Movies have been around for a long time. Some people prefer watching horror movies, while others prefer watching comedy movies. On the other hand, some people would rather watch romance movies, while others would rather watch action movies. Although they all have different audiences, all of their respective audiences could agree that movies have changed over. Since 1965 movies have changed dramatically. Advancements on technology has impacted the film industry. It has sparked a change in how movies are made and their potential in how well it portrays what the filmmaker is trying to portray with the film. Over the time movies have also seen a change in how open they are about portraying political and social issues. Filmmakers are not afraid of portraying these issues in their film as how they were before.
Changes in technology
The film quintet takes place on an frozen earth with a few people left living. The protagonist of the film is Essex , a man who is fed up with his work in the north and decides to go back, and look for his brother in the previous city he used to live in. Essex is traveling with his pregnant wife who tragically dies after they arrive to the city where they were headed to. She dies because she decides to play a game called Quintet. His brother and a group of friends he meets after his arrival also die because of this game. Quintet is a dice game that people in the city play to pass time. The players for the game are selected from the local casino and they play against each other. Their goal is to kill each other until there is only one player left. The prize of the game is the winner’s right to stay alive.
This film attracted many critics because of its oddity and because of bad its special effects were. According to Film Snobs “It wasn’t just insane, it was incomprehensible. And it wasn’t just bad, it went to the point of defining pretension. And that’s when I knew how to classify a truly”bad” film: It was a film that was a disaster on all levels but had the notion of being a masterpiece.” (2010) This critic explains that Quintet is the worst film ever made because it it truly insane. He then adds that the filmmaker in some scenes is trying to give the images a blurry look, but this doesn’t work out so well because he clearly doesn’t have the technology needed to do that. Some images come out too blurry and some less blurry, not like he would have liked them to come out. Changes in technology could change how successful the movie comes out to be like, but this movie couldn’t get the technological help that was needed.
On the other hand Artificial intelligence is about a robot, David, that is programmed to love. David is adopted by a family, Monica and Henry Swington, who decide to adopt him because their real son, Martin, is in a comma due to a disease doctors haven’t found a cure for. David tries to do anything to make his mom, Monica, love him. Miraculously Martin gets better and he is brought back home. He is jealous of David and makes him do actions that make their parents doubt if it is safe to keep David around. Due to these circumstances Monica decides to take David and his teddy to the woods and leave them there. David is devastated by this because he just wants his mom to love him back. He decides to go on a mission to find the tooth fairy, so she can turn him into a real boy to get Monica’s love back.
According to the critics the movie is not good movie, but it is interesting. Its special effects are shocking due to its advanced technology and this definitely catches people’s attention. Tim Brayton says “It is a massively broken film; a film that walks up to the edge of outright fiasco, leans its head over, and waves. And by the way, there is absolutely nothing in this life that I adore as much as movies that almost completely fail, but don’t actually fail in any one way – for they are by far the most interesting. And A.I. is so particularly interesting given some particulars of its creation, that I shall happily call it “important”, maybe even the single most important film of the last ten years. But good, I just don’t know, and I just don’t care;because a “good” A.I. would be of infinitely less value than the A.I. that we have.” (2010) This critic says the film had too many flaws for it to be good. He also says that certainly the advancements in technology at the time were an enormous factor for “A.I.” The setting was meticulously designed, and the incredibly iconic design of the robots an and the special effects could have never been made to look so great in years prior.
Political and social issues
The 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence directed by John Cassavetes is about a unhappy housewife who is struggling with a mental illness in a society where mental illnesses are not often talked about. She is married to Nick, a construction worker who doesn’t understand the way she behaves. Due to his lack of understatement and her fear of talking about her illness, she gets sent to a hospital in hopes she gets better. She comes back home and her husband is happily waiting for her hoping she has gotten better, but is frustrated to find out that things haven’t changed.
This movie caught the attention of many critics because the topic the filmmaker decided to talk about was not something people were used to talking about in the time the movie was made. According to Ray Carney “Cassavetes had done the same thing in the film he did throughout much of his life; he had said things he was not supposed to say,revealed emotional facts he should not have revealed, violated understandings about what was and was not “acceptable” to say and do. Just like Mabel. One more demonstration of his deep psychic and emotional connection with her.” (2009) This critic says the movie created a lot of controversy and it didn’t not have a big budget because no one wanted to finance it. He says that the film helps you understand that there is help anywhere and that you are not alone. It shows issues that people go through and also how they deal with them. But then he adds that when the film came out mental illness wasn’t a topic that everyone was familiar with. People didn’t just get to talk about their illness with family or a counselor and expect to get better like how it is done nowadays. Instead people would get sent to institutions and expect to get better. This were issues that impacted the success of the movie.
On the other hand, Avatar follows the story line of an alien world called Pandora, which is the home of half human and half alien creatures called Na’vis. Due to its environment being so poisonous humans have to link their minds to human/hybrid Na’vis, called Avatars, to allow free movement in Pandora. This alien world possesses lots of the mineral Unobtanium, which happens to be extremely valuable to the human race. Humans have drained all the earth’s natural resources, leading them to a severe energy crisis. Human efforts of colonizing the world Pandora, in order to mine the mineral Unobtanium , threatens the existence of the Na’vis.
This movie attracted may critics due to its special effects, but it was truly the social and political issues that shocked many of its audiences. According to the article The Racial Politics of Avatar “Avatar is more than mere entertainment. The racial allegories are so prominent that even casual viewers cannot ignore the obvious, at times even heavy-handed,pro-environmental and anti-war missives. On a more subtle level, the film holds a mirror up to humanity and shows us both the folly of our greed and disregard for human life and what our own planet might have been like if its indigenous peoples were allowed to retain their cultures rather than being overrun by European colonization.” (2009) This critic says that the reason why the movie wasn’t so great was because Avatar” is undeniably a film with a message – an earth-worshiping,evil-humans-are-destroying-the-planet message. Although these issues were not the main goal of the movie the ethics of invading the native peoples homeland and driving them out while destroying their habitat was something the filmmaker was not afraid to portray.
The film industry has grown overtime and so have its changes. Advancements in technology has made it easier for filmmakers to portray their ideas in ways that they have not being able before. Filmmakers are stepping up their game by creating special effects that are leaving audiences speechless, which are only possible to create due to technology. Filmmakers have also grown more accepting of talking about social and political issues due to the fact that most of the films that deal with these issues have been very successful. This new trends are motivating filmmakers to adventure in the film industry and is allowing them to make great masterpieces.