrors’ although some can only contain minimal elements of either genre. The hybrid genre can be seen as early as 1918, with Michael Curtiz and Edward Fritz’ Hungarian sci fi-horror ‘Alraune’. Although there is not much actually known about the film since it is now lost, it is believed to be about a mad scientist creating a demonic child which perfectly unites common tropes and elements from both the sci-fi and horror genres.
Arguably, Alien can be considered a science fiction film from afar, in general terms. It involves the discovery of extraterrestrial life then the struggle for survival. The film does employ horror tactics however, with the alien itself scaring some viewers with its grotesque look but also the infamous scene where the alien rips its way out of Kane’s chest. Although the film contains elements of horror to engage the audience through fear, the main premise is science fiction which defines Alien as a sci-fi horror, with some elements of a thriller from the intense action. The success of Alien inspired many sci fi horrors, most notably ‘Predator’ (1987, by John McTiernan). The film was similar to Alien in the way that it blurred the line between horror and sci fi, creating a hit which showcased the successes of both genres.
Ultimately, both films can be classed as horror hybrids because they mainly utilize strong elements of a horror to scare but also engage the audience with the plot and the characters. HDD also uses comedy to add a lighter tone, and also adds a refreshing spin on the ‘slasher genre’with the idea of Tree’s killer hunting her down until she can break the time loop by figuring out who is behind the mask. There is also an element of sci-fi with the film because the time loop plot, but this is focused more on in the sequel ‘Happy Death Day 2U’, whereas the original focuses mainly on a slasher horror, with a general comedic tone. On the other hand, Alien centers around a sci-fi heavy plot, but the film was released at a time where horror was arguably much bigger and more widely received than it is now in contemporary cinema so as a result: the film employed scare tactics to reach the large horror fanbase. Even today, Alien is constantly referenced as a horror masterpiece, regardless of the inital sci-fi plot