Analysis of Sun City and The Spirit Movies
Sin City and the Spirit movies are both neo-noir tales that include both action and adventure. The two films have been written and directed by Frank Miller and adapted from his comics. Their backgrounds depict stories of crimes. The movies all have villains and superheroes who are trying to clean their crime-infested cities. The superheroes are trying to do all they can with the help of other characters in bringing justice and peace in back. This analysis will highlight the concept of conflict and the feminist of crime.
Concept of Conflict
Conflict is a vital component of films, something that all screenwriters are aware of. This is so because it makes the audiences thrive in it. The idea of it needs to be directly in opposition to the goals of the main character. It forms obstacles for the main act and makes sure that the audience is able to travel with them emotionally. Not an inconvenience but just a straight clash of values. It is a dramatic story driver, for it brings about tension as well as excitement. In simple form, conflict comes about when an obstacle hinders the protagonist from acquiring their goals. If a story lacks conflict in its cornerstone, it is considered as just but a series of events. The greatest conflicts can come down to battles between bad and good. Notably, great stories have conflicts for quite a number of characters and not just the main ones (Curtis,2016).
The concept of Conflict in both films is to bring out the main idea behind them. The theme has been depicted as a main concept al trough. In the movie, Sin city, there is a series of conflicts among villains who should die through torture and heroes with the liking of torturing people to death. The movie explores the miserable and dark town, Basin City, and tells the story of different people who are mixed up with violent corruption. The tales of crime from Frank Miller’s comics focus on a muscular brute looking for the person who killed his beloved, a man that is fed up with the corrupt law enforcement of Sin City and after a horrible mistake takes the law into his own hands. A cop risks his life in order to protect a little girl from a pedophile and a hitman who wants to make money. Marv, a fictional character in Sin city, convinces himself that he does not have the right intellect but surprisingly shows a great amount of intelligence if needed. He can deduce complex events based on conflicting information. Withal, in a lot of situations, he just knocks his way through conflicts, including kicking doors down or running after police with only a hatchet.
In the Spirit, Denny Colt, who is the main character, comes back from beyond as The Spirit, a hero whose expedition is to fight against Central City’s evil forces. The Octopus killing anyone gets to see the spirits face. He has other plans of wiping out the entire city. The Spirit is tracking Octopus in the city’s warehouses as well as the underworld while also facing a number of beautiful women who are either trying to seduce, love, or even kill the masked fighter. After Killing Liebowitz by ripping off is head, Octopus sends cloned henchmen away so that he can be alone in taking down the Spirit. Silken Floss Octopus’s accomplice drives up and runs over Pathos while at it. She leaves with the merchandize with thoughts that Octopus and the Spirit will face off each other all night (Allies et al.,2019). The two enemies do take part in a long and highly conventionalized fight. Pathos, who is still quite alive, shoots the Spirit, putting him down as Octopus declares that he does share a connection with Spirit in their potentiality in taking such great numbers of punishment. He understands now that not all conflicts can be resolved through killing.
Feminist of Crime.
In the feminist school of criminology, there is the emphasis that the women’s social roles are different from those of men leading to different ways in the deviance, victimization, and crimes that are left unnoticed by other theories of crime(Naegler & Salman,2016).In Sin City, told in three parts, a number of plots overlap with repeating dialogue that is impossible to kill heroes resisting brutal punishment just in avenging a woman, let’s not forget to consider the violence. Jackie boy makes a mistake on pissing off some prostitutes, so he is done away with, but his corpse keeps speaking to Dwight.
Lucille, who is Carla’s lesbian, is punished appropriately for spurning men with her body. She shows Marv her missing arm that Kevin ate and made her watch. Marv kills Kevin after watching the police shoot Lucille and feeds his arms and legs to Kevin’s dogs. The film’s moral view is quite fascinating. There are several times that a male character insists that they never slap women but then go ahead and hits a woman (Dennon,2017).
Additionally, there are several instances that a man justifies murder. Women are just deriving power by playing in accordance with the male rules using their sexuality as a false notice of their agency while, in fact, they are only fortifying the objectification of women. Still, women do not play a role in the film at all, except as motivators of male actions. This film is simply about men being men. They sweat, fight, bleed, and die.
In both films, the women are adorned in jewelry and clothing that no woman would wear while trying to perform great physical action, solely playing out the fantasy of men: prostitutes tat smell good, wit their hair being blown by the breeze yet somehow trying to maintain their innocence in a world full of filth. Dwight repeats the line, “she will always be mine and never.” Maybe showing his inability to fully grasping women’s nature, something that is evident in the film’s depiction of women (Boer,2017). In the Spirit, as Denny Colt is busy with his ongoing missions, he still has time for beautiful women even though he does not know what their real intentions are with him. Women are being used as objects here too. Colt keeps falling in love with other women and even romances them in Infront of Ellen, yet she still can’t help herself. Colt can be termed as a womanizer of the sort because every time he has an encounter with these women, it’s another ordeal. Even though she glows in the sunlight, Silken Floss’s acting is not at per. Women should have been given more sensible roles in this film (Nisa,2017).
References
Allies, K., White, E., Identity, S., & Colt, D. (2019). The Spirit. The American Superhero: Encyclopedia of Caped Crusaders in History, 260.
Boer, S. (2017). The Sounds of Violence: Textualized sound in Frank Miller’s Sin City and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns.
Curtis, M. (2016). Film as a Tool for Conflict Transformation.
Dennon, A. (2017). The Emergence of the Feminist Fatale in American Film Noir.
Naegler, L., & Salman, S. (2016). Cultural criminology and gender consciousness: Moving feminist theory from margin to center. Feminist Criminology, 11(4), 354-374.
Nisa, K. U. (2017). The Spirit Of Feminism Against Stereotypes In The Movie Edge Of Tomorrow (Doctoral dissertation, Universitas Brawijaya).