Author: Beck-Z-Markham

Both the Arrival and The Truman Show have similar box offices and budgets when compared to each other. Arrival had a budget of 47 million dollars and made a total of 203 million dollars which made 4.37 times in budget. The Truman Show had a budget of 60 million dollars and made a total of 264 million dollars which made 4.4 times its budget in profit. The Truman Show, starring Jim Carrey, was always supposed to star Jum Carrey. Robin Williams was initially considered for the role of Truman Burbank. But the director went with Carrey because he reminded him of Charlie Chaplin. 

The production of The Truman Show was riddled with delays and problems. The original draft of the movie, written by Andrew Niccol and called The Malcolm Show at the time, was more of a science-fiction thriller set in New York City. Producer Scott Rudin purchased the film and set Peter Weir and director. The original script was dark and depressing, so Weir wanted to make it funnier and lighter, which is probably why Jim Carrey and Robin Williams were both considered for the main role, as they were both amazing comedians. Jim Carrey was also filming two other films, The Cable Guy and Liar Liar when asked for The Truman Show so Weir would have to recast Jim or wait a year and wait a year he did.

Arrival is a science fiction film with a super-focused plot of language between different species. This aspect of science fiction is usually glossed over or ignored, using deus ex machina technology like universal translators and the like. Arrival is often compared to Interstellar which also focuses on a singular aspect of science fiction. The Truman Show is a unique take on the meta-commentary on the TV industry but is similar to movies like Pleasantville from 1998 and Stranger Than Fiction from 2006. How the Truman show differs from these films is that the fact that Truman is in a sitcom is kept a secret from the audience for most of the film. This allows second and even third viewings of the film to be a different experience.  

The performances from Arrival’s and The Truman Show’s stars, Amy Adams and Jim Carrey respectfully, have been praised by reviewers. Amy Adams’ performance in Arrival is praised for its accuracy in the language process.  Jim Carrey’s performance in The Truman Show was a statement that Jim wanted to make. He wanted to show that he can do a drama role, rather than only comedic roles. He even took less pay than usual for him. He was paid 12 million dollars rather than the 20 million he was used to for other films he starred in at the time.

Someone about the performances by Jim Carrey and Laura Linney give such a horrific tone to this movie. Jim Carrey is always someone to over-act and be nearly filled with manic energy. But in this film he’s not like then till the illusion of his life falls to pieces. While this film is labeled as a comedy, it’s very tragic when you think about it. We all can laugh at Jim Carrey’ wacky performance, but it’s a man on the brink of insanity just slingshotting in the other direction of his environment. 

The Truman show is a movie with a meta-commentary on sit-com shows made in 2002. It asks the question, “Are we stars in a sitcom and just don’t know it?” That is the world and question that is posed to Truman, played by Jim Carrey. The reception of the show was quite high. Most of the common reception of the show is that it changed and/or made them question their surroundings and reality. One analysis of the film says that knowing the secret of the film, that one being that Truman is in a sitcom before the film starts, completely changes how you watch the film on further watch thoughts. The Truman show was written with inspiration from an episode of the Twilight Zone “Special Service”

When I was at work, one of my co-workers said that The Truman show made him rethink his surroundings for a month after seeing it. This comment was unprompted, I didn’t ask him for his opinion, and that just shows the influence this movie has. The Truman Show can and has been used as an analyzed piece for theses on Christianity, simulated reality, surveillance, metaphilosophy, existentialism, privacy, and reality television.

Arrival is a science fiction drama made in 2016. It was based on a short story “Story of Your Life” from 1998. The central plot revolves around a linguist, played by Amy Adams attempting to learn how to communicate with aliens before it leads to war. The film was praised for Amy Adam’s performance and its thought-provoking showcasing of communication with aliens. The film had to make its own unique language for the aliens to speak in the film. They called in 3 linguists from The McGill University for them to make the language. 

Arrival made around 200 million dollars, which when compared to its production budget, made 4 times its budget in profits. Most of the critical responses to Arrival gave great praise for the performance from Amy Adams and called it “existentially inclined” The very few mixed reviews claimed it was too close to Interstellar and criticizing the dialogue, calling it “clunky”. The Arrival received numerous nominations and won around 27 awards, ranging from Sound Editing, to Best Actress, to even Best Sci-Fi/Horror Film.

Arrival was made with a lot of focus on the language of the aliens. The process of Amy Adams trying to communicate to the alien was so accurate that many Linguistic professors, one of which worked on the film, say that it gets nearly everything right about the linguist process. David Adger, a linguist professor, from the Queen Mary University of London, said that the process of “trying different hypotheses about the language, coming up with generalization, and test them was spot on”  Betty Birner, a professor at Northern Illinois University, had a different opinion, saying that the movie’s usage of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is unbelievable and that the film skips over important parts of the language process. Betty specifically said that Amy Adam’s character going from basic vocabulary to abstract concepts such as what is a “weapon” is oversimplified

Something that I have alluded to is that I found Joker 2019 to be a vastly different movie from other DC films. Joker 2019 is such a vastly different movie in both form and function compared to other DC and even Marvel films. While the rest of DC and Marvel’s catalog are action films with no real message to take from them, Joker has a clear message to tell its audience. Joker is about the cruel world around Arthur that would soon convert him into the Joker. The movie is so different from other films in its genre that there was conflict from within Warner Brothers studios. The actor that played Joker in a different movie, Jared Leto, was very upset that someone else was playing the Joker. Jared Leto tried to get his music manager to stop the Joker movie from coming out. He said he felt alienated and blind-sighted from a standalone movie being made without his talent.   

The film was also being targeted by almost every media outlet. TV, newspapers, and talk shows all wanted to film to fail. They claimed it was because the violence that the film would show would cause riots to form, but that never happened.  The true reasoning behind their hatred of Joker is still under speculation. But the more popular theory is that they want the movie to fail because it calls out the exact kind of things they do. When looking at the talk show scene in Joker, no wonder talk shows didn’t want people to see it.

Moving Pictures says that a movie is made three separate times. Once by the screenwriter, the second time by the director and crew. And finally lastly by the editor in post-production. (Sharman 163) Editors have a lot of control over the final product of a movie. There is a ratio in movie making called the shooting ratio. This ratio is the number of hours of shot vs the amount actually used. It has evolved from a 10:1 ratio to around a 308:1 ratio. Joker’s editing is very conventionally safe. There are no ruptures, mistakes, or shenanigans when it comes to this film’s editing. It’s serviceable and kinda generic when compared to other dramas. It is exactly what you expect from a drama, but nothing like you would expect from a superhero film. This is because of a theme surrounding my appreciation of this film. It’s a drama film first, a superhero film second

There is this scene about halfway through the movie where Arthur is being harassed by three guys in the subway. There is a segment in that scene where Arthur is pushed onto the ground and is getting kicked repeatedly. The lights in the subway flicker as Arthur is being beaten, almost like his lights are about to be blacked out. Arthur then pulls a gun on the three guys and shoots them, illuminating the dark subway. After that, the lights in the subway never flicker again in that scene.

Moving Pictures says that “The soundscape around us shapes our understanding of the world, becoming its own meaningful context for every other sense perception.” (Shaman 190) The original score of Joker is perfect for the film. The score was nominated and won many awards for best original score in 2019. The best scene of the film. The interview with Murray uses music impressively. The shot of the close-up of Arthur telling Murray that he is awful is met with no music, it’s dead silent besides Arthur’s dialogue. It’s tense, without the music telling you it’s tense because there is no music. Your understanding of Arthur thought the film is informing you that something is about to happen. Immediately following that sense of uh oh, the music kicks back in and is ramping up higher and higher. The scene reaching its climax with one of the most extreme sounds known to man, a gunshot.

Moving Pictures says that a movie is made three separate times. Once by the screenwriter, the second time by the director and crew. And finally lastly by the editor in post-production. (Sharman 163) Editors have a lot of control over the final product of a movie. There is a ratio in movie making called the shooting ratio. This ratio is the number of hours of shot vs the amount actually used. It has evolved from a 10:1 ratio to around a 308:1 ratio. Monty Python’s editing is one of the only relatively conventional things about the movie. While every aspect of Monty Python is usually rule-breaking, its editing is pretty simple. The most extreme aspect of editing is the back and forth editing between live-action acting and something like stop-motion animation. The absurdity of the back and forth between real life and stop-motion is funny and shows that some of the scenes in Monty Python are hilarious because of the editor in the post-production

One aspect of Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s editing that I found interesting was the scene where the same clip of Lancelot running is used over and over for comedic effect. Using the same clip is usually a Faux pas in movies, but Monty Python breaks this rule, which is a common theme around this movie. The confusion of the guards in the scene is the exact confusion that the audience is feeling and the whole joke is from the editing. A lot of scenes in this movie have the editing of the scene itself is the joke. There was a scene where someone is listening to the forest and sounds of power tools and other things that wouldn’t fit in the current time period. A sound effect that doesn’t fit the time period usually takes the audience out of the movie, but because Monty Python doesn’t take itself seriously there is nothing that takes the audience out of the movie.

Moving Pictures says that “The soundscape around us shapes our understanding of the world, becoming its own meaningful context for every other sense perception.” (Shaman 190) The sound design around Monty Python is conventional when it sets up the false expectation of a grand adventure movie, and unconventional when it comes time to be a comedy. Typically for films in regards to music is that the music should fit the surrounding footage. Action music during an Action scene, sad music during a sad scene, etc. This is why the music in Monty Python is usually conventional. Scenes where King Arthur is walking in a field as he adventures through to find the Holy Grail are met with music that is equally adventurous and for a lack of a better word, epic.

Moving Pictures is quoted as saying that Mise-En-Scene is “referring to every element in the frame that contributes to the overall look of a film.” (Sharman 64) Moving Pictures says that the elements of a film that continued to Mise-En-Scene are set design, costume, hair, make-up, color scheme, framing, composition, and lightning. I really like the coloring chosen for this movie, the dark colors in certain scene vs the bright almost sickening colors in others just show the kind of mess Arthur is surrounded by. The lightning of Joker (2019) is pretty standard for DC films. DC superhero movies have always been darker in terms of lightning and tone when compared to Marvel superhero films. The difference between the lightning in Joker in comparison to something like The Justice League is that the dark lightning in Joker serves as a symbolic representation of the story, rather than just a stylistic choice.

Moving Pictures compares actors to athletes, “They spend a lifetime training, perfecting their technique, honing their bodies to be the perfect instrument of their craft.” (Sharman 218) Moving Pictures says that the perfect performance is more than the sum of its parts, like lightning in a bottle. The acting in Joker is top-notch.  Joaquin Phoenix is such a talented actor and you can tell that the script for Joker was written with Phoenix in mind. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance is so well done that it seems almost real. The performances can be realistic in some scenes like the interview scene, and exaggerated in others, like the staircase dance scene. Joaquin Pheonix’s performance in the scene linked in question 5 is a star performance. There is so much raw emotion in that scene, to where you feel your eyes glued to the screen. Phoenix received the best performance of the year award for his work in Joker and I feel that this scene played a big part in that award.

Joker (2019) has a very dark color scheme. Many scenes in the movie are either very green, like the scene where Joker shoots the three people in the subway, or orange like the scene where Murray Franklin interviews Arthur. Scenes can change between these two color schemes in different shoots. In the scene where Joker shoots the three people in the train, the inside of the train is almost a sickening green while the outside in the subway station is a very deep orange. Just looking at the color scheme of a single scene you can see the progress the audience is feeling. The green in the scene is sickening, which is how the audience should react to how the three people treat Arthur. The orange of the outside area symbolizes the attraction of attention which represents the attention Arthur will get from the people around him for his actions in this scene.

Joker (2019) uses very few special effects, which is a surprise coming from a superhero film. There are no iron man transformations, no superman eye lasers, nothing. The small number of special effects that are used are color correction in certain scenes and gun/blood effects for very obvious reasons.  The reason I believe that Joker doesn’t use as many special effects as other superhero films like Justice League or Avengers is that it’s a different type of story to those films. Joker (2019) isn’t an action-packed story of special effects punching other special effects like those in the first Avengers film. It’s a story of a character’s descent into madness, a story like that doesn’t need any special effects besides those to ensure the safety of actors. A character study film like Joker (2019) doesn’t need special effects, the proficiency of the main start and the cinematography cover any aspect that special effects could improve.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbliHNs4q14 (Links to an external site.)The scene that most prominently shows mise-en-scene is the interview scene between Murray and Arthur. This scene is my favorite one in the entire film, bar none. Every aspect of this scene is perfectly executed, The music, performance, cinematography, everything was done so well. My two favorite aspects of this scene are all in Joaquin Phoenix’s performance, the voice crack in the line “I’ll tell you what you get, you get what you f**king deserves”, and all of Arthur’s body language. There is a voice crack in Phoenix’s delivery in the first part of “I’ll tell you what you get” that was most likely not a part of the script but it adds so much emotion to this scene. What also adds emotion to this scene is the very subtle body language given by Phoenix. At around 2:55 of the link I provided, you can see Arthur’s chin shake and his voice is very shaky. You can tell Arthur is incredibly mad without a single line telling you so.

Moving Pictures is quoted as saying that Mise-En-Scene is “referring to every element in the frame that contributes to the overall look of a film.” (Sharman 64) Moving Pictures says that the elements of a film that continued to Mise-En-Scene are set design, costume, hair, make-up, color scheme, framing, composition, and lightning. A typical set design might be just a simple house that you might see in your neighborhood but something extreme could be a house of a might only be seen in certain regions like the house Bilbo Baggin’s house from The Hobbit was based on. Most movies past 1960 are shot in color, but some and very few movies are made in black and white for stylistic reasons the “The Lighthouse” in 2019. Most of the aspects of Monty Python and the Holy Grail are pretty standard in terms of Mise-En-Scene. The costumes look good, lighting is pretty standard as the movie uses natural lighting for most of the film, the only aspect of Mise-En-Scene that the film uses that’s interesting is its use of props. The coconut prop in place of an actual horse is the film’s most famous gag.

Moving Pictures compares actors to athletes, “They spend a lifetime training, perfecting their technique, honing their bodies to be the perfect instrument of their craft.” (Sharman 218) Moving Pictures says that the perfect performance is more than the sum of its parts, like lightning in a bottle. The acting in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is exaggerated and stylized, yet typical for the comedy genre. The scene where the joke is the character’s reactions to the insanity of the film are overdramatic and that makes it funny. One scene that I find the actor very funny in is when King Arthur talks to the rude Frenchman at the top of the castle. The mere absurdity of the scene compared to the other scenes in the film makes the acting very comedic. The actors start using words not commonly used in a fantasy or medieval setting, like “weight ratios” and “airspeed velocity”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4_9kDO3q0w

The Cinematography of Monty Python and the Holy Grail is somehow both typical and atypical at the same time. Monty Python is typical in the fact that the coloring and scenery of its scenes match its genre, but atypical because of the fact that it changes genres almost every ten minutes. For scenes that give an adventure vibe, we have shots of King Arthur slowly approaching for faraway on a hillside or similar scenery. But when the genre changes to something like a documentary, the shot type also changes to make the new genre. When the scene is a documentary, we see a pull-out shot of a historian, which matches the new documentary genre. When the genre shifts into the horror genre the color scheme goes into very dark and muted colors with shots of either extreme close-ups or far-away shots, to either match the feelings of claustrophobia or extreme loneliness

The very low budget of Monty Python and the Holy Grail brought a lot of smart usage of special FX. A vast amount of the special FX is used to make jokes. And the FX look is not realistic at all and that makes it a lot more fun. The stop motion god they use for scenes looks like a puppet and it adds the absurdity of the joke. Most of the effects in the movie are practical effects. The giant 9 something foot forest guardian could have just as well been done with special effects, but due to the budget, it’s multiple people standing on top of each other. The FX of the movie is mostly camera trickery, the french guard yelling at King Arthur and his knight isn’t actually standing on the top of the castle, it’s a separate shot of the french guard standing in a cutout of the castle. The scene where a castle is in the background it’s just a cut-board cutout, they even say so in the film “it’s only a model”

Nearly every function of Monty Python and the Holy Grail is there to be funny and entertaining. The performances are over-exaggerated for the sake of humor, the cinematography also serves to complement the current genre the film is in, the playoff the contrast of a genre shift. The FX are such bad quality and it’s humorous and plays off the rest of the lack of budget. The narrative of the film is constantly being convoluted to add to the confusion of the audience that the movie used to be humorous. The narrative is supported by the psychological aspects of the audio that also confuse the audience, such as the sounds of power tools in what we can assume to be the 5th or 6th century. One scene I enjoyed was Lance-a-lot running towards a castle and it would cut back and forth between the guards and Lance-a-lot. Every time the scene cuts back to lance-a-lot its the same shot of him running up a hill so when it cuts directly to Lance-a-lot stabbing the guard, it makes no sense but you can’t help but laugh

Moving Pictures constantly compare filmmaking with language. Each shot in a film is a single letter. A scene made of multiple shots, a scene is a sentence. An act is a paraphrase, A movie is an essay. “Just as linguistic meaning is built up from a set sequence of words, phrases, and sentences, cinematic meaning is built up from a sequence of shots and scenes.” (Sharman 165). One of Joker’s most famous scenes is essentially a single shot, Joker shooting Murray. Murray having Arthur Fleck on his show is a single set-piece, And a single shot could have been satisfactory for that scene. Joker is broken up into three chunks, Set up, Descent, and Madness. The setup is showing the whole Arthur lives in, the Descent is the world further beating down on Arthur, and Madness is Arthur turning in the Joker, white face paint, green hair, and red suit.

A good story usually follows a very simple recipe “1 protagonist. 1 goal. A whole bunch of obstacles.” (Sharman 100). But what Joker does is unconventional, Arthur Fleck never reaches that goal. The goal is being accepted by society, which is represented by Arthur struggling to climb a large set of stairs, constantly shown throughout the film. But Arthur Fleck never reaches the top of those stairs. After Arthur Fleck becomes the Joker, He is shown at the top of the stairs dancing all the way down, a metaphor for his descent into madness and chaos. The bunch of obstacles that Arthur Fleck faces is the society and environment around him. People beat him up for no reason, his mother doesn’t love him, his mental health care loses support, and his idle Franklin Murray public makes fun of him. All Arthur Fleck wanted to do in life is make people laugh, and all everyone did was laugh at him, not with him, at him

“Narrative structure may be a critical component of cinematic language, but ultimately, the structure is another word for the plot, and we don’t go to the movies to root for plots, we root for people.” (Sharman 106). The difference between a plot and a story is that a plot is what is currently happening in the media. A plot is a movie, the story is the timeline. If event “2” in the timeline happens first in the film, that’s because of how the film was plotted. When a film goes in chronological order, the plot and story are nearly the same. Joker is in chronological order so the distinction between plot and story is slim to none. The movie does not hold back its information, it directly shows you the kind of hell that Arthur Fleck has both been through and currently lives in. When critics talk about Joker’s story it is usually about how it mirror’s our own society’s look at mental health.

This film is a story, a story of a man and his descent into madness that the society around him cultivated. This story is also kind of a poem, a cautionary tale poem about the effects that the lack of support people facing mental health can lead to. The scene with Arthur Fleck climbing the stairs, only for Joker to strut down the stairs around the end of the film is just the kind of metaphor that poems have. The colors of the film are quite dark and mudded, almost lacking expression. But this doesn’t follow Arthur Fleck and Joker. His face paint is white, his hair is bright green, and his suit a strong red.  It contrasts with the moody colors of the world around Arthur.