Raise Your Voice. Dir. Sean McNamara. By Sean Rotter. Perf. Hilary Duff, Oliver James, and Rebecca De Mornay. 2004.

In class this week, we watched both Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
    The two movies are alike in so many ways, but they are also extremely different. In the Gene Wilder version, the main characters are Willy, Charlie, and Grandpa Joe. In the Johnny Depp version, the main characters are the same. However, they act and look very different. As you can see in the picture above, those are the two actors who played Willy in both of the movies. In the Gene Wilder version, Willy dresses corny and he has curly hair. In the Johnny Depp version, he dresses more classy and has a bigger hat. Johnny portrayed Willy to be more "crazy" than Gene Wilder was. Charlie is different in both movies as well. In the first film, Charlie seemed even more poor in the first move. His clothes were dirtier. In the second film, he seemed more responsible that he was in the first movie. I believe that Grandpa Joe was the same in both of the movies.
    The minor characters didn't change drastically in the movies. Most importantly, the children were there. Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregard, Mike Teavee and Charlie Bucket were still the children who won the tickets. However, the children were a little different. I think Augustus was the same. Veruca was still a spoiled brat, but it seemed a lot worse in the second movie. Violet was meaner in the second movie. She wasn't portrayed as that much of a rude girl in the first movie. Mike Teavee was smart in the second movie. In the first movie, all he cared about was Television and video games. In the second movie, he knew equations and was smart throughout. A minor character was added to the second movie that wasn't in the first movie, and that is Charlies dad. He wasn't even mentioned in the first movie but he is for this one. Personally, I like the Johnny Depp version of the movie better. It seems more put together and has better quality.
    I do not think reactions or things the minor characters said about Willy, Charlie, or Joe changed at all. No one really said anything about Charlie and Joe to begin with. However, the characters did have a few comments about Willy. They thought he was psycho, but they still stayed and continued the tour of the factory.
    Reactions seemed to be a major part of both of these films. Every time a child gets themselves into a bad situations, their parents seemed to react the same way. They reacted as thought Willy Wonka should save their kid and get them help. Although, their acting needs a little help because they didn't react as much as they should have as a parent. It seemed that way with all of the parents. The acting and all of the characters seemed more thought out in the the second movie rather r than the characters in the the first movie.

We watched The Lion King in context of establishing stereotypes in the film. I noticed two stereotypes in the film. "The King of the Jungle", and the "Old Wise Man of the Village." The King of the Jungle is Mufasa. He really is king of Pride Rock and he is a lion. A lion is the king of the Jungle. For him, its literal. He is the King of the Jungle. This stereotype seems to disappear throughout the movie because dies, but someone else becomes King and it is a lion, so in a sense it is still there. Rafiki is the "Old Wise Man of the Village." Hes a baboon who has a lot of knowledge. He seems to know everything and has all the answers. This stereotype is a traditional stereotype. It reinforced throughout the film.

We watched The Lion King in the context of archetypal characters. There are a few archetypal characters in the film. Simba, Scar, Timone, Pumba, Banzai, Shenzi, and Ed are archetypes. Simba is an archetype because he is the hero of the story. He fights scar to save Pride Rock and all the animals from dying because of starvation and dehydration. Timone and Pumba are archetypes because they are the Simbas "sidekicks." They brought Simba in when he ran away from Pride Rock when his father died, and introduced him to the life of the jungle. They also helped him distract the hyenas to go see Scar. Scar is an archetype because he is the villain of the story. He teams up with the hyenas to take over Pride Rock and to kill Mufasa. He achieves his goal and he makes Simba feel like it was his fault that Mufasa dies and tells him to run away forever. Because of the fact that Mufasa and Simba were gone, he was crowned the King of Pride Rock. Which is what he always wanted. Ed, Shenzi, and Banzai are archetypes because they are Scars sidekicks. They do what ever Scar tells them to do. They try to kill Simba twice because Scar sets it up, but it never actually happened because Mufasa came and he ran away from them and got away.

We watched The Amazing Spider-Man in the contex of protagonist and antagonist characters. The protagonist in the film is Peter Parker, aka Spiderman. He was the main character and the hero of the film. He saved the little boy on the bridge and fought the lizard until it was gone. He never gave up. The antagonist character is Dr Conners. He was the lizard that was trying to hurt everyone. The whole time, he had an alterior motive to the science. The conflict between them is that Peter gave Dr Conners a formula that would help regrow bones. At first it worked great, but then something in the formula went wrong and the object that had the bone regrown had gone sour and evil. Peter needed to kill the lizard because he is the one that was responisble for it because of the formula.

In class, we watched the Amazing Spider-Man in the context of dynamic and static characters. A dynamic character is a character that changes in the story a lot, due to situations or events. A static character is a character that changes very little or not at all. In the film, the dynamic characters are Peter Parker and Dr. Conners. They are dynamic characters because they both changed tremendously. Peter changed from a wimpy teenager into a man. When he got bit by the spider, the powers he got changed who he was. Tte death of his Uncle Ben and the death of his parents changed also had a big part of him changing, as well as the obvious change of the powers he attained. Dr Conners is a dynamic character becuse at first, he was the scientist who was just doing his job and seemed like someone Peter could trust because his dad worked with him and was close to him. He turned into the man who was the giant lizard and when he was in that, he turned evil and tried to hurt and kill many people. The static characters in the film are Gwen and Slash. Gwen is a static character because throughout the whole film, she really didn't change much. She was just became closer to Peter. Slash is a static character because he changed little but not enough to be a dynamic character. He stopped bullying and started being nicer, but thats about it.

This page will be used for my second block class, Literature to Film. We will be analyzing films the same way we analyze writings. After every film, I will post in my blog analyzing and reflecting the film. I chose to be in this class because I love films and I also love reading. It sounded perfect. I also want to go to college for English, so it was the best elective for me to take. It interests me because it just seems like one of those courses that wouldn't just be a good learning class, but also a fun class to be in. I hope to learn the way that English is in film, as it is in books.