Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products – X-Men: Days of Future Past
*the coloured paragraphs were added in for resubmission.
Days of the Future Past is the 7th instalment of the X-men franchise including the Wolverine movies. In this film, Wolverine is sent to the past to alter the future as both the humans and the mutants are in danger.
The target audience for this film is male aged 12 to 24 years old and the socio-economic status would be D to E as, people aged 12 to 24 would mostly still be in education and may have a part time job or, could possibly be a non-student with a full time job but can afford and would go to the cinema to watch this film. Socio-economic status is a scale which measures what grade an individual is depending on their social and economic status such as their education, financial state and their occupation. Geodemographics groups the people of the same region into a category and looks at what they as a region do and prefer. For this film they would have looked at all the regions of America as their main target audience are American people. Psychographics looks at the consumer’s lifestyle and personality characteristics to create a profile for them. This would consist of their likes, dislikes, the brands and things they consume, their beliefs and their attitude. This profile would enable the producers to know what their target audience eats; do in their free time and the type of lifestyle that they lead. For Young & Rubicam‘s 4Cs the target audience would fall under mainstreamers as they are at the age where they just follow the herd and so, they would also fall under social needs for Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. This being a big budget movie, they would definitely want to aim it at the most dominant sexual orientation which is Heterosexual so, they are some implications of heterosexual relations. Big budget films generally reflect the most common beliefs as this will attract most of the population, resulting in higher box office taking.
The producers of this film would have defined its audience through quantitative and qualitative audience research. Quantitative research deals with figures and stats to determine what type of audience prefer this type of film and how much it would potentially cash in. Since this film would be classified as a superhero film, I would have imagined the producers to look at how much the other superhero films that were released in the recent year made and if the public are still interested in this genre or have already gotten bored of it. Qualitative research deals with the written side as it is more detailed and explains the why through the use of focus group, questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. This helps them to determine what their audience are like and what they prefer. The target audience are asked questions regarding the movie and their expressions and opinions are taken into account when making the movie to alter it to match with their liking. I would classify this film as a Mainstream franchise as almost everyone has either heard of the movie or know at least what it’s about. The budget for this film was $200,000,000 and the box office taking was $746,045,700 worldwide so this proves that it’s a mainstream product. It also has a huge fan base.
The producers of this film would have created this movie for the above audience by addressing them via a selection of content like the use of words, images, sound, sequences, colours, fonts and actors. The words would be the type of vocabulary that was used, which were usually simple words so that their target audience would understand what was being said. There was some swearing involved and few complicated words but it was easy to interpret what they meant under the context they were put in. One of the movie poster features an extreme close up of the future Professor X’s face and the past Professor to tie-in with the title of the movie, ‘Days of Future Past’. The colour scheme of the poster is blue, black and grey which fit with the audience as these colours are usually associated with male. It’s a simple yet effective and a genius poster as the face of the young Professor X is visible in a ‘X’ shape while the old, current Professor is visible in the outer area of the ‘X’ shape. Both of the face shapes are matched. The current Professor is in black and white to give that old feel while the young one has a blue hue to it to give off that young and strong feel. Magneto’s poster is the same but with a red hue instead as it connotes evil and he is the villain of the franchise.
The construction of content i.e. the narratives, layout, captions and achorage would have also been chosen really carefully to suit the audience. The narrative of the movie juggles between the past and the future but keeps the flow of the film intact as the past effects what happens in the future. They are using the time travel concept to achieve this. Therefore, we get to see the young Professor X and the current Professor interacting with each other during the pre-final fight scene, in which Wolverine offers young Charles to find himself in his memory and he ends up meeting with his future self.
The generic code and conventions of this genre:
The main characters of this film would be Mystique, Trask and Wolverine as they play a major role in how the film shapes.
Mystique
A vital character of the movie as it’s because of her that things in the future are occurring. When she tried to kill Trask in Vietnam, she got captured by him and then got experimented and since her power is very unique, one that enables her to transform into anyone, the sentinels were able to become a reality. She isn't necessarily a baddie as she didn't kill anyone in the end and she was only trying to avenge her mutant friends who were killed by Trask.
Trask
Not your typical villain. He doesn't fit in with the usual code and conventions of a villain and that is actually a nice twist as prior to his height and body frame, he is able to cause a massive destruction from only using his brain. He is what you would call an evil genius. He made the sentinels to kill the mutants but since the mutants have always been among the humans, there were half human- half mutants as well and they were too destroyed by the Sentinels.
Wolverine
He is your typical superhero – strong, big build, male, powerful. He got experimented on during the previous movie and so he has suffered a lot of damage and pain. Therefore, he gets chosen to travel to the past instead of Professor X as he has more control than him.
A lot of the cast are from the previous X-men movies like Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Halle Berry, Ellen Page etc. By having all of the casts from different movie time come together for a movie attracts fans of both, the old and the new movie. It also helps the returning audience to get used to the new cast.
Jennifer Lawrence was one of the main characters and having her attracts her fans from her other films like the Hunger Games. While, even though he had a small role, Evan Peters brought his fans from his show American Horror Story.
Audience theory
Hypodermic needle model
This theory states that the audience are directly influenced by the media as they believe everything that is transmitted through media as the truth. In the very first scene of Quicksilver, the X-men have a conversation about rescuing Magneto by breaking through the prison in which he’s being held and Quicksilver says, " but that’s illegal" and Wolverine looks at him in disbelief because his room is filled with toys and stuff that were most likely stolen from the stores. And so, Wolverine retorts back to him saying "only if you get caught’" and that’s how they get him in the mission. Seeing this, kids might truly take it to heart and might start stealing from stores as from that scene we perceive it as stealing/ breaking the law is okay as long as you don’t get caught. Especially since it’s coming from Wolverine, a full grown adult character and the main hero of the film, this might become problematic. Since, his behaviour is more likely to be copied rather than other characters like the villain as, we associate heroes as the good people so everything they do must be a good thing and villains being the bad people, everything they do must be bad therefore we shouldn't copy them and copy the main hero is the mind-set that we have.
Cultivation theory
Repeated exposure will affect the audience’s attitude as the action will start to appear normal. In the film we see young Charles injecting himself to stabilize his mind and to gain his legs back multiple times so, the young audience might associate that as a normal thing to do and might even copy it. The amount of violence shown in this film desensitizes you as you see it happening like every 10 minutes and although it seems like they are using violence as the only solution to everything, Charles has tried to use his power to stop violence from occurring by talking to them about the consequences.
Uses and gratifications theory
This is when the audience watch a media text for their personal gain which could be for, entertainment, information, identity or relationship. This varies depending on the person. One could use it for entertainment while one could use it for relationship.
For this film it would be entertainment as the story overall is very interesting as it takes us to the past and shows us the side of X-men which we never knew i.e. Charles not being able to use his legs. They also take us back and forth to the past and the present so it really grabs your attention as if you blink even for a bit you could miss an important part as every part of the movie was important and helped to shape the plot. The main focus of the film is the X-men’s mission to stop the sentinels from being made, therefore there isn’t any love lines so the audience uses it for entertainment purpose.
Passive or active consumption
Passive audience just take in what’s thrown at them from the media and accept it while, active audience voice out their opinion and question the media text.
The audience for this film consume actively as they aren’t told what happened but are lead to assume what may have happened, which then creates a debate among them and they throw their own theories of what may have happened as the comic may have the answer to it. Also, the target audience mainly consist of the comic fan so the producer may have expected them to figure it out by themselves.
Effects debates
Usually we see the women wearing revealing clothes but in this we see Wolverine baring his back, fully exposing his skin. There is skin exposed from the female but not as much as Wolverine.
It is rated 12A for the UK release. According to the British Board Film Classification (BBFC) 12A will contain moderate violence, reference to sex may be made and some strong language will be allowed or be changed into a less strong language. Because of these kids aged 12 and under may view it in cinema but with an adult therefore, it’s up to the parents to decide on whether the movie is suitable for their kids to watch or not. In America, it is PG-13 because that is the equivalent of UK’s 12A.
Audience and Ideological readings
Dominant reading, they read the media text as it was set to be seen by the producers. They would be the young males for this film as they are the target audience.
Negotiated reading, they are similar to the dominant reading but also not as they agree to some of the producers message and disagree to some so they are half-half. For this film they would be the middle aged man since they are male as well, they might find it interesting but find it childish due to the superhero theme.
Oppositional reading, they completely reject the producers view and interpret it negatively. This would be the females, your average young teens as they would prefer rom-com rather than action films.
Cultural competence is the ability to communicate with the audience from a different social class and background. An Asian actress, Bingbing Fan and an Asian country, Vietnam was featured to target the Asian market. While, Paris was used to target the European market. They have shown both of the countries in a positive light to please the audience of those continents.
Fan Culture
All of the movies is based on the Marvel comics X-men and Wolverine so this franchise already had a fan base before it was even released. However, some choose not to watch the movie as it doesn't completely follow the comic and like any other comic turned movie, they haven’t added the important and some good bits of the comics due to the film duration limit. Therefore, some fans are never satisfied with the movie as those scenes might have been a crucial moment of the story line for them and therefore, the movie doesn't make sense anymore to them. This is the only film to have gotten a green signal from most of the comic fans as it has given justice to the comic and has smoothly rebooted the franchise due to the past being changed and therefore, the previous X-men movie except for First Class didn't happen anymore now.
*the coloured paragraphs were added in for resubmission.
Days of the Future Past is the 7th instalment of the X-men franchise including the Wolverine movies. In this film, Wolverine is sent to the past to alter the future as both the humans and the mutants are in danger.
The target audience for this film is male aged 12 to 24 years old and the socio-economic status would be D to E as, people aged 12 to 24 would mostly still be in education and may have a part time job or, could possibly be a non-student with a full time job but can afford and would go to the cinema to watch this film. Socio-economic status is a scale which measures what grade an individual is depending on their social and economic status such as their education, financial state and their occupation. Geodemographics groups the people of the same region into a category and looks at what they as a region do and prefer. For this film they would have looked at all the regions of America as their main target audience are American people. Psychographics looks at the consumer’s lifestyle and personality characteristics to create a profile for them. This would consist of their likes, dislikes, the brands and things they consume, their beliefs and their attitude. This profile would enable the producers to know what their target audience eats; do in their free time and the type of lifestyle that they lead. For Young & Rubicam‘s 4Cs the target audience would fall under mainstreamers as they are at the age where they just follow the herd and so, they would also fall under social needs for Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. This being a big budget movie, they would definitely want to aim it at the most dominant sexual orientation which is Heterosexual so, they are some implications of heterosexual relations. Big budget films generally reflect the most common beliefs as this will attract most of the population, resulting in higher box office taking.
The producers of this film would have defined its audience through quantitative and qualitative audience research. Quantitative research deals with figures and stats to determine what type of audience prefer this type of film and how much it would potentially cash in. Since this film would be classified as a superhero film, I would have imagined the producers to look at how much the other superhero films that were released in the recent year made and if the public are still interested in this genre or have already gotten bored of it. Qualitative research deals with the written side as it is more detailed and explains the why through the use of focus group, questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. This helps them to determine what their audience are like and what they prefer. The target audience are asked questions regarding the movie and their expressions and opinions are taken into account when making the movie to alter it to match with their liking. I would classify this film as a Mainstream franchise as almost everyone has either heard of the movie or know at least what it’s about. The budget for this film was $200,000,000 and the box office taking was $746,045,700 worldwide so this proves that it’s a mainstream product. It also has a huge fan base.
The producers of this film would have created this movie for the above audience by addressing them via a selection of content like the use of words, images, sound, sequences, colours, fonts and actors. The words would be the type of vocabulary that was used, which were usually simple words so that their target audience would understand what was being said. There was some swearing involved and few complicated words but it was easy to interpret what they meant under the context they were put in. One of the movie poster features an extreme close up of the future Professor X’s face and the past Professor to tie-in with the title of the movie, ‘Days of Future Past’. The colour scheme of the poster is blue, black and grey which fit with the audience as these colours are usually associated with male. It’s a simple yet effective and a genius poster as the face of the young Professor X is visible in a ‘X’ shape while the old, current Professor is visible in the outer area of the ‘X’ shape. Both of the face shapes are matched. The current Professor is in black and white to give that old feel while the young one has a blue hue to it to give off that young and strong feel. Magneto’s poster is the same but with a red hue instead as it connotes evil and he is the villain of the franchise.
The construction of content i.e. the narratives, layout, captions and achorage would have also been chosen really carefully to suit the audience. The narrative of the movie juggles between the past and the future but keeps the flow of the film intact as the past effects what happens in the future. They are using the time travel concept to achieve this. Therefore, we get to see the young Professor X and the current Professor interacting with each other during the pre-final fight scene, in which Wolverine offers young Charles to find himself in his memory and he ends up meeting with his future self.
The generic code and conventions of this genre:
- Characters with superpower
- A good guy team – Professor X and the X-men
- A villain – Trask and Sentinels
- Fancy outfits, make up, coloured lenses
- Use of CGI
- The good and bad working together but later the bad betrays.
- The good always win
- A lot of death and fights
- Various country locations – Vietnam, Paris, USA.
The main characters of this film would be Mystique, Trask and Wolverine as they play a major role in how the film shapes.
Mystique
A vital character of the movie as it’s because of her that things in the future are occurring. When she tried to kill Trask in Vietnam, she got captured by him and then got experimented and since her power is very unique, one that enables her to transform into anyone, the sentinels were able to become a reality. She isn't necessarily a baddie as she didn't kill anyone in the end and she was only trying to avenge her mutant friends who were killed by Trask.
Trask
Not your typical villain. He doesn't fit in with the usual code and conventions of a villain and that is actually a nice twist as prior to his height and body frame, he is able to cause a massive destruction from only using his brain. He is what you would call an evil genius. He made the sentinels to kill the mutants but since the mutants have always been among the humans, there were half human- half mutants as well and they were too destroyed by the Sentinels.
Wolverine
He is your typical superhero – strong, big build, male, powerful. He got experimented on during the previous movie and so he has suffered a lot of damage and pain. Therefore, he gets chosen to travel to the past instead of Professor X as he has more control than him.
A lot of the cast are from the previous X-men movies like Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Halle Berry, Ellen Page etc. By having all of the casts from different movie time come together for a movie attracts fans of both, the old and the new movie. It also helps the returning audience to get used to the new cast.
Jennifer Lawrence was one of the main characters and having her attracts her fans from her other films like the Hunger Games. While, even though he had a small role, Evan Peters brought his fans from his show American Horror Story.
Audience theory
Hypodermic needle model
This theory states that the audience are directly influenced by the media as they believe everything that is transmitted through media as the truth. In the very first scene of Quicksilver, the X-men have a conversation about rescuing Magneto by breaking through the prison in which he’s being held and Quicksilver says, " but that’s illegal" and Wolverine looks at him in disbelief because his room is filled with toys and stuff that were most likely stolen from the stores. And so, Wolverine retorts back to him saying "only if you get caught’" and that’s how they get him in the mission. Seeing this, kids might truly take it to heart and might start stealing from stores as from that scene we perceive it as stealing/ breaking the law is okay as long as you don’t get caught. Especially since it’s coming from Wolverine, a full grown adult character and the main hero of the film, this might become problematic. Since, his behaviour is more likely to be copied rather than other characters like the villain as, we associate heroes as the good people so everything they do must be a good thing and villains being the bad people, everything they do must be bad therefore we shouldn't copy them and copy the main hero is the mind-set that we have.
Cultivation theory
Repeated exposure will affect the audience’s attitude as the action will start to appear normal. In the film we see young Charles injecting himself to stabilize his mind and to gain his legs back multiple times so, the young audience might associate that as a normal thing to do and might even copy it. The amount of violence shown in this film desensitizes you as you see it happening like every 10 minutes and although it seems like they are using violence as the only solution to everything, Charles has tried to use his power to stop violence from occurring by talking to them about the consequences.
Uses and gratifications theory
This is when the audience watch a media text for their personal gain which could be for, entertainment, information, identity or relationship. This varies depending on the person. One could use it for entertainment while one could use it for relationship.
For this film it would be entertainment as the story overall is very interesting as it takes us to the past and shows us the side of X-men which we never knew i.e. Charles not being able to use his legs. They also take us back and forth to the past and the present so it really grabs your attention as if you blink even for a bit you could miss an important part as every part of the movie was important and helped to shape the plot. The main focus of the film is the X-men’s mission to stop the sentinels from being made, therefore there isn’t any love lines so the audience uses it for entertainment purpose.
Passive or active consumption
Passive audience just take in what’s thrown at them from the media and accept it while, active audience voice out their opinion and question the media text.
The audience for this film consume actively as they aren’t told what happened but are lead to assume what may have happened, which then creates a debate among them and they throw their own theories of what may have happened as the comic may have the answer to it. Also, the target audience mainly consist of the comic fan so the producer may have expected them to figure it out by themselves.
Effects debates
Usually we see the women wearing revealing clothes but in this we see Wolverine baring his back, fully exposing his skin. There is skin exposed from the female but not as much as Wolverine.
It is rated 12A for the UK release. According to the British Board Film Classification (BBFC) 12A will contain moderate violence, reference to sex may be made and some strong language will be allowed or be changed into a less strong language. Because of these kids aged 12 and under may view it in cinema but with an adult therefore, it’s up to the parents to decide on whether the movie is suitable for their kids to watch or not. In America, it is PG-13 because that is the equivalent of UK’s 12A.
Audience and Ideological readings
Dominant reading, they read the media text as it was set to be seen by the producers. They would be the young males for this film as they are the target audience.
Negotiated reading, they are similar to the dominant reading but also not as they agree to some of the producers message and disagree to some so they are half-half. For this film they would be the middle aged man since they are male as well, they might find it interesting but find it childish due to the superhero theme.
Oppositional reading, they completely reject the producers view and interpret it negatively. This would be the females, your average young teens as they would prefer rom-com rather than action films.
Cultural competence is the ability to communicate with the audience from a different social class and background. An Asian actress, Bingbing Fan and an Asian country, Vietnam was featured to target the Asian market. While, Paris was used to target the European market. They have shown both of the countries in a positive light to please the audience of those continents.
Fan Culture
All of the movies is based on the Marvel comics X-men and Wolverine so this franchise already had a fan base before it was even released. However, some choose not to watch the movie as it doesn't completely follow the comic and like any other comic turned movie, they haven’t added the important and some good bits of the comics due to the film duration limit. Therefore, some fans are never satisfied with the movie as those scenes might have been a crucial moment of the story line for them and therefore, the movie doesn't make sense anymore to them. This is the only film to have gotten a green signal from most of the comic fans as it has given justice to the comic and has smoothly rebooted the franchise due to the past being changed and therefore, the previous X-men movie except for First Class didn't happen anymore now.