This very paragraph is so vague yet so interesting to me because of the contexts that cover literary production. I like this comparison between destruction and deconstruction. Derrida truly breaks apart the image behind nuclear war as it gets paired with the idea of "leaving no traces" but how that taps into Williams's context of literary production.

This very well best describes the political turmoils of today as many men, that to white men, control the offices, making dangerous decisions that have led countries to war, famine, disease etc. We are at that level where feminists are prompting us to start trusting women and give them more power. Gender and the values of the two sexes have been put into consideration with women holding more signs for compassion, understanding and leadership.

As stated previously, this perfectly summarizes my point on the impact of culture on other countries. Unfortunately even other countries have fallen short to the shameless representation of culture. India has idealized the United States for a long time. Now when a movie comes out in India, we see a general rift between foreign and Indian movie goers as both sides debate over whether it holds up to the standards of American films. It is unlike Korean cinema with hits like Parasite becoming an ideal example of how that line between foreign and American is beginning to break.

I won't really know how to word globalization, seeing how much criticism it has received. I have taken many classes discussing the effects of globalization. It kind of is an eye opener to see this as a colonial thing. American films had a large influence on other countries. I know my grandfather was fond of Ben Hur, Cleopatra and similar films of the past the same way Jean Paul Belmondo was fond of Humphrey Bogart in Breathless. The overall idea here is that there is a clear American influence that becomes prominent in today's culture, especially in countries like China and India, that many American companies/corp/studios want to bank on.

We should thank James Cameron for also revolutionizing this technology in his films. Cameron's stories combine the grounded reality of today with the realistic and out of the world ideas that are present in the sci-fi genre. Most of his films are explorations of technology, nature amongst other science related things. Cameron himself believes that technology will most definitely take over society in the near future. Majority of his films, either technology has been lethal machines that threaten humanity future or tools that humans use to defeat other beings, humans included. Terminator has a lot of stop and go animations alongside animatronics and puppets. When it is needed, he uses computerized motion controls and CGI to build larger than life worlds. He has been practical, using technology to explore the deep sea, and the remains of Titanic.

1. It's very insightful to think that critics back then had so much to criticize about action films. The 80s were truly a pioneering era for blockbuster films. Horror, crime/thriller, sci-fi had a shock factor to them, filmmakers instilled all sorts of gore and violence that would get audiences to theaters. Things were a lot different for the industry. Now, viewers have been rather desensitized to all the action, everything seems oversaturated and we are rather seeing a return of older movie stereotypes and trends, especially with the newMortal Kombat film that will most likely be turned into a series. I look at Robin Wood's critique and I can say that they certainly will have the same response, if not worse, when they watch today's action films. We have "like-minded" movies out there that attempt to bring some vitality to the genre (MCU, Mission Impossible 6, James Bond, John Wick, Edge of Tomorrow) but they don't come close to other action films either of the past or from other countries (Heat and The Raid)

Many noir films at the time had this notion in being patriotic and depicting themselves as the morally righteous nation capable of fixing other nations. The paranoia and fear of such movies were dramatized in a certain way, always pitting one side against the other and creating archetypes that were not so nuanced. Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice, briefly mentions a Cold War film The Russians are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, which is being played at a mental asylum during the late 60s.

I really like how the reading discusses the reflexivity of films both from its genesis, Eadward Muybridge, to its very revolution, The Matrix, and then chooses to segway into discussing the idea of the Zeno Paradox. This very description presented by Brian Massumi, reminds me very much of the state of narrative storytelling today. The idea of "binary thinking underpinning cultural theory's tendency to imagine subjects as occupying externally determined positions", "subject moving through multiple complex and contradictory positions" and "being rather than becoming" LL work for external determinants of subjectivity. Would these work for internal determinants of subjectivity? Would the Zeno Paradox make sense if we judged someone based on their internal compass? We can certainly connect to movies like The Dark Knight. Nolan's Dark Knight explores good vs. evil in a different sense. It's a binary tale consisting of two positions, law enforcement and criminals with Batman and Joker in the center of it. The two oppositions clash, creating a distinction of morals, and driving our hero to change himself, becoming rather than being. The very quote "this is what happens when an unstoppable force, meets an immovable object". Perhaps, if comment doesn't sound so rubbish, there might be some explanations to that quote.

I don't know why but there's something about these kinds of details that make me curious about how critics analyze genre and films. I never really openly see any "reflexivity" in movies. This could maybe be because I am still in my 20s and haven't trained my mind enough to be more open to bigger ideas, but I am struggling to find the importance behind such metatextual understandings of movies.

This could be true not only for cinema, but I guess every other medium of entertainment. James Cameron truly popularized spectacle in its best form every decade that he decided to make films. Through this change, we were able to ogle at every bit of improvement and attention in detail thus proving to us that cinema has truly been innovated. I'd like to think the same for television (now that we are literally watching big budget shows on TV). It can be said for comic books as well. Many might disagree with me on this but I think comic books depicting futures are about the futures of how we perceive text and images on a page, it expands our visual bank in the the art of information.

This literally took me by surprise. I have heard many critical things about Love Story 2050 considering that it was an attempt at making a serious Bollywood CGI spectacle. However, the movie was disastrous and consisted of some weird ideas (like a Doc Brown spoof as a villain). Bollywood has attempted to replicate Hollywood many times with such films. Koi Mil Gaya which I watched many times as a kid is an obvious carbon copy of a lot of classic Hollywood blockbusters from the Lucas/Spielberg era. The movie literally has an opening crawl for the opening credits. However, compared to Love Story 2050, Koi Mil Gaya packs a lot of punch because it tries to work within its material. There are many moments to it that are just plain badass. Koi Mil Gaya is also followed by two other sequels, Krrish and Krrish 3 which explore the superhero genre that take elements from fantasy and sci fi.

In terms of spectacle, these films are attempting to show and tell at the same time. I have seen that bad Bollywood movies, when they copy, suffer from lack of nuance in their ability to embrace their own ideas (rather than copying others), their visuals are sub-par since they don't have that many up-to-date technology and there is a lack of focus.

Intertextuality is also something a lot of critics, like Walter Metz, also specialize on uncovering. Hollywood uses intertextuality on a daily basis to best mimic and replicate works without mimciking and replicating their originals completely. I find it interesting how Blade Runner takes from 40s noir films, but has also become the idealized imagery for the futurist society. Many games, tv shows and movies such as the sequel also emulated this style. Christopher Nolan takes a lot from Scott's movies and implores it in his Batman films to match the dirty grungy feel of the streets of LA to that of Gotham.

I like the author's take on the connection between the gender specific values that much of the 80s films shared and masculinity being the main drive for these movies. Classic sci fi films had female characters that served a certain purpose. We had Maria from Metropolis, Jane Fonda's seductive Barberella and Nyota Ahura from Star Trek. Johnston has mentioned Aliens 1 & 2 ,Terminator 1 & 2 but what would he think about their resurgence in today's world? I can certainly say that the politics of today are reliant on the need for more nuanced ideologies. There are a lot of new feminist approaches to the genre, such as Ex Machina, Under the Skin, Arrival, High Life etc.

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