Reconstruction / Film

Reconstructions in Films and Animated Films.

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Films — Animation:

Films — Animation

• In the 2010s (although it arguably started earlier with 2007's Enchanted), Disney began reconstructing its classic "fairy tales with princesses and true love" formula that had been deconstructed and parodied to death in the 2000s by films like Shrek and Hoodwinked!. Their princesses are proactive and have goals that don't include "find my true love" anywhere in them, their princes now need to go through a lot of Character Development and/or aren't even actual princes in the first place, and True Love's Kiss and Love at First Sight don't work as they used to, but The Princess and the Frog, Tangled, and Frozen all still end with the villain being defeated, The Power of Love saving the day in some way, and the main characters living Happily Ever After.
• Even as far back as Aladdin, Jasmine served as a Reconstruction of the Princess Classic. It was the first Princess film to address some of the hardships associated with the title - Jasmine has never left the palace, she's never known true friendship and she's bound by the law to marry someone even if she doesn't want to. But she realises that there are advantages to having the authority of a Princess.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy's Big Picture Show reconstructs the trope With Friends Like These... after at first deconstructing it. When the Eds pull a scam that pushes the neighborhood kids to their limit, forcing them flee the cul-de-sac Double D starts to question his friendship with Ed and Eddy after too many poor decisions with them, especially after they keep pulling some very ill-timed jokes on him. Eventually, a fed up Double D almost ends his friendship with Eddy and Ed when they pretend to drown in quicksand, until Eddy finally realizes how his actions are costing one of the only friends he has, and admits his flaws and how it's his fault they got into the mess they're in, and apologizes to Double D, who happily accepts, showing even though Eddy hasn't been a very good friend to him and Ed, he does care about them and doesn't want to lose their friendship.
• The Incredibles reconstructs the superhero plot, partially by correcting the mistakes and partially by transferring them to villains. Yes, superheroes need special suits, so Edna designs them. Yes, capes are silly; so Edna's suits don't feature them. Heroes do cause destruction, but how else can you defeat evil robots? Most supers are eager to be supers, as opposed to being tired and suicidal. The only one doing this for fame is, well, the villain. And so on.
• Kung Fu Panda reconstructs the idea of being an Ascended Fanboy. On the one hand, being a martial artist is not as easy as practicing moves in your room-there's a lot of hard work and training that goes into it, and already-established students aren't going to fall over themselves for you just because you're The Chosen One. On the other hand, if you can prove yourself through dedication and determination, you can live the dream and make friends with your idols. In particular, the film runs with the idea that the way Po reaches his desired level is by training the way that best suits him, while also keeping in line with the necessary steps; Shifu uses food as a motivator and incorporates its presence into training.
• The LEGO Movie. Sometimes, people can seem conformist and unoriginal in their lives. However, everyone has the potential to be a hero. Also The Prophecy was made up, but it was made so someone would believe in it and actually save the day. And most importantly, everyone can take what someone else did, and recreate something more, because Everyone IS awesome.
• Moana is a reconstruction of the classic Disney premise of the Rebellious Princess defying the strict and seemingly arbitrary rules society requires her to live by. Motunui’s taboo against sailing past the reef exists for a good reason but it’s been so long that most people have forgotten why it was instituted. The Chief is a Reasonable Authority Figure rather than a bumbling fool or blind traditionalist, and he forbids Moana from crossing the reef because he personally knows the danger of sailing into open water. Moana desperately wants to leave Motonui and explore the world, but she recognises that as the future leader of her people she has responsibilities at home that are more important and chooses to accept her role on the island until circumstances force her to leave.

Films — Live-action:

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• Due to the dark nature of the material to begin with, the line between Deconstruction and Reconstruction is often blurred with horror films.
  • Scream (1996) was, itself, a Deconstructive Parody of the Slasher Movie. Originally, writer Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven created the film as a Genre Throwback during the mid-1990s, a time when slasher movies were becoming Box Office Bombs. However, Scream resembled a traditional slasher movie even with its deconstructive elements and reminded audiences why they liked slashers so much, which subsequently helped bring the ailing genre back into popularity. It was soon followed by a large number of slasher flicks that played it completely straight.
  • Hatchet and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane deconstructed the Slasher Movie genre, albeit in two very different manners (Hatchet was a more comedic form of horror, while Mandy Lane was far more serious and gritty).
  • This became increasingly true in the post-Scream era, simply because many of the things that originally set Scream apart became the new cliches, to the point where even Scream 4, released fifteen years after the original, noted it. It became increasingly normal for characters to be at least somewhat Genre Savvy, almost all killers were shameless self-promoters and/or ideologically driven.
  • Series like Saw began deconstructing their own franchises within a few entries, simply because deconstruction was the norm.
  • You're Next, simply because it takes the entire storyline in such a wildly different direction, and uses characters who make fairly rational decisions regarding how to counter the killers without being particularly Genre Savvy (i.e. the house is under siege, begin barricading).
• Some Westerns seem to be attempts at this (3:10 to Yuma (2007), Appaloosa) in contrast to some of the more post-modern examples of the genre (such as No Country for Old Men and The Proposition). Or they may be seen as straddling the middle ground between Deconstruction and Reconstruction.
• 10 Things I Hate About You has a reconstruction of some elements of this with regards to the teen comedy. Kat's anti-social behavior stems from past high school drama and Bianca has a Heel Realization with her It's All About Me attitude.
• The whole airplane disaster genre has been spoofed thoroughly by Airplane!, and for a long time, audiences have been unable to take them seriously. United 93 is a reconstructed work of said genre, ultimately for the simple fact that many of the events actually happened...
• Bone Tomahawk strikes a balance between this and Deliberate Values Dissonance, acknowledging the antiquated values of the time period while depicting a remarkably progressive view of the Old West:
  • The town's resident Native American character is "The Professor", a gentleman who speaks fluent English, dresses well and appears to command some respect among the white community in Bright Hope. He must contend with John Brooder, a racist Jerkass Indian fighter.
  • Arthur O'Dywer is officially the town's doctor, but his pretty wife Samantha is also capable enough to treat patients when he is not available, and characters do not make a fuss over it. It is implied that the Mayoralty of Bright Hope also exists in a similar situation, as Hunt addresses Mrs. Porter whenever something needs to be done, but she insist he deliver it through her husband.
  • The two black residents of the town are lowly stable-hands but nobody expresses any racist sentiments towards them. When one of the boys is killed, the reaction of the white residents is horror and sympathy over the brutality of his death (though his employer shows more concern about the missing horses).
  • When The Savage Indian trope emerges, it is through a Cannibal Clan of cave-dwelling Troglodytes who are so inbred and degenerate that they are theorized as a Human Subspecies by The Professor, who is the one to call them "Troglodytes" and dismisses out of hand any notions of kinship Native Americans might have with the savage creatures.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes the dumb blonde who gets killed in horror movies and reconstructs her as an action heroine, then deconstructs the supergirl concept by giving her real world problems.
• Chicago and Moulin Rouge! are credited with reconstructing The Musical in movies. Both films employ a Framing Device to justify all the singing - Chicago featuring the songs as figments of Roxie's imagination, and Moulin Rouge has Christian narrating the story and emphasising the surrealist nature of the songs. Both had the darkness of the earlier deconstructions, but still plenty of throwbacks to the fun and frivolity of classic musicals.
• Cinderella (2015)
  • The film reconstructs Disney's own animated version by playing the story straight - but addressing any issues people might have with the original; Cinderella's role as The Pollyanna is born out of a desire to follow her late mother's wishes to be good to everyone, the Wicked Stepmother is given an excuse for her abuse, the lovers get to have actual conversations and get to know each other, the quest to try on the slipper is Lampshaded repeatedly and the Fairy Godmother is given a reason to help the girl.
  • The film as a whole reconstructs the Prince Charming character. Since the 90s, parodies and subversions of this character spawned their own trope. Kit here is indeed an actual Prince Charming - but with character growth and development.
  • The King was given more depth than his animated counterpart. In the animation he was the Plucky Comic Relief, wanting his son to get married because of his obsession with really wanting grandkids. In this film, it's established that their Kingdom is actually a small nation and he's invested in his son getting married to a Foreign Princess both for the good of the kingdom and his own peace of mind knowing that there will be someone to take care of Kit when he's no longer around.
• Cloverfield does this to kaiju movies. Ironically, people believed it to be a deconstruction, forgetting what a horrific anti-atomic weapons allegory the Trope Codifier Gojira really is. It started out horrific, got light and fluffy, and returned to being horrific. The film performs this reconstruction by showing the events of the film through the perspective of normal civilians. It's a surprisingly effective way to show just how gut-wrenchingly brutal and terrifying a giant monster attack would be in real life.
• Clueless is a reconstruction of Teen Movies after the bitter deconstruction of Heathers, while also taking some time out to reconstruct Jane Austen by way of adapting Emma into a modern-day setting where it actually more-or-less works.
• Dracula Untold is the first live-action movie in a long time to take the idea of a vampire turning into a bat seriously. Vlad transforms into a rather massive flock of bats, enough to account for his size and weight. It actually does a good job of making the idea not seem cheesy.
• Enchanted takes a stereotypical Disney princess and puts her in the real world of New York. Giselle starts out tripping over her own feet and being generally clueless, and making life very difficult for her caretaker. Soon, her quirkiness and overall sunshine start affecting her new world positively, and at the end she's seen using her gown-making skills and ability to control animals to start a successful fashion store.
• Godzilla (2014):
  • The movie takes a Revisiting the Roots approach to Godzilla, bringing back the grim tone and the scary-force-of-nature characterization of the King of the Monsters.
  • The movie Reconstructs the Lighter and Softer "Godzilla vs." movies that came afterwards; rather than treating such a set-up as a joke like so many parodies have done, it instead treats the "Godzilla vs." style in a straightforward way by introducing the same grim approach as Godzilla had in his initial solo outing.
  • While staying mature and serious, it also reconstructs the idea that a kaiju doesn't need to be outright villainous, and can be sympathized with. This incarnation of Godzilla coming off more of a Destructive Savior than a villainous enemy, and the M.U.T.O.s act like normal animals more than they do super villains.
  • Various elements of Godzilla's design are updated to seem more plausible. His feet are rounder like a sauropod's to support his heavy weight, he has gills on the side of his neck to explain how he can live underwater, his armoured hide and arms now look crocodilian. In general he's bulkier, as an animal his size and shape probably would be to support its own weight.
  • Also done for Nightmare Fuel: A creature with Godzilla's mass and weight leaving the ocean would not be a quiet affair. All the water he displaces causes a tsunami. The same thing would have happened if a battleship suddenly grew legs and walked onto shore, all that displaced water has to go somewhere.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters: In contrast to the anime version of the character, this Ghidorah takes the original concept and adds enough realism to make it work beautifully. A giant flying dragon would need enormous wings he could fold out of his way, that are also sturdy enough to support his weight when leaning forward. The three heads all have minds of their own, causing certain independence from each other, and move around like cobras due to their long necks. He belches a conductive ionized gas ignited by his body’s bio-electricity, and his electrical powers allow him to summon storms. His occasional mind control powers are reworked into his status as an Alpha titan with the ability to direct the other Titans as he sees fit on an instinctual level. Also, while previous King Ghidorahs were said to be planet killers, how they did so wasn't elaborated on other than 'fly around spamming Gravity Beams until everything is dead.' This Ghidorah is capable of destroying all life on Earth by virtue of his storm spreading until it blankets the entire planet in a neverending hurricane.
  • Godzilla vs. Kong: Mechagodzilla has been tweaked so that he's overall more believable as a weapon to kill Godzilla. His arms have clawed hands that allow him to grasp Godzilla, and he's received boosters that massively increase his mobility, allowing him to run circles around his opponent, so he can get in tons of hits before Godzilla can strike back. His tail is drill-tipped, giving him a way around Godzilla's tough hide. All of his weapons are explicitly meant to take down Kaiju and work very well. His atomic breath equivalent is a continuous weapon and thus can overpower Godzilla's by simply pushing the latter until he has to breathe. Even the logistics behind him are addressed - there might not be any existing human-derived power source that can sustain him, but such a power source easily exists in a world filled with Kaiju.
• Goodbye Lenin reconstructs, of all things, Marxism. The film portrays it as a genuinely positive and idealistic view of the world that went wrong and blatantly acknowledges the problems of Marxism and the good things provided by the West but by the end of the film we see that the hopes and dreams of the East German people are not necessarily defeated.
• Hard Boiled features every single police officer character as unambiguously heroic, as an apology by John Woo for the way Chinese films had started to glorify criminals (including some of Woo's previous films). Their conduct in the hospital sequence in particular puts an extra helping of "Heroic" in Heroic Bloodshed.
• Hitch reconstructs the notion of 'pick-up artistry' - as in teaching Dogged Nice Guys how to score with beautiful women. Hitch is a date doctor of course, but he encourages guys to be themselves and overcome their fears in order to let the women get to know their best selves. However he refuses to work with a Handsome Lech who just wants to use his methods to score one night stands. And when the female lead mistakenly thinks this about him - and wrecks his career in the process - he calls her out for it.
  "This is exactly why falling in love is so goddamn hard!"
• Hot Fuzz was partially an attempt to revive the British police officer as a credible movie hero after almost every British crime movie of the previous decade (or at least since Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels) had instead focused on glorifying criminals. Hot Fuzz spent its first half deconstructing the police-action movie, then used its second half to gleefully rebuild it.
• James Bond:
  • When the series appeared dead (and had been somewhat deconstructed in the Timothy Dalton era), True Lies appeared to reconstruct the spy-action-adventure genre by way of Affectionate Parody. Ironically, it is a remake of a French parody of Hollywood action-adventure movies.
  • The Daniel Craig movies gradually undergo this process; Casino Royale (2006) begins the process of deconstruction by placing Bond in a more gritty, 'modern' setting, and Skyfall begins with raising the question of whether the typical Bond-style hero is necessary or even relevant in a modern setting, before gradually reintroducing a lot of the traditional elements of the Bond series that had disappeared over the Dalton, Brosnan and Craig movies. As M argues during her Parliamentary hearing, the end of the Cold War has not made the intelligence services irrelevant; if anything, MI6 is even more relevant in the age of The War on Terror, when Britain's enemies can hide anywhere and strike at any time. By the time of Spectre, Craig's Bond has returned to classic Bond form with gadgets like an exploding watch or a car-exhaust flame jet, and even the classic Nebulous Evil Organization has returned to plague the current era.
• The film version of Kick-Ass reconstructs its own original comic's deconstruction of the superhero genre. In the comic, the hero is a sorry loser who never trains, gets beaten up all the time, and screws up his relationship with his new girlfriend. In the film, super-heroism is played mostly straight, with Kick-Ass becoming an inspirational underdog with low-level superpowers who eventually helps save the day and gets the girl.
• Kingsman: The Secret Service reconstructs and affectionately parodies Roger Moore's Bond spy films, and also campy spy films in general. It's got it all: the silly (but still quite dangerous) villain with an evil plan to destroy the world as we know it, the exotic foreign henchwoman, the wacky disguised weapon gadgets, the Tuxedo and Martini, the Soundtrack Dissonance and the unapologetic old British Tory ethos that even the Bond films only hinted at. On the other hand, the villain is Genre Savvy, every female character is three-dimensional and written and presented in a highly respectful fashion^note neither Roxy and Gazelle are sexualised gratituously, and even the Swedish princess Eggsy has Rescue Sex with at the end actually propositions to him - he only asked for a Smooch of Victory from her, and class conflict is a recurring theme^note the main character comes from a working-class background, and the film is of course slightly more sympathetic to slobs, but both slobs and snobs are shown to have their good and bad guys.

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• Although it didn't stick, The Outlaw Josey Wales can be seen as an attempted reconstruction of the old-style "sagebrush" western, with a more ambiguous and nuanced view of morality, the Civil War, and Indian raids. Essentially, The Man With No Name leads a group of pioneers to seek their fortunes in Texas.
• While Cloverfield isn't 100% Deconstruction, Pacific Rim definitely moves things back in the opposite direction, focusing on the heroes combating the kaiju, not civilians trying to escape. It also makes kaiju cool again, rather than just terrifying. It also gives Humongous Mecha a comeback in the big screen and they are as awesome as they are big.
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: The film spends the first part dissecting the corruption of American politics, with Mr. Smith and his ideals being dragged through the mud in the process. But the next part shows Smith delivering a stirring defense of those political ideals, this time more politically astute and aware of committee rules.
• All of Running Scared (2006) is basically a scary fairy tale about a boy who ran to an Enchanted Forest and met numerous monsters, including The Big Bad Wolf and a witch living in a Gingerbread House. Credits make sure you got the reference with an animated sequence showing the boy's misadventures in that light.
• Saving Private Ryan is this for war movies. Following The Vietnam War, most war movies focused on the futile or dehumanizing nature of war. Ryan definitely has a War Is Hell mentality, with the sheer brutality of the D-Day landings and honest portrayals of shell-shocked soldiers clearly communicating the horrors of war. Yet, this all only served to further highlight the valor of the soldiers. Several of the more heroic Military and Warfare Tropes are played without irony. Captain Miller is a classic Father to His Men, and none of the military leaders are portrayed as foolish, cowardly, mean-spirited, or dangerously gung-ho. Though the soldiers mock Upham for trying to apply the Band of Brothers trope to them, they all essentially interact this way. Finally, the movie is bookended by scenes at Normandy, which honors the sacrifice of American soldiers, alongside a huge American flag.
• Silverado: The influence of Spaghetti westerns had radically changed the landscape of westerns starting in the 1970s, with stripped-down productions and grizzled antiheroes, but this film reconstructed the style of the classic, epic Westerns of the 1950s and 1960s for the 1980s.
• Star Trek (2009) could be seen as a Reconstruction not only of the Star Trek franchise, but also the Space Opera genre as a whole. While the franchise had been heavily deconstructed to begin with, the later series had moved away from many aspects of the original series. The genre as a whole had suffered from certain works (including Star Trek: Enterprise and the Star Wars prequels) becoming notorious for generating a Broken Base, and undergone Deconstruction with the remake of Battlestar Galactica in 2000.
• Star Wars:
  • A New Hope was a reconstruction of optimistic heroic and mythic storytelling, made at a time when a great deal of cynicism was finding its way into cinema through films such as First Blood and Taxi Driver, and played tropes straight that had been twisted for much of the post-Vietnam War era.
  • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story:
    • The movie reconstructs the Darth Vader mythos. In the original films, Vader was depicted as an extremely powerful and dangerous, but ultimately beatable antagonist. However, since then decades of parodies and references robbed him of much of his mystique and aura of threat. Rogue One depicts him as a borderline Humanoid Abomination, a vast, unknowable force of pure death which even his nominal allies are visibly frightened of.
    • The Force Choke is also reconstructed. Director Krennic's look of visible terror as Vader chokes him shows just how horrifying an attack like that, which he can barely comprehend and couldn't possibly fight against, would be.
  • The Last Jedi both deconstructs and reconstructs classic Star Wars tropes at the same time. Your heroes can make mistakes, and sometimes aren't what you thought they were, but in the end, they prove why they became such legendary heroes in the first place. Blindly jumping into a battle you have no chance of winning gets people killed, but fighting to the end to save what you care about is never foolish. Looking to bloodlines and families to find heroes can create a ruthless Knight Templar, but heroes can emerge from the most unlikely of places.

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