History in Film

Whether it be Dunkirk, Darkest hour, They Shall Not Grow Old or even the Netflix series of Crown it seems around 100 years later history starts coming back.

 

Throughout most of my childhood, superheroes were the theme, fiction in cartoons, romantic stories or space epics, all set either today or soon. 

 

But it seems Hollywood has taken a step back, or even passed the baton to Europe who have put away their phones, brought out their pocket watches and started to imagine stories of universal truths, love, fear, war, but importantly,set in the past.

 

And yes, you might be screaming, ANECDOTAL, and yes, alright. But using clever number crunching and statistics tracking ‘StephenFollows’ has calculated similar tends. Over the last 20 years history films have seen a rise, along with horror, biographical and sci-fi, compared to a fall in romance, action, war and crime. 

 

This rise in historical and biographical films, though not significant is definitely noticeable. Even fiction fantasy series like Game of Thrones have a noticeable historical setting. What such films are appealing to is the seeming romance behind the past, a calmer way of life far different from any of the modern complications like instant communication, making it easier to filmmakers to shape their stories. 

 

Historical films also generate a sense of cultural longing, in such times of peace, globalization and similarities unique differences in attitudes and people can be more substantially portrait.

 

Though most of this was speculation, it was intended to encourage though. Do people truly have a longing to discover their culture, an interest of where we came from and are going. Or is this all just another Hollywood money making gimmick, another theme for us to spend our money on?

 

Write in, whats your thought? Or perhaps buy the e-book, "History of the world in Poetry", available on Amazon. (shameless plug)