I just finished watching The Lord of The Rings trilogy, which is one of the most famous western fantasy films. However, I found a lot of plots and characters that are very similar to those in another very successful fantasy film-- Harry Potter. I do not think it may be a kind of plagiarize, so the only reason for it is that: The similarities are Western Values which the society treasures a lot.
Now I will list a few of the similarities and do a little of analysis.
l There are more than one leading roles. Different from Super Man and Spider Man or whatever Man, Harry Potter and The Lord of The Rings have many leading roles and everyone is necessary, which means victory needs the strength of unity rather than someone's super power.
l Long live the friendship. That is easy to find. Ron and Hermione support Harry unconditionally just like Sam does to Frodo.
l The devil has a matchless army and an immortal body. Evil cannot be head-on destroyed.
l But the devil will die with the ruin of certain items. I think the items represent certain kind of appetites. There will be no darkness if only humans can defeat these appetites.
l Females can do even better than males.
l The most intelligent character must be a greybeard.
l Go to the dangers or go back? "I cannot go back!
l Humans will defeat the evil. After all, no matter how powerful the evil is, humans will win. That is a belief.
With knowing these, you may guess the ending and plots correctly when you see a western fantasy film next time.
It is quite interesting! I enjoy reading your blog. When rending this, I can imagine your facial expressions. However,I really do not know what to say about your content.
ReplyDeleteYour summary is very intersting! However, as I consider, some of them cannot be regarded as the outcome of Western Values. For example, the wisest is always described as an old man with long white beard in Chinese fairy tales as well. In addition, I think the only leading character in is Harry Potter but I should also claim that I like Ron, Hermione,Dumbledore,Ginny and many other characters as well.
ReplyDeleteFirstly I want to say this kind of fantasy movie is nothing about western values. Also, I think some of the similarity you summaries is not neccesary because whether it is a hero movie or fantasy movie, it is a must that the justice will defeat evil. And I think what really attract us in Harry Potter or the Rings is the strong and imaginable story background not socalled relationship or army. Finally, your blog gives some reflection about the continuous weakness of Chinese fantasy movie. Actually, there are not any fantasy movies such as whatever man or Harry Potter, so I search the Internet and I find the reason why China cannot make out this kind of movie is because in the long history of China, people's imagination more limited inthe "Wu Xia"culture. Chinese fantasy story more concentrates in the realm of individual instead of different races such as theRings. That is all my point of view. All in all, thank you for sharing your opinion.
ReplyDelete