7_Pounds

Seven Pounds and The Pursuit of Happiness 1. Choose any two similar movies that have been released in the last 10 years. The movies must have significant character development. Thoroughly describe the plots, main characters, and settings of both movies. (2-3 paragraphs for each movie.) I chose the movies Seven Pounds, and The Pursuit of Happiness. They both star the famous actor Will Smith as the main character. Will Smith plays a very strong character in both films. In the movie Seven Pounds, Will Smith plays a man named Tim, who realizes that he can change the lives of seven people. He knows that he can change the lives of people that range from being blind, to a girl on the organ donor lists. He feels that these people deserve a second chance at life. Through the entire movie, he only wants to help these seven people. He has no intentions of falling in love with any of those seven, but he ends up falling for a woman that is on a donor list who is in need of a heart. He gives up absolutely everything; which includes his life, just to help her. The story takes place in an urban neighborhood and in different parts of Los Angeles, California. This movie is a long one but it is a good one in my opinion. It starts off with Tim getting into a car crash that kills seven people, so in exchange he feels that he can make things right by helping others by donating his organs. Seven Pounds puts off a calm setting in most of the movie, but it also puts off a dramatic edge at times. I feel that it is very realistic, and it shows how a simple Average Joe becomes very humble and only wants to help others even though he has never met some of them before. The second film I watched was The Pursuit of Happiness, and that also start Will Smith as the main character. In this movie Will Smith plays a guy named Chris. Chris has a wife named Linda and a five year old son that is named Christopher. The story begins in San Francisco, California, and Chris sells X-Ray machines for a living. His wife works as well but still somehow, they can’t seem to make ends meet. It seems that they both live stressful lives in the big busy city. When Chris finds himself no longer able to sell his x-ray machines, his family begins to have financial problems that will eventually break them apart. After the family is broken apart Chris sets out on his own still trying to make a living. Throughout the entire movie his main struggle is a financial one. He just can’t seem to be able to stand on his own two feet. Chris has this thought about Thomas Jefferson and his saying of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Does it really exist, and to what level' After all the sacrifices he gave and after the many struggles that Chris goes through, he finally ends up with a job because he kept his head up and never gave up. This movie has a lot of lessons to teach people and in the movie, I think that the lesson Chris learned was to appreciate everything in life, and even thought there were times in his life where he barely had a few dollars he was able to keep his happiness, simply because that is the type of person he was. 2. Describe the target audiences (gender, age range, ethnicity, etc) of your movies. The intended audience of my films, I believe could be the same criteria of people. For the movie Seven Pounds; I think that girls or women would be more interested in watching this because it is emotional, and very sad at the end. Although I am sure guys would not be completely opposed to this movie. I think it would be a good couple movie night movie. The age preference for seven pounds would be teenagers to the elderly. I don’t think that age has too much to do with the targeted audience, it’s more so the taste of the movie that people are interested in. Of course ethnicity doesn’t have anything to do with the targeted audiences, if the producers were intentionally targeting a specific ethnicity then that would be considered discrimination. Something that I did notice in Seven Pounds was that there were no children throughout the whole film, besides a bone marrow recipient. So I would personally say that children wouldn’t really be interested in watching this film. I think that the context of this film would be too hard for children to understand and process. I firmly believe that if children were to watch this movie they would not understand the moral of this movie. In my second film which was The Pursuit of Happiness, the targeted audience is easy to find. This film is suitable for everyone including children to the elderly. The Pursuit of Happiness is for both male and female viewers. There is no targeted ethnicity in this movie as well. I still feel if there would be that would be discrimination. This film doesn’t have violence or any bad language. It is all about serious matters though. I would like to say that this is or could be considered a family friendly film. It is just a really good movie that makes you think and ponder about your life in the end. It helps you appreciate what you have, even though it is just a movie; although it is based on an actual story. 3. Do you feel that children, adolescents, and adults look to movies for role models in their lives' Would you consider any of the main characters in the movies to be positive role models' If so, describe in detail. As a child/adolescent, did you have any movie role models while growing up' Explain in detail. I do strongly agree that children, adolescents, and adults all look up to movie for role models. I think that mainly children and teens have movie role models. I’m really thinking that adults do to, just at a different level. I think that maybe adults see the “role models” as advice and lessons that can be learned, just in advance. It can also really depend on what movie it is. For example, if it’s a movie that the characters can do non-realistic things like Spiderman; it is a good movie, but realistically nobody can really do that in real life. Children would look up to Spiderman, but adults most likely would not. The two movies I chose have realistic characters and real events so I believe that changes the circumstances of this question. In my two films that I chose to complete this project with, I strongly agree that the two main characters can be used as pretty good role models. Stated with the fact that Tim from Seven Pounds is definitely not the best role model, but certain traits in his character are. In the beginning of the movie Seven Pounds, Tim is in a car accidently that is solely caused by him talking on his cell phone while driving. Also something really negative that I saw would not be a good thing at all for someone to look up to is that he took his own life at the end of the movie. I think that this demonstrated pure weakness and guilt which was from the crash. At the same, during the movie he was doing something good. He was only trying to save Emily and Ezra. Otherwise all the good things that he did do throughout this film he can be justified as a good role model. He only wanted to help people that he really believed and though that deserved a second chance. In the Pursuit of Happiness, Chris was the main character who I believe was a good role model for both adults and children. There were so many scenarios in this film that showed his positive influence that he had. For example, there was the scene were the man that was the sole decision maker of whether to hire him or not needed to borrow five dollars for his taxi ride. Chris knowing that he didn’t even have a place to live, let alone was he in any condition to lend money out, He gave the man the five dollars anyways. I think that this is something people can learn from, they can learn not to be selfish and always give a helping hand. Last of all, another reason that Chris is a good role model, is that not once did Chris ever abandon his son nor did he ever give up trying to get a job. He kept trying and in the end he was hired by the business Dean Witter. People can take from this to never give up in the good times or bad ones. These are today’s role models; they have changed in the roles of movies as society has seemed to change as well. When I was a young girl, before I was even in my teen years, I would watch a lot of shows that would come out on the Disney channel. They were all pretty good shows with good messages. For example, I will use the show called “Sister, Sister”. This show was about two twin girls that lived ordinary lives, and I looked up to them. I thought they were cool girls and not a bad influence at all. They did well in school, and were good kids. It was such a long time ago that I would watch this show, so I’m trying to remember what I can. But I could say that they really were influences to me in a way. I had good grades in school, and did nothing bad to get in trouble. I was a good kid overall. We are human though, and some of us are influenced on what we see. Rather we act on the influences that are bad, it is good to know that some of us can still use our judgment on how to act and choose what is right from what is wrong. 4. You will choose one main character from each movie. Utilizing the 10 scales of the Minnesota Multiphase Personality Inventory (MMPI) (Hypochondrias, Depression, Hysteria, Psychopathic Deviancy, Masculinity/Femininity, Paranoia, Psychasthenia, Schizophrenia, Hypomania, and Social Introversion) and the “big 5” personality factors. Conduct a detailed personality analysis on your two main characters and justify your graphs/charts in writing. This chart demonstrates the MMPI of the two main characters. Both of the characters are similar in a few ways more than others. I made my judgment of the characters personalities’ bases on what I thought. They are both average people, but I found that everyone had some sort of personality weakness or strength or both combined. I realized that Tim Thomas from Seven Pounds had more of an emotional personality. He has a lot of emotional problems, hysteria I think bothered him the most.