Research: Narrative Themes and Plots - Miss Begum

Introduction

A theme is a subject which is applied to a film for the audience to understand at a length the motif behind the story line and what may be expected in the film, e.g. a Romantic film may include friendship, loyalty and love. Themes are important behind a film as they further audience understanding of the movie and supports the genre of film, as a romantic film with gore and death will not do well to the genre and turn away audiences. Themes are dependent on genres in many ways, this is because they are needed as a support for the story line and plot e.g. a Sci-Fi film would be nothing without it’s futuristic aurora, spacey element, travelling maybe it’s time travel and supernatural effects, these things help the audience to understand and develop further knowledge of the Sci-Fi genre and what it consists of. 

There are common themes in many thrillers today which play a part in why it is what it is today. Conventional themes in a thriller are conflict, betrayal, revenge and vengeance, supernatural. Thrillers also consist of scenes of lust, gambling, conspiracy, religion, legal, violence, political, mystery, psychological and many more other themes and elements in a thriller. 

Take the thriller film Batman vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice, even from watching the trailer you have that basic idea of what to expect in the film, like violence as they are both strong characters and the ‘vs’ in the title suggests it is a battle of some sort, conspiracy as they label Superman a false God, Supernatural as they are two comic book heroes with inhuman strength with the latter strength coming from the sun. Another example of a film with common themes in them is Parker, on the cover there is a female next to him which may suggest that it is his love interest and will further allow for the audience to gain a better understanding of the scenes within the film.

These things allow the audience to expect the unexpected and the expected and excites the audience by giving them what they want.

The impacts of these themes in films and on the audience are effectively obvious. It gives the audience a clearer cultural understanding of a film or scene and what to expect, for example a film with futuristic elements would be categorized as a Sci-Fi among many other genres. It also supports and is a basic foundation of the genre, a comedy film with no humor will not be supportive to the comedy genre as we are not getting what we expect.

Conclusively I will research further the different themes and find a way to mix them all together to make something productive, adding a bit of an element of crime to my thriller may influence my opening to follow down that path of common conventions of a crime thriller. Also, I may mix lust and violence not to promote but to show the consequence of temptation which is what is expected in a lustful thriller and will be expected as it is what the audience wants.