I watched “Logan” (2016, directed by James Mangold) yesterday, and it got me thinking about manipulating or changing existing and established worlds to influence changes in tone and aesthetic within film genre and narrative. The already critically acclaimed film, builds upon the existing mythos of the X-Men series however the biggest shift in this particular installment is the vastly alien environment in which the film is set. Set in the near future in a dystopian landscape blending elements of western films and desolate and ravished landscapes, the films setting assists in exposing the vulnerabilities of the key characters and establishing the recurring themes of age and degeneration (both holistically metaphorical and physically) . With the landscape itself, often showing boundless plains in the mexican desert, rusted and worn buildings and trinkets ravished by time. The world feels lived in, assisting to acclimatize the viewers to what would otherwise be a jarring jump into the future without any environment to give context.

(Shot from Logan, featuring an abandoned factory in the heart of New Mexico, the landscape being shown as no longer functional an echo of the protagonist’s inability to function as he once did, one of many examples of the world being used to convey narrative themes)

From a course relevant perspective, this had me thinking of other possibilities in utilizing world as a tool placed above dialogue and narrative to establish setting in the vein of the phrase “showing rather than telling”, with the latter usually being the key encumbrance in distinguishing good from bad screenplays. While in a vastly different strain of the same principle, The Truman Show (1998,  Peter Weir), a common film discussed in this weeks tutorial classes, embodies similar traits as world was clearly a key factor in bolstering the surreal feel and look of the world in which Truman goes about his day to day life in. With this in mind and given the focus and expectations of the course structure, I believe this will be a key point of focus in my own outcomes, as the concept of environments and set pieces of a world as a narrative tool to convey information is a powerful asset when utilized correctly, and in practices this I hope to be able to distinguish between correct usage and finding balance between subtlety without oversaturation.

(Shot of Seahaven, the fictional city in which Truman lives, the environment and the people inhabiting it set up for the grand revelation that the world is curated and designed for a reality TV show, through using the environment to establish this earlier allows the audience to not feel as if the grand reveal was unexpected as they have been given tools through the landscape to formulate this for themselves without needing to be told.)