When people first look into the newest movie coming out, their first instinct or opinion is sheer genre. When it comes to movies, the best notion we get from its all-around purpose is whether or not it is a horror, thriller, drama, action, romance, or comedy. We can look into the summaries of the movies and we can research just what it is about, but when it comes to its deeper meaning and the value it may hold to the public, most people are blind to its purpose. However, as each person realizes the basis of these movies as a well-written story with an enticing plot line, the bigger picture is that, nowadays, every “must see” movie that comes out is about the downfall of society.
The real problem is that we are letting our society crumble down around us and we are not doing anything about it. We are being naive to the reality of the damage we are doing, and as these movies blatantly are about the demise of the human race and how we as a society of unequal, separated, judgmental human beings destroy ourselves, the point is made that going through a force of change in trying to mend our wrongs and bring back the civilized world is a necessary task. Look at the “Hunger Games” or “Divergent” series. You could even go back further in time to the movie “I Am Legend” or even “Terminator." What all of these situations have in common is the sociological term, interconnectedness.
Society is more than aware of the fact that we are destroying ourselves, yet we are not powerful enough to change or do anything about it because we believe that it is all in our heads, or at least on a non-reality based television screen. However, when it comes to these fantasy situations going from being on the screen of a movie theater to the daily news channel, when will we wake up to realize how real our own destruction actually is? All the things that these movies have in common are that they are seen as apocalyptic worlds. Apocalyptic on the terms of society bringing about humanities downfall. The deeper value that movie directors are trying to portray to us is that we are the cause of our own destruction.
A successful interpretation of such a movie is "I Am Legend." Spoiler alert - the book and the movie have nothing in common. The book, written by Richard Matheson, was about a hardworking man living in a world that was ravaged by dust storms that everyone he knew, everyone in the world in fact, had died from and were either burned or came back as vampires. The book puts him in a constant struggle as he attempts to comprehend what has become of humanity, and he holds onto what sanity he has left. In the end, he is the base of a society's legends, as he was the last of his kind in a world no longer ravaged by humans, but vampires trying to survive from his murderous reign.
With that being said, the movie was a perfect example of an apocalyptic world being caused by humans, because the director completely changed the entirety of the storyline but kept the same apocalyptic world, the director simply made the destructive world something created by humans. In the movie version of "I Am Legend," we were the cause of our own destruction, we were the dust storm that ravaged through the world and tore apart our humanity from within ourselves.
Now, when it comes to the smaller things in humanity's little actions, such as understanding one another, I believe that directors try to connect us on emotional levels, such as soap operas, and on personal levels, such as action movies. Emotional influences are reflected on things such as "Grey's Anatomy." In "Grey's," there are all these damaged lives that come together in a privileged standard where they learn things about themselves through one another and the people they interact with. Personal influences are reflected in things such as the "Fast & Furious" movies where the damaged people are those who come from non-privileged pasts and find parts of themselves through each other.
In movies such as these, I feel movie directors accomplish making connections between the privileged and non-privileged. In these movies we see powerful characters that are seen as leaders and people that the rest of us look up to. "Fast & Furious" is the perfect example because everyone sees Vin and Paul as the type of people that are courageous and charismatic, or even the perfect role model. But what they really are without all the optimistic views is thieves and delinquents. However, they hold deeper morals and values at the end of the day, which is why we look up to them.
Movie directors blatantly show us how corrupted we can be, but also just how much we can mend not only one another, but society as a whole. Morals, values and beliefs are what connect us throughout each other in society. Each person has a role, each character in life has a purpose, that purpose is to enlighten the people around us, the ones around us that make us realize what it means to keep going and look to the future, the ones who enlighten us on what it feels like not to be alone. Everyone is meant to be here for someone else, to impact them in a way that makes them realize that we are not as lost as we feel we are. We are meant to go through life to learn through one another.
