Task 2.5 (Comparison of Sequences)

As our final movie idea we have a scene with violence so for my analysis of two opening sequences I choose two fight scenes, one is in the war genre set in World War 2 with "Saving Private Ryan" the other is also set in war, but as the opening to sci-fi movie "Star Wars-Revenge of the Sith" these are the two clips:


and Star wars:

watch from 1:30



Both the clips are opening to movies and similar themes however the genre conventions mean that they are vastly different, both movies have a set of protagonists who are fighting to restore equilibrium against the antagonists. Also both sets of protagonists have an uphill battle as the antagonists appear to have the upper hand, In Saving Private Ryan have a better position on the beach and better weapons, this is often reflected in the camera angles as when the cuts are made between the shots the German army are always higher up, to cap all this off, throughout most of the opening minutes there is no evidence of the antagonists dying, all the death is off the Americans to show that the Germans are definitely winning until main protagonist Tom Hanks manages to help his squad gain some shelter., not necessarily a birds eye shot but still enough of an angle to show German superiority. In Star Wars although there is a war going on, the protagonists are alone with little help and there are many enemies trying to kill them, the little help that they have is soon destroyed, similar to the other clip until one of the main Protagonist-Anakin manages to remove some of the danger. This is typical of the protagonists being presented as the "underdogs", in both clips when they seem to have the upper hand in Saving Private Ryan this happens when they reach the shelter of the banks and in Star Wars Anakin manages to rescue his mentor Obi-Wan from the "buzz droids". However the period of equilibrium cannot yet be restored as both encounter more obstacles, Saving Private Ryan have difficulty removing the German snipers while the door to the spaceship starts to close in Star Wars, however as it happens at the start, the audience wouldn't expect the main protagonists to die, and this is the case as both sets of Protagonists in both films escape the dangers of the opening scene.

Despite both films being set in wartime, the genre dictates how different both the sequences are, especially in terms of character and setting; In Star Wars the two main protagonists are Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi; played by human actors however in the film they are represented as Jedi's who have supernatural powers this is something typical of the sci-fi genre, despite being in the middle of a "battleground" both protagonists remain very calm, in start contrast to the desperation of the characters in Saving Private Ryan as they are represented as Humans who feel the emotion. The uniform of the characters is also interesting, you would expect from a war for the soldiers to have a basic uniform all the same colours from one set of soldiers to aid identity, and this is the case in Saving Private Ryan whereas the protagonists in Star Wars wear what look like formal robes and the protagonists also wear different colours, Anakin wearing dark and Obi-Wan wears lighter robes, this also foreshadows events that happen later in the film with Anakin turning evill as Black is deemed as the colour of evill in most film.

The setting of where the film takes place is also vastly different, this again is because of the genre. Saving Private Ryan takes place on a beach to mirror that of the Second World War, the war in which the film is based on, some rumors also state that Star Wars was based on the world wars as well, however as a sci-fi film it takes place in a "galaxy far away" in a space setting surrounded by stars and planets much different to the realism on Saving Private Ryan. The weapons used are also different, Saving Private Ryan has the typical rifles, machine guns, boats and tanks as featured in realistic wars, whereas in Star Wars, they have little aeroplane type machines which have many buttons and controls and shoot neon beams in the sky to destroy the antagonists, there are also all sorts of sheilds and spaceships. The main weapons of the protagonists are "Lightsabres" which are neon beams on a stick vastly different to the "thomson" rifle in Saving Private Ryan.