Thursday, 4 November 2010

Incohesive Worlds

For my choice as an example of a badly realised fictional world, I chose the 'Underworld' films.

The reasons I chose this as my example are many, so I'll get started. The first reason is that in it's inception it decides to be nothing remotely original and simply play the cliche game. Yes it's a vampire movie but that did not mean it had to stick to vampire movie cliché’s. Film's like 'Let the right one in' have shown that a vampire movie can be just as successful without adhering to the stereotypes. 'Underworld' uses the stereotypes so much that the film almost becomes a self-parody. Cliche's such as the vampires are all pale, seductive and decadent to the point where they even have decadent names such as 'Viktor', 'Selene' and 'Kraven' and the werewolves are all hulking, feral and brutish. Other cliche's are rife such as all of the vampires wear black and the werewolves love nothing more than having their shirts off.

Another of the reason's I think this is an example of a bad coherent world is that, the film at first seems to create the illusion that this is all set in some fantasy world unlike our own where strange creatures roam the land like Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials ' novels, however we soon discover it's actually set in the modern day. The way that the Director/Screenwriter meshes the fantastical with the modern world does not work in any way, especially  when the same blueish dark hues are applied to the modern settings it looks like a film has been put over the camera lens for no reason.



I also think this film fails to create a cohesive world as it falls into a common trap in movies, the modern world and indeed the characters do not react to having fantastical elements in them. The human character of 'Michael Corvin' is never overly shocked that leather clad vampires and bare chested werewolves not only exist but are running all over the place. He never seems in any real state of shock or disbelief. For me this further ruins the film as although you take a leap of faith in accepting the films fantastical/supernatural elements, you expect that a the human characters would be a little surprised at their existence.

Finally, I think that another reason the film fails in the creation in it's world is due to  it's dialogue which was poorly written and seemed again to make the film set in some other world. It was also just poorly written in terms of language, an example is in the opening line itself...

"The war had all but ground to a halt in the blink of an eye." ... Not a great metaphor; if something 'grinds to a halt' it's a slow process and for a slow process to happen in the blink of an eye? It just doesn't make a lot of sense. Pretentiousness for the sake of pretentiousness.

And then there are the sequels...

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