By: Sasha Franchuk
Most films produced now usually follow the same plot in a specific way, you are more likely to know how the film will end and who will win, the good side or the bad side by a third of the way in watching the film. In most action films which make millions in sales follow the same way of being filmed, a retired hero or a specialised hero is shown at the start of a film minding their own business either enjoying life at being retired and then being forced to come back to the life they didn’t want to go with or a specialised hero who is shown being amazing at what he is doing, either being a good person (hero) or a bad person (villain). But some films that I mostly enjoyed such as Fight Club (1999), Baby Driver (2017) have shown the film in a different way, with some sort of twist. In ‘Baby Driver’ you are introduced to a driver called Miles who is a professional getaway driver and he gets into a life of crime from which he tries to break free after paying off his debt, the film is heavily relying on the fast-pace action that happens through-out the film and the film does a good job of not ruining the fast-pace storyline as most film who try but fail to create a successful fast-pace film. Avengers: Infinity War is shown from the trailer that the evil wins over the good force and that there will be a different way the film ends. In Fight Club there is a huge plot twist at the middle end when we find out that Brad Pitt was not real and that Edward Norton was talking to himself all this time and that he achieved the position he is in at the end all by himself.
I also enjoyed two films named: John Wick Chapter 1 (2014) and Chapter 2 (2017) whose genre is: Thriller and Action. Directed by: Chad Stahelski, I personally believe he made two films where an assassin has to come back to the life of crime because of gang members messing with his personal life. In Chapter 1, the son of a hitman who made a deal with John Wick of leaving him alone kills John’s dog in John’s home and beats-up John also in the process, due to this John Wick comes back to the life of crime to hunt down the son and the main villain of the film who is the father of the son, through the process of finding the son and the father, John kills a lot of gang members and the way Chad directed the film was awesome, I’ve never seen a film being shown this way, firstly I enjoy that there are no cuts every 3-5 seconds during a shoot-out or a fight scene, it is either a track shot all through-out the shoot-out scene or that the actors in the scene are shown in full height and mostly with a wide-shot of the action happening, it was a risk Chad took while filming this film but I personally think this film tops most shoot-out scenes in other films which have like 30-40 cuts within 2 minutes because it is quite exciting to see the action happening in full detail of the surrounding area whilst those films which have many cuts during these scenes just don’t feel as exciting as they did maybe when they were first introduced in the film industry.
Sin City (2005) whose genre is: Crime/Thriller/Neo-Noir. This is the first film I’ve watched where it’s is mostly filmed in black and white and only the main details like blood, dress which is red and the villain which is yellow everything else is in black and white. For me personally this film stand out from all the other black and white films I have watched because mostly in the 21 century all films are filmed in colour and don’t have that many scenes with just black and white colour unless it is something like a flashback in the film.
Terminator (1984) genre is: Action, Fantasy, Sci-Fi. Terminator is an amazing film, I’ve seen it many times when I was young and completely forgot everything about so I decided to watch it this Christmas with my family, and I must say that for a film made in 1984 this film was amazing and would top any other film made in 1984 within the same genre because of the storyline, the special effects and the good quality of camera used whilst filming this film, Terminator is about a bionic robot sent from the future to the past who wears human skin to fit in with other people in the world, his goal is to assassinate Sarah Connor who becomes the leader of the human race when a war breaks-out in 2026, in order for the human race to survive a soldier named Kyle Reese was sent to the past to protect Sarah from the Terminator at any cost because it all depends on her survival on who will win the war. If she dies the machines win and the leftover humans who survive the war would become slaves to the robots until they die, if she survives then there is a chance of humans winning the war because of her son Kyle Reese who becomes a war hero against the robots and he knows how to defeat the robots and their weakness. My favourite scenes were: Tech Noir Scene and the Police Station Shootout Scene, the reason why I like these scenes the most was because of the music used and the action that happens in Tech Noir and in the Police Station shootout I enjoyed the background music also fitting well with the events happening on screen and just how well they filmed the Terminator shooting the police officers, with just enough camera shots and no quick cuts, most of them are long cuts. This scene also shows the Terminator superior compared to the police officers. Interesting how this film has a basic plot but was very well structured for the year at which it was made when there were no green screens and it was hard to film these types of films back then so if I didn’t know in what year this was made I would have guessed in year 2003/2006 because it just looks too good to be true for 1984.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) Blade Runner (1982)
Blade Runner was directed by Ridley Scott in 1982 and by Denis Villeneuve in 2017, the reason for this change was because Harrison Ford didn’t get along with Ridley Scott during the time when the original Blade Runner was being filmed, I haven’t watched the 1982 version but mostly everyone who has seen the 1982 version says that it is so much better than the 2017 version but the 2017 version had some amazing visual effects, I personally would give the film a 6/10 because I didn’t really like it, it was too long, at a playtime of 2hr 44mins it got quite boring by the mid-end part of the film when the main character was just wondering around the lost place and during this part of the film I felt that the film was about an extra 2-3 hours because of how much they dragged out this part . Even Ridley Scott thinks that Blade Runner 2049 was ‘Way Too Long’ and since the film had a budget of $150 million and a built-in audience already meaning the company had to spend less on advertisement, the film still did very poorly, at only picking up $91 million at the domestic box office and an ultimately grossing $258 million worldwide that is a very poor amount of revenue earnt for a film with a very high budget price. Scott said that Villeneuve has only done low budget movies and that it was stupid giving him $180 million because they do not know on what to spend the money on, the film has spent most of the money on the visual effects which I personally think were amazing but I think they should have spent more money on the script writing and all the other elements which would have made this film very good with enough action, good amount of storytelling and a sense of suspense, sadly all three of these elements have disappointed me whilst watching the film. But I still have to watch ‘Blade Runner’ 1982 to compare which film is better but I think I could trust the reviews from the critics because I do not think it could be as bad as Blade Runner 2049 was.