Thursday, 11 September 2014

History and Significance of Comedy and Action genre

Comedy
Comedy is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. These films are designed to entertain the audience through amusement, and most often work by exaggerating characteristics of real life for humorous effect.

Movies from the comedy genre of film making began in the early 1900's, with screen greats such as Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Charlie Chaplin.  Technology was limited, which brought on silent movies.  These movie geniuses played out their roles using physical movements and facial expressions to get their ideas across to the viewing audience. Around the 1930's, sound tracks were added to the production of movies. In the 1940’s, most comedy films ran with the war or military theme. Production companies at this time decided to go with a more serious film topic and audience. By the 1950's, the big screen noticed conflicts with the coming out of more affordable televisions for home use. Not much changed until the 1980s, Comedy action films got off to a good start with massive hits like 48 Hours, and Beverly Hills Cop. Because of new technology, such as computer generated characters, today's films run the gamut of comical archetypes.  Even adults enjoy the characters from Shrek or Cars, all computers generated. Audiences are maturing at a much faster rate and nothing seems to carry much shock value.  Films of today are pushing the ultimate limit to bring us better, funnier and unique story plots, visuals, and lines.

Action
Action is a film genre in which one or more heroes are driven into a series of challenges that typically include physical acts, extended fight scenes, violence, and hysterical chases. Action films tend to feature a resourceful character struggling against incredible odds, which include life-threatening situations, a villain, or a pursuit which generally concludes in victory for the hero.

During the 1920s and 1930s many films featured as swashbuckling, these are action adventure sub genre films; they normally consist of sword fighting and adventurous heroic characters. The 1940s and 1950s saw a different subgenre of films, most films in the 40sand 50s were mainly in the form of a war film, or a cowboy movie. War films were generally related on warfare. The 1960s introduced a new subgenre of action films; this was the Spy Adventure Genre, These films, were something new, James Bond came into the whole equation. The 1970s, This is where bond saw a competition on his hands these were gritty detective stories and urban crime dramas, these consisted of this new action style, leading to a string of police officer films all of which featured an intense car chase, which they replicated of bonds popular stunt work of the Bond films. The 70s also saw the introduction of martial-arts films to western audiences. The 1980s saw the action film take over in Hollywood to become a dominant form of summer blockbuster this was named the Action Era. This introduced some of the main factors such as: Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Chuck Norris. The 1990s was an era of sequels and hybrid, sub genre actions films. These all were starting to parody them, with the growing revolution in Computer Gaming Imagery. The 20th and 21st Century Films had a whole new thing to them, with most films having budgets of $100 million. This meant that films were able to create thrilling, breath taking features. The ability to use CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) able films to have such spectacular graphics 

Action Comedy together

Putting both these genres together blends comic antics and action where the film stars combine wit and one-liners with a thrilling plot and daring stunts. The genre became a specific draw in North America in the eighties when comedians such as Eddie Murphy started taking more action oriented roles such as Beverly Hills Cop. These types of films are often buddy films, with mismatched partners such as in Rush Hour21 Jump StreetBad Boys, and Hot Fuzz. It may also focus on superhero films such as Hancock and Kick-Ass. Jackie Chan among others brought up the sub genre of Slapstick martial arts films which became a mainstay of Hong Kong action cinema.

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