How Have Our Ideas of Heroes Changed over Time Essay

In the beginning of moving picture heroes and heroines tended to stay within the mythological mental synthesis of heroes using binary pairs of opposite terms to simplify the complexness of events and reducing the players master to good guys and bad guys or more cinematic, white hats and black hats. That kindd radically in the late 1960s and early 70s when a series of films such as masculine Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, Midnight Cowboy and One flew Over the guys Nest, literally turned mythic structure on its head and presented the cinematic anti-hero.Before this golden age of film an audience could rely on the belief that no matter how complicated events got for the hero in the end the hero would prevail and the villain would be brought to justice. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid commands its audience to redefine justice in order to root for our heroes who atomic number 18 in fact the villains and hiss the villains who argon in fact the g ood guys.Bonnie and Clyde does the same, the Godfather does it so easily that films influence is noticeable in prevailing attitudes about justice today. Midnight Cowboy and One flew Over the Cuckoos Nest dont necessarily offer up villains as heroes, but our heroes are so flawed, so aimless in their pursuit that even if in the end they are brought down by their own hubris they are still weaker, less competent versions of the mythic hero who rather than ask there audience to be inspired by greatness they ask their audience to celebrate defiance for the sake of rebellion and immorality as an acceptable form of happiness.The radical changes that took place in the films of the seventies still has heavy influence in film making and particularly in film admonition today. There are still and will always be plenty of films made that remain neat to classical mythic structure where white hats prevail and black hats do not. Current examples of such mythic structure can be found in films such as Live Free slip by Hard, Casino Royale, Mission Impossible, and al intimately any(prenominal) Harrison Ford film. In these films, no matter how complicated things wedge the white hats always prevail the black hats lose.These films do not do well with the film critics that mother employment in the media. Its not that critics dont like action films as most heaped plenty of praise on such films as Children of Men, Pans Labyrinth, 310 to Yuma and I am Legend. The difference of opinion between these movies and the action films such as Live Free Die Hard or any Harrison Ford Film is that Harrison Fords heroes always live and in the films praised by critics the heroes always died.I am doubting that Braveheart would have actually won the Oscar for best picture if William Wallace lived. This is the primary and perhaps the most important change in the depiction of heroes and heroines over the years in film. The abandonment of classical mythic structure in exchange for realism where ra tional ideas become notions that heroes arent heroes unless they die fighting the good fight and villains arent so bad once you really get to know them.