Over the weekend i saw Meet The Spartans ...... it was a bit crap, as most films of its kind are, but it did get me thinking about how it referenced other things not only in films but in current events. Which led me onto some of the more famous films of this style Police Squad, Naked Gun and Hot Shots. All of them rely on intertextuality to sustain them. Hot Shots and Hot Shots Part Deux reference Top Gun and Rambo so heavily that a lot of it wouldn't be funny or even make sense if you hadn't seen the films that they are parodies of. These kind of films show how important intertextuality is, but they cling to it like some kind of crutch, they don't move away and support themselves with originally entertaining content, but rather mock the films that they piggyback.
Another film that Ive seen fairly recently was the re-make/prequel Star Trek. This is visually a beautiful film the CGI is flawless, the ships look both classic and modern. Everything about how it presents itself is superb right down to the costumes. Story wise it reworks the whole timeline of the Star Trek history with a kind of alternate reality brought about through time travel. However there are more than enough nods to the original stories and timeline to keep the all but the die hard fans happy. This use of intertextuality is much more subtle than the spoof parodies of the the first group of films. It is however no less important for without its attention to intertextual detail it would have been pulled apart by fans who wanted a return to the old films.
No comments:
Post a Comment