Lauren VISA Assignment #4 Action Movie
The most recent Hollywood action film that I partially watched (I’ve watched it several times before) was Doctor Strange. The character in this photo (roughly at 1:19:50) is Doctor Strange, it is harder to tell due to the lighting to tell what he is wearing. He is wearing a burgundy cape, and a slightly lighter and brighter deep blue tunic and pants. The movie of Doctor Strange is darker in color caused by using darker tones. This scene uses exposure to allow the viewer to see the chaotic placement and directions of the buildings highlighted through the streaks of light. The lead up to the photo involved a lot of cuts. Regarding the axis of action in this photo, the action is at 180 degrees. The scene leading up to this picture is fast and all over the place. The quality of violence has Strange: getting in a bad crash accident (glass is all over the place), fighting (kicking/punching, the use of magic as a whip and other magical tools are used to fight), chase sequences, falling and landing on a bus facedown, he also gets cuts and scrapes from the fights and obtains a somewhat more major injury, Strange choked by a villain to prevent movement. The violence in the movie to me seems fairly tame. The majority of main cast (credited) overall are men (nineteen) while there being about a third of women (ten). I don’t know the race of the characters that the actors are presented as but I’m pretty sure that Doctor Strange is white and I am certain that he is identified as male. All the characters in the scene leading up to the photo can use magic. The ecology of this sequence is all over the place and chaotic. These aspects are portrayed by the frequent randomness in the setting where the characters can appear all over the place on staircases which are constantly changing. This is also induced with the help of the camera’s movements. For Stranges’ clothes he only mainly wears two solid colors red and blue, not including his shoes. The colors of his clothes can mean, “red means… bold, passionate, and determined, but grounded with blue’s depth, wisdom, and confidence,” (McLachlan and Hanson “Superhero Color Theory…”) these colors clearly fit the character and personality of Doctor Strange. In regard to the chaotic buildings, an article from The Lancet Neurology by Andrew Bianchi says, “Cityscapes twist and collide under the sorcerers’ whims–brick, glass, and concrete rearranging themselves.” The budget for the film was $165,000,000 and made $677,796,076 worldwide in the box office. I think there could be a few potential consequences of this film in real life because of the kicking/punching, chasing (the kind that causes fear), and the chokehold. The normalizing of kicking and punching could let people think that the next time they are being hurt that this is okay to do, that the kind of chasing a person usually imagines being done by a predatory animal is okay to do other people to cause fear, and that choking people would be a possibility to prevent movement.
Works Cited
McLachlan, Brian, and Hanson, Aaron. “Superhero Color Theory, Part I: The Primary Heroes.” Comics Alliance, 2 June 2016, accessed Nov. 2021, https://comicsalliance.com/superhero-color-theory-primary-heroes/
Bianchi, Andrew. “Paging Doctor Strange.” The Lancet Neurology, vol. 16, Issue 2, 2017, pp. 110. Science Direct, accessed Nov. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(16)30387-8 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1474442216303878?via%3Dihub)