Disney's new film "Jungle Quest" is a typical theme park audiovisual entertainment product.
The plot applies the hero journey template + sophisticated production level + two stars with box office appeal = the benchmark of the assembly line movie.
After watching the movie version of "Jungle Trek", it feels like sitting in a "jungle cruise" in Disneyland.
The whole process cannot be said to be boring, but there is nothing worth remembering after the end.
This film, like the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, was created by physical amusement projects first, and then developed IP.
Disneyland "Jungle Trek" project
The film is relatively shallow and routine, but the overhead story world needs a complete world view, and some of the memes in the film can be seen that the screenwriter has made a lot of effort to the fictional context.
Analyze several interesting Easter eggs in the movie, which are supported by corresponding prototypes or histories:
First, the film is based on Jungle Cruise, a disneyland attraction that has been around since the opening of Anaheim, California, in 1955.
According to the authorities, the first inspiration for jungle Cruise rides came from True-Life Adventures, a series of documentaries produced by Disney in the 1950s.
The documentary series consists of 14 episodes, each with a theme, documenting life in an exotic animal world, which can be compared to China's "Animal World".
The exotic jungle environment, beasts and other flora and fauna landscapes in the jungle cruise program are mainly based on the episode of the documentary series called "The African Lion".
An episode of African Lions in True-Life Adventures
The script of the film version of "Jungle Trek" places the protagonist's adventure in the jungle of the Amazon River in Brazil, and in fact the entire amusement project is a jungle smorgasbord that combines jungle elements from Africa, South America and Southeast Asia, and is more inclined to the African jungle.
The second inspiration for the ride, the section on steamboat voyages, was largely a reference to the 1951 Anglo-American co-production The African Queen.
The Queen of Africa
Directed by film maestro John Huston, the film was starring Humphrey Bogart and Kathleen Hepburn, and the cast was the top configuration in Hollywood at the time.
The story tells the story of a pair of British brothers and sister missionaries in the village of Kungdu in German East Africa, then a German African colony, just in time for the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
Her brother Samuel was horrified to death by the atrocities of the Germans who burned the village and drove the villagers away, and her sister Ruth had to leave the village with Charlie, a Canadian mechanic who regularly passed through the village, and his steamboat, the Queen of Africa.
Stills from The Queen of Africa
Charlie the Mechanic is an informal, untrimmed and somewhat rude man, while Ruth is a well-behaved, pretentious old girl who has not yet married at a very young age.
But these two people with completely different personalities, after experiencing dangerous life and death drifts and getting along on the "Queen of Africa", discover each other's strengths and both fall in love. At the end of the film, before the two are about to be hanged, the wedding ceremony at the witness of the enemy German captain is very romantic.
In addition to the love line, in order to create an evil image of Germany, the film also shows the divine power of the British Empire and its colonies (the male protagonist is Set as a Canadian), and also adds an exaggerated plot of the "anti-German god film" in which two people transform oxygen cylinders into torpedoes and happen to sink German warships.
The name of the ship and the title of the film, "The African Queen", also fully reflect the Queen of Great Britain's concern for the far-flung African continent.
One of the root causes of the outbreak of the First World War was the anglo-German contradiction, and Germany was the source of the two world wars, so it was common to establish Germany as an enemy or an evil image in Anglo-American film and television dramas involving the background of World War I and World War II.
The vilified Germans in The Queen of Africa
Before the First World War, the hatred between Britain and Germany and the confrontation between the two countries were even written in the textbooks of the children of the two countries.
The means by which these smear enemies in British and American film and television dramas publicize themselves are really no smarter than China's "anti-Japanese dramas", and they also insult the intelligence of the audience. The Queen of Africa is a case in point.
It is clear from the plot and ideology of the above-mentioned "African Queen" that this movie is not only the inspiration for the "Jungle Cruise" amusement project, but also the original version of the current "Jungle Cruise".
The story structure of Disney's new film almost directly copied the plot of "The Queen of Africa", the story is also set during World War I, the villain is also an evil German, the protagonist is also an Anglo-Saxon white woman and vulgar captain, and there is a rapids drifting scene that is exactly the same as some lines.
The screenwriter simply changed the original purpose of the male and female protagonists drifting on the river to find the invincible god "Tears of the Moon" that can cure all diseases, replaced the space with the Amazon River, and added several cursed Spanish colonists.
Is this a "tribute"? Is it a "remake"? Or "plagiarism"?
Judging from the above-mentioned "Jungle Wonder" reference to "African Queen", European and American films and television, especially this kind of audio-visual entertainment products with little depth, are not all pure original.
Some are just taking advantage of the poor perception of old European and American movies by Eastern audiences, in fact, this story has long been popular, and now it is being brought to the old bottle of new wine.
Under these two inspirations, "Jungle Cruise" has become a substitute for tourists who cannot go to the tropical jungle to experience the exotic atmosphere, and has also become one of the representative projects of Disneyland's "making dreams".
The second type of Easter eggs in the film is some of the historical memes involved in the film, which are basically concentrated in the first half of the film.
The film begins with a Spanish evil expedition led by Don Lope de Aguirre.
Its leader, Lope de Aguirre, is possessed by a snake in the film as the arch-villain, a man who has his own in history.
Aguirre was active in the 16th century expeditions in South America, nicknamed "Madman" or "Madman", calling himself "the wrath of God, the Prince of Freedom", and from the portrait it can be seen that he is a ruthless man.
Known for his brutality, barbarism, greed, and unprincipledness, the Spanish conquistador burned and plundered not only native Americans, but also his own country.
Aguirre, really like his nickname, was wreaking havoc unprincipledly on the new American continent that humanity had just discovered.
His last expedition was to go up the Amazon River in search of el Dorado, the fabled source of the Amazon River, and the film's writers attached this expedition to find the "Tears of the Moon".
An old West German film from 1972, Achill, The Wrath of God, tells the story of this man directly.
Movie "Achill, The Wrath of God"
In short, Aguirre represents the cruel exploitation and ravages of the early Spanish colonists on the New World, and his image gradually transcends history to become symbolic, becoming a symbol of the evil colonists in many film and television dramas, anime and stories.
From the above analysis, it can also be seen that in the creative ideology of the Anglo-Americans, the early Spanish colonists were the big bad guys, the rising German colonists were also the big bad guys, and only the Anglo-Saxons among us were gentle, kind, and came with the great ideal of saving the world.
But in reality, is that really the case?
(This article was original by the movie Juice, plagiarized and carried by the whole family)
After the opening black Spaniard, the film enters the main narrative line.
The heroine's younger brother, McGregor, is giving a speech against the backdrop of "London 1916 two years into The Great War".
"The Great War" is the British name for the First World War, and 1916 was exactly the second year of the war, which is basically the same time background as the above-mentioned African Queen.
The place where McGregor speaks has a long name in the film, and the camera flashes by, called The Royal Anthropological and Diverse Adventure Society, which roughly translates to "Royal Anthropology and Integrated Exploration Society".
In fact, the fictional organization in the film refers to the long-established "Royal Society for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge in London", referred to as the "Royal Society".
The Royal Society is the oldest national scientific institution in human history, and the great scientists we are familiar with, Newton, Huxley and others, have all served as presidents of this society.
The Society was originally composed mainly of medical scientists and natural scientists (mainly physics), so it is logical for the protagonist in the film to persuade the Society to support them to find the miracle drug "Tears of the Moon" to cure all diseases.
During the period of learning to lobby, the heroine Lily meets a villain who looks like Xiao Yueyue, Prince Prince Joachim.
This man is not fictional either, he was indeed the youngest son of The Prussian Emperor Wilhelm II in history.
Historical Prince Joachim (1890-1920)
However, in 1916, the German prince was not in Brazil, and the role was also based on the British position to promote the ugly image of the Germans.
From the year of birth and death, Prince Joachim lived only 29 years. Because he could not bear the abdication of his father, William II, in World War I and became a commoner himself, he shot himself at the age of 29.
Before his suicide, Prince Joachim had fallen into severe mental problems and depression, and there are traces of the film portraying the prince as crazy.
More importantly, the weapon used by Prince Joachim as a villain in the film is the submarine, which is also in line with the historical background of the time.
As we all know, Britain was once known as the Empire of the Sun Never Setting, with the world's largest colony, relying on the powerful sea power accumulated over the years.
Before the First World War, there was no country in the world that could compete with the British Navy. After the rise of Germany, the navy has always been a short board, but Germany has always wanted to compete with the British Royal Navy.
But Germany is a continental country, the coastline is not long, the time for naval development is too short, and the strength and tonnage of surface ships cannot be directed with the British navy.
Germany can only choose to vigorously develop submarines, using "submarines to break the war" to destroy British maritime transport lines to contain Britain.
The countries that contributed the most to early submarine technology in history were the United States, France, Germany, and Russia, because the surface ships of these countries were inferior to those of britain, so they used the British navy as a hypothetical enemy to study submarines.
Among them, German submarines were at the forefront of the time, and German U-boats caused a lot of trouble to Britain in World War I and World War II, which was a symbol of evil.
In "Jungle Quest", the German submarine is paired with the crazy German prince, and I don't know if the Germans will feel "milky" when they see it.
The next historical meme of the film is that Frank, played by Dwayne Johnson, was surprised to see a woman wearing pants for the first time, and used the word pants to nickname the heroine Lily.
Frank's surprise at women wearing pants is not an exaggeration, because for a long time in human history, women and pants were insulated, and even some regions and religions made it illegal for women to wear pants.
The trend of women wearing pants began in Victorian Britain, around the 1850s and 1890s, with the world's first wave of feminist trends.
The film takes place in the early twentieth century, just after the so-called Victorian Costume Reformation.
Historical chart of women wearing pants
The meme of women wearing pants mentioned in the film is also to cater to the current feminist public opinion.
In addition to the costume reform, a great invention was born in the late Victorian era - film.
There are many factors that gave birth to cinema as a technology and entertainment, and they cannot be simply attributed to one or the other, and the prosperous Victorian economy and the demand for entertainment are one of the roots.
There is such a plot in the movie "Jungle Flight", the heroine Lily carries a camera that can take so-called "moving photos", and Frank is curious when he sees it.
This little section is a tribute to the creators' early film history.
The currently recognized sign of the birth of the film is the public screening of the Lumière brothers in 1895, from this time back to the time of the story of "Jungle Trek" in 1916, which is about 20 years after the birth of the film.
There is a law in the history of world cinema, that is, there will be some technical and artistic breakthroughs about every 10 years.
For example, in 1896, the year after the birth of the film, the lumiere brothers' photography operator Eugène Promio put the camera on a small boat for the first time, and the camera was moved to shoot.
Although it seems that this operation is not worth mentioning now, in terms of the audience's perception at the time, this moving image is very shocking.
Eugène Plomio put the camera on a boat and filmed a series of landscape footage in the water city of Venice and the Nile in Egypt.
The Canal of Venice photographed by Eugène Plomio in 1896
As a result, Eugène Promeo is also considered by film history to be the first photographer in the world to maneuver photography, although he only let the camera follow the vehicle, rather than actually move the camera.
In the history of film development since then, a large number of documentary films shooting exotic landscapes in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Americas and other places have emerged, and they have become popular in Europe and the United States.
Except for a few adventurers, it is difficult for ordinary people to have the opportunity to go to these primeval jungles or desert grasslands in a lifetime, but Europeans and Americans use the reproducibility and copyability of the invention of film to satisfy people's yearning for exoticism.
The time of the movie "Jungle Adventure" is also the era when such exotic landscape films are popular, and the heroine sails on the Amazon River while recording the scenery along the way, which can leave a vivid image record for future generations.
This kind of recording is the same as the role of various disneyland rides, all to fulfill the dream of ordinary people, but without having to go there in person.
To sum up, this movie based on Disneyland amusement projects can't be said to be bad, but it also has no connotations worth thinking about deeply.
Martin Scorsese's vision of theme park products is similar to mcDonald's and KFC's fast food.
You say it's not edible, it's delicious; you say it's edible, it's a product produced by factory assembly lines.
One will come out with a Southeast Asian sauce, and the other will come up with an Orleans-style chicken wing... Exotic flavors can be eaten at your doorstep.
This idea is the same as Disney making movies, several elements are integrated, and it is enough to look at that feeling.
The above pictures are from the Network, and if there is any error or omission in the content, I hope to correct it
-END-