1. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING & DESIGN
FOUNDATION IN NATURAL AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT
NAME: ROSABELLA ZUNTIVAI MOBIJOHN
STUDENT I.D: 0322106
GROUP/SESSION: WEDNESDAY (6.30PM-8.30PM)
SUBJECT: ENGLISH II
CODE: ELG30605
INTAKE: MARCH 2015 (SEMESTER 2)
SUBMISSION DATE: 4TH DECEMBER 2015
LECTURER: MR. GOPIGHANTAN MYLVAGANAM
WORD COUNT: 1000
2. All movies make and leave an impression on us. No matter what people watch when they
leave the theatre, they are always left with the impression that “It was the best movie that I have
EVER watched, or that movie was Epic, or that was the scariest movie I have ever watched.”
However, on many weekends, people wonder what to do. Usually movies are picked out depending
on what mood people are in, deciding what movie to watch can be quite difficult at times. Movie
genres helps us decide what movies to watch. Therefore, movie genres can be quite different as
well. What are movie genres? Movie genre is the term used to categorise different types of movies.
For example, there are horror movies, action movies, romance movies, sci-fi movies and so on.
For this essay, I will be contrasting two blockbuster movies which derive from two different
movie genres which are of a disaster and adventure movie genre. A disaster film is a film genre that
has an impending or ongoing disaster as its subject and primary plot device. Such disasters include,
natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes, accidents such as shipwrecks or airplane crashes, or
calamities like world wide diseases pandemics. On the other hand, Dirks (2015) stated that an
adventure movie genre are usually exciting stories, with new experiences or exotic locales, very
similar to or often paired with the action film genre. They can include traditional swashbucklers,
serialised films and historical spectacles, searches or expeditions for lost continents, "jungle" and
"desert" epics, treasure hunts, or searches for the unknown.
To begin with, the first movie that I’ve selected is Titanic. Titanic is a disaster film which
was released in the year 1997 in America and was directed by James Cameron. After winning a trip
on the RMS Titanic during a dockside card game, American Jack Dawson spots the society girl
Rose DeWitt Bukater who is on her way to Philadelphia to marry her rich snob fiancé Caledon
Hockley. Rose feels helplessly trapped by her situation and makes her way to the aft deck and
thinks of suicide until she is rescued by Jack. In return, he spirits Rose off to third-class for an
evening of dancing, giving her the time of her life. Deciding to forsake her intended future all
together, Rose asks Jack, who has made his living making sketches on the streets of Paris, to draw
her in the nude wearing the invaluable blue diamond Cal has given her. Caledon finds out and has
Jack locked away. Soon afterwards, the ship hits an iceberg and Rose must find Jack while both
must run from Caledon even as the ship sinks. (IMDb, 1997)
Furthermore, the second movie that I’ve selected to contrast on is Tomorrowland.
Tomorrowland is an adventure film which was released in the year 2015 in France and was directed
by Brad Bird. Bound by a shared destiny, a bright, optimistic teen bursting with scientific curiosity,
Casey Newton sabotages equipment being used to bring down a NASA station. One night, her luck
runs out when she is captured by police. When leaving she makes an extraordinary discovery-a pin.
Whenever Casey touches it, she finds herself in Tomorrowland, a futuristic world where nothing is
impossible. She realises the pin is evil, so she heads out to return it. Along the way, she teams up
with mysterious robot girl, Athena, and genius boy inventor now 54, frank walker on a danger filled
adventure to unearth the secrets of an enigmatic place somewhere in time and space that exists in
their collective memory as “Tomorrowland.” (IMDb, 2015)
In the movie Titanic, Jack Dawson is one of the main protagonists in Titanic and the love
interest of Rose DeWitt Bukater. He is portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio while Rose DeWitt Bukater
3. is portrayed by Kate Winslet. In contrast, the movie Tomorrowland has only one protagonist which
is Casey Newton played by Britt Robertson. Moving on, it is pretty evident that both movies portray
different settings. In the movie Titanic, the setting is in the North Atlantic Ocean on the RMS
Titanic while in the movie Tomorrowland, Lederman (2015) stated that there are more than one
setting. The settings mentioned were in Enderby, the museum of Vancouver, the H.R. MacMillan
Space centre, University of British Columbia, Valencia, Spain, Caribbean, NASA, Florida and
Disneyland. Last but not least, contrast between the ending of both movies. The movie Titanic has a
rather sad and depressing end. Unfortunately, the ship wrecks and the stern side rises 90 degrees
into the air. Jack dies of hyperaemia. The story thus ends with the aged Rose telling this story to the
treasure hunters, and ends up dropping the 'Heart of the Ocean' back to where it belonged and
retires to bed with a lighter heart and falls into an eternal sleep, and as the last survivor her spirit
returns to the Grand Staircase on board a magical and restored to her former glory Titanic where
Jack, and the other souls, have been patiently waiting for her to return home. While in the movie
Tomorrowland, it has an explosive movie ending. For whatever reason, the people of Tomorrowland
don’t really seem to care that Governor Nix had a building fall on him. Instead, it appears that Frank
becomes the new leader of +U. He and Casey begin a new recruitment campaign, including
bringing Casey’s family and other former-NASA engineers to the city. They also create a new group
of robot recruiters like Athena, who go to Earth to find new “dreamers”: scientists, artists, activists
and other people who haven’t given up on the world.
Hence to conclude, I have contrasted on both movies in terms of movie genre, the plot, main
characters,settings and also the ending. In a nutshell, I’ve learnt that movie genres can be so similar,
yet different at the same time. They’re able to lead you on emotional rollercoaster rides and cause
you to think outside the box.
4. References
1. Film genre. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1st, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Film_genre
2. Dirks, T. (2015). Adventure Films. Retrieved December 3rd, 2015, from http://
www.filmsite.org/adventurefilms.html
3. Plot Summary. (n.d.). Retrieved December 3rd, 2015, from http://www.imdb.com/title/
tt0120338/plotsummary
4. Plot Summary. (n.d.). Retrieved December 3rd, 2015, from http://www.imdb.com/title/
tt1964418/plotsummary
5. Lederman, M. (2015, May 21). Tomorrowland movie setting. Retrieved December 3, 2015,
from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/british-columbia-was-the-perfect-setting-for-
tomorrowland/article24551441/
