Decon Recon Switch / Live-Action Films

• 21 Jump Street takes all the tropes of the original show and sets them in modern day. It deconstructs the tropes by showing that a much more self-aware and smarter society is quicker to catch up on what Jump Street may actually be doing. It reconstructs it back together by still following all their gimmicks respectfully.
• According to one interpretation, Adaptation. deconstructs movie cliches in the first half, then reconstructs them in the second. The Hero Charlie Kaufman, while undergoing hard-core writer's block and trying to adapt an unadaptable book, spends the first half of the movie decrying a bunch of cliches (such as the Polar Opposite Twins) and insists he doesn't wants to add them to the film because he thinks they are unrealistic, and the second half then goes on to demonstrate that at least some of those cliches are Acceptable Breaks from Reality for a reason (such as the fact that Charlie's Polar Opposite Twin Donald is actually a Helpful Hallucination or writer guru Robert McKee unleashes a hard-core "The Reason You Suck" Speech on Charlie while highlighting how Reality Is Unrealistic (another interpretation is that it just deconstructs these cliches in the first half and spoofs them in the second half, without any attempt at reconstruction).
  Charlie Kaufman: Sir, what if the writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens? Where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies, they struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world.
  Robert McKee: The real world?
  Charlie Kaufman: Yes, sir.
  Robert McKee: The real fucking world. First of all, you write a screenplay without conflict or crisis you'll bore your audience to tears. Secondly, nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There's genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save somebody else. Every fucking day someone somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ's sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! Someone goes hungry, somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can't find that stuff in life, then you my friend don't know crap about life! And why the FUCK are you wasting my two precious hours with your movie!? I don't have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!
  Charlie Kaufman: ...Okay, thanks.
• Tim Burton's 1988 hit film Beetlejuice at first appeared to deconstruct the monster movie by showing that the "monsters" could be pretty decent folk, the corollary of course being that Humans Are Bastards. But the movie ultimately affirms that not only are humans redeemable if they're just scared straight, but supernatural creatures can still be complete assholes.
• Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon deconstructs the slasher genre for most of the first hour of the movie, then reconstructs it in the end. The first hour is a mockumentary that shows how Vernon is just a regular human man who takes great lengths to be Crazy-Prepared for a single night of bloody rampaging... and then the third act has the documentary team recording him find out the hard way that this preparedness makes Vernon as nigh-unstoppable and unavoidable as a slasher is expected to be, that all the knowledge that it's just smoke and mirrors doesn't change the fact that there's a maniac killer out to get you, and that they too were among his chosen victims all along. In the end, it's the documentarian herself who becomes the Final Girl, just as Vernon had planned.
• The Dark Knight Trilogy and its Spiritual Successor The Batman (2022) do this for Batman. Batman now operates using modern-day technology in more realistic cities and has to adjust his gear and techniques as such, but ultimately still turns out to be his usual awesome crime fighting self. It deconstructs some of the more negative aspects of Batman's character - the public backlash, the immense physical toll it takes on Bruce Wayne's body, the escalating superhero-supervillain arms race, and the fact that Batman is fighting for justice in a system that may be beyond saving. The reconstruction comes from the fact that in each movie, Bruce, or even the people of Gotham itself, proves the villains wrong by standing up to the threat and firmly showing why Gotham and its people can be changed, and the trilogy ends with Batman retired by necessity, but Gotham at peace.
  • The Batman (2022), meanwhile, starts out as a Deconstruction of Batman's Terror Hero aspects. The opening scene establishes that while Batman has done an extremely effective job striking fear into the hearts of criminals (the mere sight of the Bat-Signal in the sky has every criminal looking in fear at any dark alleyway or hallway, terrified that Batman might be lurking in the shadows), crime hasn't actually gone down, it's gone up. It's taken even further when it's revealed that The Riddler was actually inspired by Batman and believed that they were working together to clean up corruption in Gotham. However, it's Reconstructed at the end, when Batman realizes that it's not enough to merely terrify criminals, but that he also needs to become someone who can inspire hope in those he's trying to protect, and he starts taking his first steps towards becoming a Hope Bringer for the people of Gotham.
• As this article points out, Zack Snyder's three movies for the DC Extended Universe follow this road, with Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice being the deconstructions and Zack Snyder's Justice League as the reconstruction.
  • With Superman, Clark's alien powers initially alienate him from the rest of the world (as is shown with how his classmates bullied him as a child and treated him like "the weird kid") and give him a great deal of grief as he grew up due to having no one to teach him how to deal with them. Furthermore, his Muggle Foster Parents are paranoid and frightened that terrible things could happen if their adopted son's secret were to get out, and make him swear to lay low. However, he can't not help people in some way, putting himself in danger or risk of exposure even before he puts on the suit, and when faced with the choice of bringing Krypton back at the expense of letting every human be killed in the process, Clark chooses his adopted home world without a second thought.
  • Batman v Superman does it for both title characters. Superman has to deal with humanity's divided opinions over him, especially given the destructive aftermath of his battle against General Zod in the last movie, while Batman has been fighting crime in Gotham for nearly twenty years by the events of this movie, is clearly suffering from burnout and PTSD (not helped by how he'd lost a sidekick to the Joker), and is consumed with paranoia that Superman's power makes him a threat to humanity to the point that he doesn't see/realize that an even worse threat, Lex Luthor, is hiding in the shadows. It all ends on a pretty depressing note with Superman sacrificing himself to stop Luthor's monstrous creation from killing everyone while Batman and Wonder Woman see that Earth is vulnerable to new threats from beyond.
  • Zack Snyder's Justice League, by contrast, rebuild the heroes, being much lighter in tone (while still being serious) and focusing more on the fantastical elements. After the events of BvS, Batman has rediscovered his sense of purpose and is determined to honor Superman's sacrifice by putting together a league of superheroes to face these bigger threats Luthor warned him of. Each of the heroes start off hurt or broken in some way, but through finding each other and supporting one another on and off the battlefield, they become a surrogate family. In a direct contrast to the hostility and paranoia he demonstrated in the previous movie, Batman has a conversation with Alfred where he expresses the need to rely on faith that others will do the right thing. Furthermore, as the article notes, superheroes can't just punch their way out of tough and morally grey questions with no easy answers, like how to solve societal issues and whatnot... but they are essential for protecting Earth from threats like Darkseid.
• Demolition Man does this to the Cowboy Cop. LAPD cop John Spartan is so bold and reckless in stopping criminals that his superiors hate him, bestowing upon him the titular nickname. As he finally takes down psychotic criminal Simon Phoenix in such a destructive manner that led to the deaths of dozens of hostages, he gets a life sentence in prison alongside Phoenix. Decades later, Phoenix is released into a violence-free society where police officers are so by-the-book that they are absolutely unable to think for themselves, and Phoenix easily outclasses them. The police decide to release Spartan to stop Phoenix, accepting that a less by-the-book, more intuitive policeman would do better in bringing down an Ax-Crazy criminal like Phoenix. Spartan, however, is uncomfortable with how cops like Lenina Huxley are enthralled by his cavalier behavior and eventually does acknowledge that the world of impossibly low crime that created such inept cops is far more peaceful than his own time, which produced a Cowboy Cop like him.
• Destination Wedding: Frank and Lindsay tear apart romance tropes while they commiserate on being stuck together at a wedding, but over the course of the film develop a sincere romance of their own.
• Enchanted does this to princess and Disney fairytale tropes. For instance, princesses usually have cute and cuddly animal friends, right? In New York City, the only animals around are pests like rats, pigeons, and cockroaches. They still become good and helpful princess animal friends. Edward, the prince Giselle originally seems destined to be with, is a bumbling ditz who turns out to not be Giselle's true love after all. However, he's still a genuinely decent man who doesn't hesitate to step aside to let Giselle be kissed by her true love, and does get to be a bonafide Prince Charming for another woman.
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind deconstructs the standard Romantic Comedy by detailing the break-up of a relationship... and in doing so shows why the Odd Couple got together in the first place. They end up back together by the end of the film.
• Finley does this to "killer doll" horror movies such as the Child's Play series. Upon being awakened by the owners of the house his crate has been stowed away in, Finley sets out to kill each of them, only to have all of his attempts fail either due to his small size or his lack of practice, with the three of them coming to see him as a nuisance at worst. However, after three months of unsuccessful attempts, he starts to learn from his mistakes and gets the chance to put his newfound knowledge in action when burglars invade the house.
• Galaxy Quest spends the first half of the film showing the actors from the initial Galaxy Quest TV show to be a bunch of jaded washouts with little to their name other than adoring fans. They're then given control of an actual spaceship by some misguided aliens who've mistaken them for heroes who will save them from evil Rubber-Forehead Aliens... and nearly get themselves and everyone else killed. Only once they finally realize their situation in the final act and start applying all of the old tropes from their TV show do they start kicking ass, while simultaneously showing why people fell in love with shows like Star Trek in the first place.
• Godzilla (2014) initially plays off as a darker twist of the kaiju genre, showing horrific real-life consequences of giant monster attacks. We see the main character tragically lose his father when the Male MUTO escapes. Later, we see Godzilla cause a massive tsunami in Hawaii which drowns thousands of terrified civilians, and later the main character's wife, a nurse, is seen tending to a crowded hospital filled with hundreds of wounded patients. Then comes the grand finale, where Godzilla battles the MUTO pair, and it's right back to the good old goofy-yet-awesome monster fights that we know and love. It also initially deconstructs the Gentle Giant trope. Godzilla is relatively benign compared to other incarnations. However, his massive size still makes him a danger to people such as when he first arrives in Hawaii and accidentally causes a massive tsunami simply by getting out of the water. It's later reconstructed when he learns to take his time around the tiny creatures he lives with and goes out of his way to create as little damage as possible. And in the end, the world celebrates Godzilla's victory over the MUTOs.
• The Green Hornet is arguably a deconstruction and reconstruction of the Hero/Sidekick dynamic. Two people with strong enough personalities to dress up in costumes, fill multiple cars with enough guns to take out a small country, and spend their nights kicking criminals asses without a care to the police are not going to work effectively in that kind of partnership. Since the movie is a bit more optimistic than, say, The Dark Knight, Britt and Kato eventually learn how to work together.
• The Green Knight spends much of its runtime breaking down the idea of chivalry, with Gawain's quest being shown as an absurd endeavor driven by Honor Before Reason that will almost undoubtedly result in his death, and Gawain himself is deeply flawed in his beliefs that these deeds will make him noble. His feats are held up as heroic by other characters despite them being reckless and foolhardy, and his actual knightly prowess is suspect at best. However, the end of the movie has Gawain go through a vision that reveals that if he does give up on his knightly honor and abandon the quest, then it will leave him a broken and miserable man and bring Camelot to ruin. Essentially, it comes to the conclusion that what wasn't wrong was the idea of chivalry; what was wrong was Gawain's immature understanding of it, and his obsession with the trappings of valor over its true meaning.
• Hancock starts out as a deconstruction. What if Superman didn't know who or what he is or why he can live forever, and finally got fed up of people repeatedly ostracizing him, becoming a drunken asshole as a result? The second half of the film then acts as a reconstruction, with Hancock attempting to become a genuine costumed superhero under the tuition of Ray, a grateful PR agent who's life he'd previously saved, while exploring his true origins.
• Hot Fuzz: The first half of the movie points out that most cop movie cliches are unrealistic and silly and true police work is boring bouts of surveillance and building up trust in the community. The second half of the movie plays every single one of those cliches straight, by way of a destructive gun battle against the Milkman Conspiracy that is the town's dark secret, because they're incredibly awesome... except for the fact that such an encounter leads to a having to deal with a literal mountain of paperwork, but you can't have it all.
• The Russian film If This Happens to You starts as a deconstruction of the Kid Hero subgenre of Occupiers Out of Our Country. Three children are transported back in time to World War II and, despite their best efforts, do not seem to accomplish anything against the German occupation forces. But later on, they do manage to liberate a couple of prisoners and assist the Soviet counterattack.
• James Bond:
  • GoldenEye, the first Bond movie to be made after the Cold War, does a lot in deconstructing James Bond, with many characters going on about how much the world has changed and how he doesn't fit so well into it anymore. Then, we're back to nifty gadgets, Bond One Liners, and a car chase with a tank to demonstrate that, yes, he is still relevant in a world where all of the Cold War's dirty laundry is running loose.
  • Skyfall does something similar. It asks us - if we don't have enemies out in the open anymore in the form of countries wearing symbols, does society still need secret agents operating in the shadows? Cue a bad guy who operates in the shadows and is brought down not via high tech, but by holing up and making a last stand armed with shotguns. The answer seems to be, "Yes, you damn well need people like James Bond." The film also deconstructs/reconstructs some of the iconic James Bond symbols: Q makes fun of the idea of exploding pens and M has some choice commentary about the classic Aston Martin. Then the car gets its Moment of Awesome by demonstrating that machine gun headlights can be more than a gimmick.
  • Likewise, its sequel Spectre even questions whether Attack Drones and Big Brother Is Watching can do the job of spies like 007, and whether the data that's being gathered by C's Joint Intelligence/"Nine Eyes" Program might actually end up in the wrong hands. Spectre does prove that yes, Bond is still relevant in an era of digital surveillance and drones, while also critiquing the Joint Intelligence/"Nine Eyes" program's flaws, especially if backdoor access is handed over to criminals (like SPECTRE) who can then blackmail countries into doing their bidding even if they don't like it.
• In the Kamen Rider crossover film of OOO and W movie Kamen Rider x Kamen Rider OOO & W Featuring Skull: Movie Wars CORE, Akiko thinks that the people who became Kamen Riders ruined their own personal lives including the happiness of their loved ones, however during the climax of the film as the Big Bad received all the memories of every Kamen Rider thinking himself as the rider, W and OOO reject his belief because even though the riders give up their own personal lives, they will always protect everyone, even their beloved ones.
• Kick-Ass, at least the film version, used this trope. The first half of the movie was spent hammering in the message that being a superhero in the real world is equivalent to buying a one-way ticket to getting your ass kicked. However, the second half, especially the showdown with the Big Bad, takes on a much lighter tone, showing that hey, maybe you'll get your ass kicked, but at least you'll be pretty damn awesome while trying to do justice. And, by the end of the movie, more competent people have been inspired by Kick-Ass' feats of badassery.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service does this to the Tuxedo and Martini Spy Fiction of early James Bond films. It begins by deconstructing it, including the sheer amount of trauma that comes with becoming such an operative even in the training stages and having a truly cunning villain who refuses to abide by Death Trap creation and other Bond Villain Stupidity, but comes back to a Reconstruction when the team of Merlin, Roxy, and Eggsy work together and use the tactics of many of this type to fight back anyway.
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang did this to the mystery genre by both showing the realistic consequences of an Amateur Sleuth acting like he's a Hardboiled Detective when the bad guys have no patience for games, but at the same time structuring the plot to mirror that of the old Mystery Fiction books the characters themselves keep referencing.
• The Last Exorcism does this to Demonic Possession movies. Not only does it avert Christianity is Catholic by having the exorcist Cotton Marcus be an evangelical minister, it also portrays him as a charlatan who has grown disillusioned with the faith, recognizing that the "possessed" people he is treating are suffering from mental illness that, due to their religious upbringing, manifests as a belief that they are possessed by demons. His main goal in the film isn't to drive a demon from Nell, but to convince her family that what she needs is a psychiatrist once he realizes what's really up with her. That said, while the possession is psychosomatic, so is the exorcism, and Marcus recognizes that it can help people overcome their belief that they are possessed. And as it turns out, Nell really was possessed — and what's more, a Satanic cult had been misleading Marcus the whole time as to what was really going on. The Bolivian Army Ending sees Marcus recover his faith for one last battle with the forces of Satan.
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) deconstructs the Bond-esque spy thriller by turning the two leads into antiheroes. The suave sophistication of Solo is balanced by the fact that he's a greedy Boxed Crook who is only doing this work because he has to. The action-oriented Kurykin is a brooding, emotionally damaged ball of rage. However, they eventually manage to put aside their grievances toward each other and participate in a straight spy action-adventure.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier deconstructs the superhero archetype of The Cape by showing that Steve Rogers' ideals don't quite fit in the modern, pragmatic world. He wonders if his morals and values mean anything in modern society or even the old days, and his refusal to change them results in finding himself useless. The reconstruction kicks in when Steve retrieves his old WWII uniform from the Smithsonian and finds hope in the allies that believe in him (i.e. Natasha and Sam). His Rousing Speech to SHIELD agents influences them to stop Project Insight. Finally, Steve's belief in the good in people results in Bucky going against his Winter Soldier programming and saving him from drowning in the Potomac River.
  • Spider-Man: Homecoming has one for teenage superheroes. Although the failings of Peter Parker's mentors certainly played a role in it as well, almost everything bad that happens in this movie can be traced back to one well-meaning but inexperienced superhero meddling in affairs way out of his league, as Peter almost gets himself, his classmates, and hundreds of bystanders killed several times. For example, he almost drowns while fighting the Vulture after causing untold amounts of damage on his way to catch his goons, he puts the Washington Monument and everyone inside in danger by leaving a dangerous piece of alien technology with his friend, and he sinks a ferry boat by acting before the proper authorities get a chance to. It's only due to the repeated interventions of actual heroes that he survives. However, by the end of the film he's able to prove his worth by stopping the Vulture from making off with the Avengers' tech without any help (even using his original Beta Outfit to get the job done) and the adults realize he does have what it takes to be one of the Avengers. Peter declines because he realizes that the regular people need a superhero too, and he can fill out that niche while the other heroes can't.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 has it all over the place.
    • Of the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that the Guardians are famous for being. Despite having worked together for years by this point and being famous heroes, their numerous differences still often results in Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, to the point that Nebula outright accuses Drax and Mantis of being The Load while Mantis also insults Nebula, and it becomes a plot point that everyone is constantly making separate plans simply because they feel like it, resulting in half of the team breaking into the High Evolutionary's ship to rescue Quill and Groot who have already escaped. Despite this, however, the Guardians are genuine True Companions who love each other like family and their many differences are what allow them to work together so well as a team as well as bringing unique skills and experiences.
    • Of the Replacement Goldfish. Quill at first tries to recreate a connection with the Gamora from 2014, having spent years mourning her death, but is consistently horrified by how brutal the new Gamora is while she is angered by Quill's attempts to make her like the original Gamora. Gamora also points out that Quill's need for her to be someone important to him reveals that there is something wrong with him. Despite this, while they don't begin any sort of romance Quill and Gamora part on friendly terms, Gamora having come to see why the original Gamora could have fallen for Quill and saying they "must have been fun" while Quill recognises her as a different person from his Gamora and acknowledges that his need to have his version back stems from how he's been running from the pain of his mother's death for decades.
    • Of Drax's role as the Dumb Muscle. Nebula eventually becomes furious with Drax's lack of self awareness, yelling how everyone is constantly carrying him on this team while he remains cheerfully oblivious to how very little he contributes to the team. Mantis points out that while she does think he's stupid, which Drax is hurt by until she makes him forget, he's also a caring person and the only member of the team not haunted by his Dark and Troubled Past. Nebula also comes to see that his dumb but well meaning nature is what made him an amazing father in the past and important to getting the kids to safety, with the ending have her tell Drax that he was not born to be a destroyer, but to be a father which is why he takes responsibility of the freed children.
    • Of Mantis' role as The Heart. Nebula points out that her role mostly involves sensing peoples' feelings and talking about it with them, making her in Nebula's eyes just as useless as Drax. However, the film shows that her empathic abilities make her able to befriend any creature, including the alien monsters that the High Evolutionary hoped would kill them. It also allows her to encourage and help her allies, such as when Cosmo's exhaustion almost caused her to lose focus in using her powers.
• The Muppets Take Manhattan is one for The Muppet Movie. In both films, the Muppets come to the big city expecting to become stars. Only this time, they find out it's not so simple as just showing up and asking, especially for a bunch of nobodies fresh out of college. Instead of giving them a contract, producer after producer rejects them, thinking It Will Never Catch On, until the Muppets run out of money and end up taking less-than-stellar jobs. Afterwards, the movie shows that even though it's not easy, you can still make your dreams come true if you keep trying and find the right opening. The Empire State Building scene is basically Kermit's resolve to find the second half of this trope.
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has a central theme of deconstructing the pirate mythology by having the world taken over by corporate power. The opening scene is a mass execution of anyone showing even the slightest sympathy for anyone accused of piracy (which means even you, the audience, would be up there for rooting for the pirates in the last two movies), Davy Jones, the main villain of Dead Man's Chest, has been reduced to Corrupt Corporate Executive Cutler Beckett's lackey, and the fearsome Kraken gets unceremoniously Killed Offscreen as Jack and Barbossa muse about the world being less special for it. Beckett rubs this deconstruction in Jones's face.
  This is no longer your world, Jones. The immaterial has become immaterial.
  • Where the Reconstruction comes in is that Beckett presents such a huge existential threat that it convinces the pirates, who normally hate each other and are constantly at each others' guts (Jack and Barbossa serving as a prime example in the first movie, Curse of the Black Pearl), to band together against a common enemy and defend their way of life. This is also reflected by main characters Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann throughout the entire trilogy. Both of them get swept up in the pirate lifestyle, lose their innocence, become increasingly treacherous and self-preserving, and end as Star-Crossed Lovers, but ultimately, they play a prominent role in reshaping the world. Elizabeth Swann gets elected Pirate King and leads the final rebellion, while Will Turner becomes Captain of the Flying Dutchman, restoring the ship to its original role of ferrying souls to the afterlife after it was corrupted into hell on earth by Davy Jones. The Reconstruction is exemplified by his father Bootstrap Bill Turner:
  This ship has a purpose again.
• In Power Rangers (2017) the original Power Rangers Mythos is deconstructed. Unlike the original TV series, Zordon, who is more interested in reviving himself, isn’t happy that a group of untrained teenagers were chosen by the Power Coins to be the successors of his team, and the Rangers have a hard working together and being a team, due them being from different friend groups and not knowing each other that well, leaving unable to morph. However, it later gets reconstructed, when over the course of the film the Rangers bond, and when Billy dies they truly come together as team and unlock the Morphing Grid with Zordon choosing to sacrifice his chance to be revived so Billy can live again, finally accepting the new Power Rangers.
• The big hook of Scream (1996) was that its characters knew all the tropes and cliches of slasher movies, and tried to avoid making silly mistakes that got people like them killed in such movies. The thing was, the same was true of the killer, who was far craftier than the usual masked maniacs of the genre and knew how to subvert the subversions of the people he was trying to kill. (The film's tagline was even "someone has taken their love of scary movies one step too far.") This is best illustrated by a scene where the Final Girl Sidney snarks about Too Dumb to Live slasher victims who run upstairs when they should be running out the front door... only to find herself forced to run upstairs no more than five minutes later because she had locked the front door and couldn't get it open in time to escape from Ghostface.
• As Quoted on the main page, The Princess Bride. The Official Couple are a simple commoner and farmboy, and when the boy makes The Promise that True Love will carry him back to her, this is immediately subverted by him seemingly being lost at sea. Then when Buttercup is chosen as a commoner to become a princess, it's a kind of political ploy where Prince Humperdink is marrying her to shore up his political standing, and to use her as a pawn to start a war with their rival kingdom. The Gentle Giant and Lovable Rogue were Forced into Evil because they need money to survive, and neither of their traits make them particularly employable in the world around them. The mysterious masked man beats the evil leader through simple use of Acquired Immunity from poison. The villains do NOT keep their word even to someone they say they value. And even at the end, it ends not in a dramatic final fight, but a heroic bluff. At the same time, the Framing Device is that this is a storybook, and as the story goes on, the grandson even gets upset that the story isn't going how it's "suppose to". But even with all these flaws, the story turns into something much more fulfilling. The Princess, while not a fighter, shows an emotional strength and a refusal to accept what is decreed. The heroic lead wins with skill, brains and wits, but needs rescuing in the end too. The henchmen end up being the Spanner in the Works to the whole movie, as their honor ends up saving the leads. The Lifes Goal is fulfilled, but he's given a potential future so it's not pure Vengeance Feels Empty. All in all, while the main fantasy tropes are knocked on, the story itself is still a heroic tale of getting the girl, finding friends and Love Triumphing.
• Snow White: A Tale of Terror deconstructs the original fairytale by making the new stepmother start out as quite warm and friendly to the young girl. But the girl resents her new stepmother for taking her father's attention and she grows up into a rather bratty teenager, still shying away from any attempt at making friends the stepmother makes. After the stepmother suffers a miscarriage, she then gets pushed over the edge and the fairytale plays out normally.
• Spy: The film first acts a deconstruction of James Bond films and the idea of a fully capable secret agent. We see from the outset that the primary reason why Bond-like agents are one-man armies is because they have hardworking desk agents who monitor their every action, scope the surrounding areas for Mooks, tell the agent when to duck mid-fight, and call in a drone strike to help an agent get out of a sticky situation. This is reconstructed later in the film when Susan goes out into the field and we learn that she always had the chops to be a top agent, getting the top marks at the academy and literally decimating the field test. Fine knew this and persuaded her to be his assistant rather than a field agent so she wouldn't be the best spy in the game, leaving room for himself to take that title. However, this ultimately backfires; Susan's ten years as an analyst has provided her with the tech skills and knowledge of targets to make her a one-woman "two-man team" combining brains and brawn, thus making her a Bond-level super-spy.
• Star Trek Into Darkness: The movie starts out with Captain Kirk getting utterly reamed by Admiral Pike for his Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! methods and demoted to first officer. By the time the movie is over, he's back in command of the Enterprise and those same methods led to the villains' plots being foiled.
• Star Wars:
  • The series as a whole does this to The Chosen One. In the prequel trilogy, Anakin Skywalker is told at a young age that he is the chosen one with great powers. But eventually, he becomes completely arrogant, and he loses his friends and lover in his attempts to assert that power, eventually falling to the Dark Side of the Force and becoming Darth Vader. In the original trilogy, his son Luke is told about his potential at a later age when he's more emotionally mature, and thus avoids falling to the Dark Side, even getting Anakin/Vader to the Light Side once again.
  • The sequel trilogy, especially Episode VIII, does it too, regarding some aspects of the Jedi religion. More than any other installment in the series so far, it stresses the fact that the Jedi Order was a worldly institution led by fallible sentient beings, and was indirectly responsible for its own destruction, in part because of an overemphasis on practical aspects of Force mastery (lifting up rocks, etc...). Though, as long as people use the dark side of the Force, there is a need to use the light side to oppose them. Oh, and lifting up rocks can be useful, too.
  • Firmly driven home with the last few images of Luke in The Last Jedi: Luke becomes one with the Force while looking at a double sunset, linking the beginning and ending of his journey together and, by reminding us where he started, that for all his failings, he truly was the greatest Jedi of all time. The first words we see in the movie are "THE FIRST ORDER REIGNS", and the image that ends the movie is a Force-sensitive child holding a broom like a kid playing with a toy lightsaber, looking up at the stars and dreaming of something better. Like all of us when we watch the movies.
  • Rogue One deconstructs the image of the Rebellion by giving us a Rebel Alliance that is desperate, outgunned, can't agree on what to do and is willing to kill innocent people to further its own goals. Some factions of the Rebellion, like Saw Gerrera's partisans, are dangerously close to jihadist terrorism, and most people in the galaxy, like Jyn Erso, care only about keeping their heads down and not attracting Imperial attention. The effort that the first half puts into reminding us how impossible the odds are for our heroes ultimately makes it that much more inspiring when they fight back against their orders and successfully steal the Death Star plans at the cost of all their lives. Showing how much blood, sweat, and human life went into retrieving those plans makes the ultimate inevitable victory that much more meaningful. By the end of the film, the transition from cynical realism to heroic idealism is complete, and the Rogue One crew passes the baton up to A New Hope by ending with the plans being delivered to the living symbol of Rebellion heroism, Princess Leia.
  • Rogue One also specifically takes apart before rebuilding the concept of belief in the Force as a religion with the characters of Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus. With their temple destroyed and their church outlawed, Baze has become an embittered cynic with no faith in the Force, and while Chirrut remains pious, even his best friend thinks he's delusional and misguided. Yet throughout the film, Chirrut's trust in the Force remains unshakeable and drives him to perform some incredibly badass feats of strength and skill. In the final battle, Chirrut literally walks unharmed through a hail of gunfire possibly through the power of the Force while chanting his Survival Mantra, and Baze's faith has been restored to such a degree that he repeats the mantra as Chirrut lies dying in his arms, before pulling an epic Last Stand of his own.
• Transformers: Age of Extinction applies this to Optimus Prime's Ideal Hero status. The first three movies portray Optimus as having faith in humanity's potential for good, but Age of Extinction sees the Autobots being betrayed and hunted down by the humans they swore to protect. Needless to say, Optimus is heartbroken by this betrayal and considers leaving Earth permanently. It is only after Cade reasons with him that Optimus regains his idealism. In the climax, Optimus says that evil comes from both humanity and Cybertronians alike, and it is their responsibility to do the right thing regardless of the circumstances.
• Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven deconstructs The Gunslinger tropes and Eastwood's career as those types of characters. Eastwood's Will Munny admits that as a gunslinger he was a drunken, damaged monster who survived his many shootouts mostly through luck. An author looking for dime-novel biographies of Wild West gunslingers is perpetually disappointed to find that all of the frontier legends he investigates are lies or gross embellishments. However, Munny's quest for vengeance, both to avenge the prostitutes and his slain friend, ultimately plays out like a classic western.

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