How Have Our Ideas of Heroes Changed over Time Essay

In the beginning of cinema heroes and heroines t intercepted to hitch within the mythic structure of heroes using binary pairs of opposite cost to simplify the complexity of levelts and reducing the players down to good guys and bad guys or more cinematic, white hats and black hats. That changed radically in the late 1960s and early 70s when a series of films such(prenominal) as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, sightly and Clyde, The Godfather, Midnight Cowboy and One flew Over the Cuckoos go up, literally turned mythic structure on its head and presented the cinematic anti-hero.Before this golden age of film an audition 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 conducts its audience to redefine justice in order to root for our heroes who are in fact the villains and hiss the villains who are in fact the good guys.Bonnie and Clyde does the same, the Godfather does it so well that films influence is noniceable in prevailing attitudes some justice today. Midnight Cowboy and One flew Over the Cuckoos Nest dont necessarily offer up villains as heroes, nevertheless 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 close up weaker, less competent versions of the mythic hero who rather than subscribe there audience to be inspired by greatness they ask their audience to celebrate rebelliousness 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 criticism today. There are still and will eternally be surge of films made that remain true 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 racy Free Die Hard, Casino Royale, Mission Impossible, and almost any Harrison Ford film. In these films, no matter how complicated things drop dead the white hats always prevail the black hats lose.These films do not do well with the film critics that find 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 between these movies and the action films such as Live Free Die Hard or any Harrison Ford accept is that Harrison Fords heroes always live and in the films praised by critics the heroes always died.I am skeptical that Braveheart would have actually won the Oscar for best picture if William Wallace lived. This is the direct and perhaps the most important change in the depiction of heroes and heroines everyplace the years in film. The abandonment of classical mythic structure in exchange for realism where rational ideas become notions that heroes arent heroes unless they die conflict the good fight and villains arent so bad once you authentically get to know them.