Monday 25 January 2010

Protagonist and Antagonist Analysis



In the film X-Men Origins: Wolverine, there is one protagonist which is identified immediately as Wolverine. The Antagonist is at first thought to be Wolverine's half brother, Sabertooth, but it is later revealed to be a man who is responsible for all the events, Stryker.

Wolverine in the film goes through a series of personality changes. These personalities are of strong feelings, such as anger, despair and sincerity. These can be thought as his weakness in the film, a convention of thriller protagonists, as it is constantly used against him when the antagonists want to use him for his powers.

The first antagonist, Sabertooth, holds a very strong grudge against Wolverine, as he walked away from their friendship. Sabertooth is very similar to Wolverine but is
overall stronger than him, leaving Wolverine in very close-to-death situations.

The second antagonist, Stryker, has no such deep feelings towards Wolverine and his only motive is to make him the "perfect weapon" and then later use other mutants captured during the film, by sabertooth, to create his dream. He uses a more psychological approach to getting what he wanted, keeping away from using actual violence. This can be thought as a merging of a psychological thriller with the main fundamentals of an action thriller which this film is.

In comparison to our opening clip, the antagonist has the advantage over the protagonist until the very end of the film, which is not seen as we are only doing two minutes and therefore we only see the protagonist in a position of weakness. The protagonist also has a weakness that the antagonist can use to his advantage, in the form of a would that was inflicted and never fully heals in the remainder of the plot, that will never be seen.

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