Due Date and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

            Due Date and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles are so similar that the former almost seems like a remake of latter.

            There were various elements in each film that make them seem very similar.  For example, in both films, the main characters cannot get to their destination via plane and must find a different form of transportation.  The difference is, though, that in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Neal and Del take a train at two points in the film, while in Due Date, Peter and Ethan only traveled by car.  Another example is that in both films, Peter regards Ethan in the same way that Neal regards Del and vice versa.  Peter and Neal think of Ethan and Del as obtrusive and destructive; likewise, Ethan and Del think of Peter and Neal as uptight and pessimistic.  Another instance is that both Peter and Neal accept Ethan and Del into their lives at the end of the film.  The difference here, though, is that Neal realizes that Del does not have a family to return to while Peter just accepts Ethan’s friendship.

            Due Date and Planes, Trains, and Automobiles have many similarities.  Both films involve the main characters using different methods of transportation; both films involve main characters with the same feelings regarding their travelling companion; and both films end in a bonded friendship.  There were also differences between both films such as one film involved the use of trains while the other only used cars.

Megamind and Young Frankenstein

            I found two main similarities between Megamind and Young Frankenstein.

            The first similarity is that in both films, the main character creates something that gets out of hand.  In Young Frankenstein, Frankenstein brings to life a dead body.  At first, it seems like the experiment has gone well until Igor lights a match and frightens the creation.  The creation is deemed as a dangerous monster because it is discovered that it has an abnormal brain and acts in unpredictable but destructive ways.  In Megamind, on the other hand, Megamind enhances Hal’s body into that of a superhero.  Megamind then trains superhero Hal, known as Tighten, to fight for good.  In the end, however, Tighten becomes a bad guy because Roxanne does not love him for being a good guy.

            The second similarity in both films is that the protagonist is viewed as the bad buy at first but then becomes the good guy.  In Young Frankenstein, all of the townsfolk in Transylvania do not trust Frankenstein because of his family’s history of creating monsters.  As soon as Frankenstein reveals that he has made a creature and the creature starts to terrorize the village, then the townsfolk hate Frankenstein.  It is only after Frankenstein gives some of his own intelligence to the creation and the creation stops the townsfolk from destroying Frankenstein is when Frankenstein is seen as a decent guy.  In Megamind, Megamind thinks he is supposed to be the bad guy so he acts this way until Tighten starts to turn evil.  Megamind saves Roxanne and Metro City from Tighten, and then everyone views him as the good guy.

             Megamind and Young Frankenstein have two main similarities.  They both have protagonists that make something that terrorizes people, and they are viewed as the bad guy at first.

Catfish and Catch Me If You Can

            I will be explaining some of the various similarities between the films Catfish and Catch Me If You Can. 

Catfish and Catch Me If You Can are very similar in a lot of aspects.  The biggest similarity is that both films are about a person who is living a relatively huge lie.  In Catfish, the person living the lie is female and uses the internet to disguise herself.  Specifically, she uses Facebook to create multiple accounts for the different people she plays as.  In Catch Me If You Can, a male lives the lie by becoming and living as a co-pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer.  He was able to acquire these roles by knowing some of the on-the-job jargon and by hiding behind fake names.  For both Angela and Frank, they never believed to be the people they pretended to be.  Angela’s reasoning for creating the fake identities is because she does not like the current life she leads, and so she creates each account based on fragments of her personality that she wishes she could live out.  Frank’s reason for creating his identities, however, is because he wants his mother and father to get back together.  He believes that by earning back the money and things his parents had lost, that would make them happy and the family would get back together again.  Another similarity is that Angela and Frank never stopped lying about their identities until someone found out the truth and forced their hand.  When Nev first met with Angela, she did not act as if anything were wrong and even made up that she had ovarian cancer; however, when Nev finally confronted Angela about the fake accounts, she immediately surrendered and told Nev the truth about herself.  In the first encounter with Carl, Frank pretends to be part of the Secret Service so he can get away.  It is not until Frank is caught and ends up working for the FBI that he finally stops faking his identity.

            Catfish and Catch Me If You Can have a lot of similarities between them.  I have only explained three of them, but I am sure there are more.

Red and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

            The films Red and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World have very little in common.  And, what they do have in common, have to be connected in sort of a vague way.  I will be focusing on the difference between the vague connections.

            One of the first things that I noticed that the films have in common is that they both contain humor, and the humor only lasts for about two-thirds of the films.  The difference, however, is in the type of comedy.  The comedy found in Red comes from the fact that the situations that the characters encounter are unrealistic, and they deal with it in an unrealistic way such as when John Malkovich’s character bats a grenade with his gun back at the grenade thrower and explodes him.  The comedy in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World comes from its actors:  they are comedians put into real life situations, and we expect them to get out of the situation in a funny way.

            The second commonality I noticed was that both films contain a form of greed and deal with it differently.  The difference here is that in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the main characters are dealing with greed over hidden money.  How the characters deal with greed is through comedy.  In Red, however, the main characters are attempting to survive an assassination attempt spawned by a greedy arms dealer.  Greed in this film is shown as a bad attribute to have.

            The last and probably biggest connection I found between the two films is that they both appeal to an older audience.  It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World appeals to an older audience because it contains many actors and comedians from the era it was made in, so an older audience member will know much more about the actor and possibly appreciate the actor more than a younger viewer might.  Red appeals to an older audience for almost the same reason as It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World except that the film was made in this era.

            Red and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World do not have much in common, and what they do have in common has very little relation to each other. Both films contain comedy, greed, and an allure for an older audience.

The Town and The Public Enemy

            The Public Enemy and The Town are vaguely related, at best.  Both Tom and Doug, the main characters of the movie, are criminals.  But, how far does this relation really extend?

            The Public Enemy is all about how criminals should not be glorified.  Yet, the main character is a criminal.  The film introduces us to a young Tom, who has, on his own will, decided to get involved in petty crimes in order to get money for himself.  When Tom gets older, he gets involved in a crime that goes wrong and one of his friends, Larry, gets killed.  The rest of the movie is about how Tom becomes a hired gang member for Paddy.  Throughout the movie, though, we never side with Tom, except for maybe at the near end when Tom’s other friend, Matt, dies, and when Tom gets kidnapped from the hospital.

            The Town, on the other hand, wants us to think of Doug as the antihero, and wants us to feel that Doug should be able to get away and not get in trouble for the crimes he has done.  This film emphasizes the fact that Charlestown has always been full of criminals, and that families have passed down the criminal profession from generation to generation.  We also learn that though Doug becomes part of a gang because of his dad’s history and brother-like friend, he does not actually enjoy the business and wants to start anew with Claire.

            Though The Public Enemy and The Town share a common theme of the life of a criminal, they do not share much else. The Public Enemy is a warning to its viewers that criminals and thugs should be stopped and that they are only nuisances to our lives. The Town, however, serves to give a humanizing view on criminals.  It wants us to remember that not all criminals chose the lives they live, and when they want to redeem themselves from crime, there can never be an escape from punishment, either from their gang or from law enforcement. 

The Social Network and Citizen Kane

   Citizen Kane and The Social Network contain very similar elements, especially between the main characters of each film. There are also distinct differences between the main characters of each film. This essay aims to point out these key commonalities and differences found between Charles Kane and Mark Zuckerberg.
   There were surprisingly quite a few similarities between The Social Network and Citizen Kane. One of the main similarities is that both Charles Kane and Mark Zuckerberg were not interested in making money from their business even though they became extremely wealthy from it. Another similarity is that both characters made a form of media that changed the way information is spread out. Kane made a newspaper that influenced the public so much so that they would vote for whoever Kane supported. Zuckerberg created a website that made the way we socialize radically different from what it used to be. For example, we sometimes Facebook stalk a person to get to know him or her rather than asking people we know about the person. Another similarity between the movies is that Kane and Zuckerberg did not get what they wanted in the end. Kane wanted his sled and childhood back, and Zuckerberg wanted Erica Albright who left him at the beginning of the film. Another similarity is that both Zuckerberg and Kane wrote badly about their ladies: Zuckerberg writes mean things about Erica after she breaks up with him, and Kane writes a bad review about Susan Alexander Kane’s opera singing on opening night.
   There were obvious differences between the movies. For instance, Kane writes exaggerated newspapers, but Zuckerberg created a social website for users to have control over their own accounts. Another example is that Kane tried to fill his life with physical objects whereas Zuckerberg did not. Another difference is that Kane yearned for the love and attention of everyone around him whereas Zuckerberg only wanted the love of one person, Erica Albright. Another difference is that Kane used his newspaper business to try and gain political power while Zuckerberg just wanted to redeem himself with the Harvard student body after making FaceMash.
   At a first glance, it might seem like both movies have very little in common, especially since each takes place in very different time periods. However, when comparing and contrasting both movies, it turns out that The Social Network and Citizen Kane have many commonalities and a few differences between their main characters, Mark Zuckerberg and Charles Kane, as shown above.