VISA 1500 – Action Movie – 2021

Chloe Macus

VISA 1500

Assignment 4

Part A

The movie that I chose is from the Marvel universe and it’s called “Spider-Man: Far from Home”. It is based after the events of “Avengers: Endgame” and follows the well-known character of Spider-Man whose real name is Peter Parker. During a school trip in Europe, Peter Parker attempts to take a break from his duties as Spider-Man by touring Venice with his friends. He soon finds out that his responsibilities as a superhero are far from over as a group of creatures called the Elementals start terrorizing cities all over the world. With the help of a new hero, Mysterio, Peter works to stop the creatures and learn why they started appearing in the first place. Apparently, this movie did very well as it grossed $1.131,927,996 worldwide according to Box Office Mojo.

The photo chosen is from one of the last fight scenes of the movie. It was found out that Mysterio was the villain the whole time and created the creatures known as the Elementals using drones that projected the illusion of the Elementals. Peter infiltrated the group of drones that was creating the illusion and he started destroying them which caused the image being portrayed to lose its structure and fall apart. The film uses dark blue and red hues when Peter is inside the projection, but when he opens it up, the colour on the screen becomes lighter, signifying that Peter broke through the lies Mysterio created. The whole movie is set in more of a lighter tone with no harsh or depressing colours. This is most likely because Peter Parker is still a kid and the movie isn’t that sad or angry to begin with as it’s about Peter navigating his personal and superhero life. While the fighting is taking place in this scene, the shots are very short and fast with intense music which gets your adrenaline going because you have no idea what is about to happen next.

One aspect I liked about the main love interest, MJ, is that she isn’t one-dimensional. She seems like a regular, everyday teenager who has different interests and an actual personality. I also appreciate that she isn’t overly sexualized as she dresses like a regular teen, and they don’t cake her in makeup or try to whitewash her since she is a person of colour. My only critique is that this female character is based around the main male character. We don’t see MJ having her own story or doing anything that isn’t somewhat centred around the male protagonist. Her whole purpose in the movie is to be the love interest and that is really it. According to Lauzen (2015), “female characters are two times more likely than males to be identified only by a life-related role rather than a work-related role, they are consistently younger than their male counterparts, and they are rarely portrayed as formal leaders.”

With action movies, especially those in the Marvel universe, there is a lot of violence that is shown to happen throughout the whole film. What is damaging is the fact that usually when someone in a movie does a crazy stunt or has harm is done to them that should result in death, the character brushes it off as nothing happened. This is shown a lot in this movie where Spider-Man is thrown from great heights and still manages to survive with barely a scratch. A study done regarding violence and injuries in movies showed that up to 90% of actions that included violence on-screen resulted in zero consequence to the body of the person even though 80% involved deadly force (McArthur, et al, 2000). This wrongfully shows the extent that the human body can withstand, and though I like to assume that people are smart enough not to try stunts in movies, there are those who think that they are like the hero on the screen and won’t get hurt.

References

McArthur, D., Peek-Asa, C., Webb, T., Fisher, K., Cook, B., Browne, N., & Kraus, J. (2000). Violence and its injury consequences in American movies: A public health perspective. Injury Prevention, 6(2), 120–124. https://doi.org/10.1136/ip.6.2.120

Spider-Man: Far from Home. (n.d.). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved November 21, 2021, from https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3791750657/

Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film (2015). It’s a man’s (celluloid) world: On-screen representations of female characters in the top 100 films of 2014. San Diego: Dr. Martha M. Lauzen