Boondock Saints theme by Sb3000
Download: BoondockSaints.p3t
(3 backgrounds)
Redirect to:
The #1 spot for Playstation themes!
Matrix theme by Big Willie
Download: Matrix_Theme.p3t
(4 backgrounds)
Matrix (pl.: matrices or matrixes) most commonly refers to:
Matrix may also refer to:
Reservoir Dogs theme by hitman1986
Download: ReservoirDogs.p3t
(1 background)
Reservoir Dogs | |
---|---|
Directed by | Quentin Tarantino |
Written by | Quentin Tarantino |
Produced by | Lawrence Bender |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Andrzej Sekuła |
Edited by | Sally Menke |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by | Miramax Films |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 99 minutes[1] |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $1.2–3 million[1][2][3] |
Box office | $2.9 million[1] |
Reservoir Dogs is a 1992 American crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino in his feature-length debut. It stars Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Michael Madsen, Tarantino, and Edward Bunker as diamond thieves whose heist of a jewelry store goes terribly wrong. Kirk Baltz, Randy Brooks, and Steven Wright also play supporting roles. The film incorporates many motifs that have become Tarantino's hallmarks: violent crime, pop culture references, profanity, and nonlinear storytelling.
The film is regarded as a classic of independent film and a cult film[4] and was named "Greatest Independent Film of All Time" by Empire. Although controversial at first for its depictions of violence and heavy use of profanity, Reservoir Dogs was generally well-received, and the cast was praised by many critics. Despite not being heavily promoted during its theatrical run, the film became a modest success in the United States after grossing $2.8 million against its scant budget. It achieved higher popularity after the success of Tarantino's next film, Pulp Fiction (1994). A soundtrack was released featuring songs used in the film, which are mostly from the 1970s.
Eight men eat breakfast at a diner. All but the boss, Joe Cabot, and his son, "Nice Guy" Eddie Cabot, use aliases: Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange and Mr. Pink.
The men carry out a diamond heist. White flees with Orange, who was shot during the escape and is bleeding profusely in the back seat of White's car. At their hideout, White and Orange rendezvous with Pink, who believes that the job was a setup and that the police were waiting for them. White informs him that Brown is dead, Blue and Blonde are missing, and Blonde murdered several civilians during the heist. White is furious that Joe, his old friend, would employ Blonde, whom he describes as a psychopath. Pink has hidden the diamonds nearby and argues with White over whether to get medical attention for Orange, and the pair draw guns on each other. They stand down when Blonde arrives with a kidnapped policeman, Marvin Nash.
Some time earlier, Blonde meets with the Cabots, having completed a four-year prison sentence. To reward him for not having given Joe's name to the authorities, they offer him a job. Blonde is grateful but insists that he wants to get back to "real work", and they recruit him for the heist.
In the present, White and Pink beat Nash for information. Eddie arrives and orders them to go with him to ditch the getaway vehicles, leaving Blonde in charge of Nash and Orange. Nash denies knowledge, but Blonde ignores him and resumes the torture, cutting off Nash's ear with a straight razor. He prepares to set him on fire, but Orange shoots Blonde dead. Orange reveals to Nash that he is an undercover police officer, and that the police will arrive when Joe comes to the warehouse.
When Eddie, Pink, and White return, Orange tries to convince them that Blonde planned to kill them all and steal the diamonds for himself. Eddie shoots and kills Nash and accuses Orange of lying, since Blonde was loyal to his father. Joe arrives with news that the police have killed Blue. He is about to execute Orange, who he suspects is the traitor behind the setup, but White intervenes and holds Joe at gunpoint, insisting that Orange is not a police officer. Eddie aims his gun at White, creating a Mexican standoff. All three fire. Both Cabots are killed, and White and Orange are hit.
Pink takes the diamonds and flees. As White cradles the dying Orange in his arms, Orange confesses that he is a police officer. White presses his gun to Orange's head. The police storm the warehouse and order White to drop his gun. Gunshots sound and White collapses.
Rich Turner played Sheriff #1. Nina Siemaszko played police officer Jody McClusky; her scenes were deleted from the theatrical release.[5] There is an unseen accomplice of Joe and Eddie who speaks to Eddie on the phone. His name is Dov Schwarz, named after the sound editor on My Best Friend's Birthday.[6]
Quentin Tarantino had been working at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California, and originally planned to shoot the film with his friends on a budget of $30,000 in a 16 mm black-and-white format, with producer Lawrence Bender playing a police officer chasing Mr. Pink.[7] Bender gave the script to his acting teacher, whose wife gave the script to Harvey Keitel.[8] Keitel liked it enough to sign as a co-producer so Tarantino and Bender would have an easier job finding funding; with his assistance, they raised $1.5 million.[2] Keitel also paid for Tarantino and Bender to host casting sessions in New York, where the duo found Steve Buscemi, Michael Madsen, and Tim Roth.[9] Jon Cryer was asked to audition for the role of Mr. Pink, but he backed out at the last minute.[10] Viggo Mortensen and George Clooney also read for roles,[11][12] while Tim Roth's agents originally wanted him to be Mr. Pink or Mr. Blonde, but he preferred Mr. Orange because he would "be an English actor pretending to be American playing a cop pretending to be a robber".[13]
The film contains multiple homages to other films.[14] Tarantino himself has said that Reservoir Dogs was influenced by Stanley Kubrick's 1956 film noir The Killing: "I didn't go out of my way to do a rip-off of The Killing, but I did think of it as my 'Killing', my take on that kind of heist movie."[2] The film's plot was also inspired by the 1952 film Kansas City Confidential.[15] Additionally, Joseph H. Lewis's 1955 film The Big Combo and Sergio Corbucci's 1966 Spaghetti Western Django inspired the scene where a police officer is tortured in a chair.[15][16] Having the main characters named after colors (Mr. Pink, White, Brown, etc.) was first seen in the 1974 film The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.[17] The film also contains key elements similar to those found in Ringo Lam's 1987 film City on Fire.[18] Tarantino praised the film City on Fire and mentioned it as a major influence.[19]
Tarantino said that everybody hated Lawrence Tierney by the end of the first week of production.[20]
The warehouse scenes were filmed in an unused mortuary filled with coffins, funeral equipment, embalming fluid, and a hearse. Mr. Orange's apartment was a room on the second floor of the mortuary, set to look like living quarters. The building has since been demolished.[21]
Tarantino's decision not to film the diamond robbery was twofold: for budgetary reasons, and to keep the details of the heist ambiguous. By not showing the robbery and having the characters describe it, Tarantino explained, the film is allowed to be "about other things", similar to the way in which the burglary in Glengarry Glen Ross and its film adaptation is discussed, described, and debated, but never shown.[2] Tarantino compared the technique to the work of a novelist, and said he wanted the film to be about something not seen and to "play with a real-time clock as opposed to a movie clock ticking".[22]
Reservoir Dogs premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1992. It became the festival's most talked-about film, and it was subsequently picked up for distribution by Miramax Films.[23] After being shown at several other film festivals, including in Cannes, Sitges, and Toronto,[23] Reservoir Dogs opened in the United States in 19 theaters on October 9, 1992, with a first week total of $147,839.[1] It was expanded to 61 theaters on October 23, 1992, and totaled $2,832,029 at the domestic box office.[1] The film grossed more than double that in the United Kingdom,[24] where it did not receive a home video release until 1995.[25] During the period of unavailability on home video, the film was re-released in UK cinemas in June 1994.[26]
Reservoir Dogs is regarded as an important and influential milestone of independent filmmaking.[27][28] Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 90% based on 81 reviews, and an average rating of 8.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Thrumming with intelligence and energy, Reservoir Dogs opens Quentin Tarantino's filmmaking career with hard-hitting style."[29] On Metacritic the film has an average score of 81 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[30] Empire magazine named it the "Greatest Independent Film" ever made.[31]
At the film's release at the Sundance Film Festival, film critic Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News compared the effect of Reservoir Dogs to that of the 1895 film L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat, when audiences supposedly saw a moving train approaching the camera and ducked. Bernard said that Reservoir Dogs had a similar effect and people were not ready for it.[28] Vincent Canby of The New York Times enjoyed the cast and the usage of non-linear storytelling. He similarly complimented Tarantino's directing and liked the fact that he did not often use close-ups in the film.[32] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times also enjoyed the film and the acting, particularly that of Buscemi, Tierney and Madsen, and said "Tarantino's palpable enthusiasm, his unapologetic passion for what he's created, reinvigorates this venerable plot and, mayhem aside, makes it involving for longer than you might suspect."[33] Critic James Berardinelli was of a similar opinion; he complimented both the cast and Tarantino's dialogue writing abilities.[34] Hal Hinson of The Washington Post was also enthusiastic about the cast, complimenting the film on its "deadpan sense of humor".[35]
Roger Ebert was less enthusiastic, as he felt that the script could have been better and said that the film "feels like it's going to be terrific", but Tarantino's script does not have much curiosity about the characters. He also said that Tarantino "has an idea, and trusts the idea to drive the plot." Ebert gave the film two and a half stars out of four and said that while he enjoyed it and that it was a very good film from a talented director, "I liked what I saw, but I wanted more."[36]
The film has received substantial criticism for its strong violence and language. One scene that viewers found particularly unnerving was the ear-cutting scene. Madsen himself reportedly had great difficulty finishing it, especially after Kirk Baltz ad-libbed the desperate plea "I've got a little kid at home."[37] Many people walked out during the film. During a screening at Sitges Film Festival, 15 people walked out, including horror film director Wes Craven and special makeup effects artist Rick Baker.[38] Baker later told Tarantino to take the walkout as a "compliment" and explained that he found the violence unnerving because of its heightened sense of realism.[38] Tarantino commented about it at the time: "It happens at every single screening. For some people the violence, or the rudeness of the language, is a mountain they can't climb. That's OK. It's not their cup of tea. But I am affecting them. I wanted that scene to be disturbing."[2]
Reservoir Dogs has often been seen as a prominent film in terms of on-screen violence.[27][39][40] J. P. Telotte compared Reservoir Dogs to classic caper noir films and points out the irony in its ending scenes.[41] Mark Irwin also made the connection between Reservoir Dogs and classic American noir.[42] Caroline Jewers called Reservoir Dogs a "feudal epic" and paralleled the color pseudonyms to color names of medieval knights.[43]
Critics have observed parallels between Reservoir Dogs and other films. For its nonlinear storyline, Reservoir Dogs has often been compared to Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon.[14] Critic John Hartl compared the ear-cutting scene to the shower murder scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Tarantino to David Lynch. He furthermore explored parallels between Reservoir Dogs and Glengarry Glen Ross.[2] Todd McCarthy, who called the film "undeniably impressive", was of the opinion that it was influenced by Mean Streets, Goodfellas and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing.[44] After this film, Tarantino himself was also compared to Martin Scorsese, Sam Peckinpah, John Singleton, Gus Van Sant, and Abel Ferrara.[14]
A frequently cited comparison has been to Tarantino's second and more successful film Pulp Fiction,[22][42] especially since the majority of audiences saw Reservoir Dogs after the success of Pulp Fiction. Comparisons have been made regarding the black humor in both the films, the theme of accidents,[22] and more concretely, the style of dialogue and narrative that Tarantino incorporates into both films.[45] Specifically the relationship between white people and black people plays a big part in the films—though underplayed in Reservoir Dogs. Stanley Crouch of The New York Times compared the way the white criminals speak of black people in Reservoir Dogs to the way they are spoken of in Scorsese's Mean Streets and Goodfellas. Crouch observed the way black people are looked down upon in Reservoir Dogs, but also the way that the criminals accuse each other of "verbally imitating" black men and the characters' apparent sexual attraction to black actress Pam Grier.[45]
In February 2012, as part of an ongoing series of live dramatic readings of film scripts being staged with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), director Jason Reitman cast black actors in the originally white cast: Laurence Fishburne as Mr. White; Terrence Howard as Mr. Blonde; Anthony Mackie as Mr. Pink; Cuba Gooding Jr. as Mr. Orange; Chi McBride as Joe Cabot; Anthony Anderson as Nice Guy Eddie (Joe Cabot's son); Common as both Mr. Brown and Officer Nash (the torture victim of Mr. Blonde), and Patton Oswalt as Holdaway (the mentor cop who was originally played by Randy Brooks, the only black actor in the film). Critic Elvis Mitchell suggested that Reitman's version of the script was taking the source material back to its roots since the characters "all sound like black dudes."[46]
The film was screened out of competition at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival.[47] It won the Critic's Award at the 4th Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival in February 1993, which Tarantino attended.[48] The film was also nominated for the Grand Prix of the Belgian Syndicate of Cinema Critics.[49] Steve Buscemi won the 1992 Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male.[50] Reservoir Dogs ranks at No. 97 in Empire magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.[51] In 2024, Reservoir Dogs was ranked second on the list of the Sundance Film Festival's Top 10 films of All Time based on a survey conducted with 500 filmmakers and critics in honor of the festival's 40th anniversary.[52][53]
In the United Kingdom, release of the VHS rental video was delayed until 1995 due to the British Board of Film Classification initially refusing the film a home video certificate (UK releases are required to be certified separately for theatrical release and for viewing at home).[25] The latter is a requirement by law due to the Video Recordings Act 1984.[25] Following the UK VHS release approval, PolyGram released a "Mr Blonde Deluxe Edition",[54] which included an interview with Tarantino and several memorabilia associated with the character Mr. Blonde, such as sunglasses and a chrome toothpick holder.
Region 1 DVDs of Reservoir Dogs have been released multiple times. The first release was a single two-sided disc from LIVE Entertainment, released in June 1997 and featuring two versions of the film: the original letterbox 2.39:1 widescreen version and an open matte 1.33:1 full screen version.[55] Five years later, on August 27, 2002, Artisan Entertainment (who changed their name from LIVE Entertainment in the interim) released a two-disc 10th anniversary edition on DVD and VHS featuring multiple covers color-coded to match the nicknames of five of the characters (Pink, White, Orange, Blonde, and Brown) and a disc of bonus features such as interviews with the cast and crew.[56] However, the full screen version on the second disc was a pan and scan transfer from the 2.39:1 widescreen version, as opposed to open matte like the 1997 DVD.
For the film's 15th anniversary, Lionsgate (which had purchased Artisan in the interim) produced a two-disc anniversary edition with a remastered 16:9 transfer and a new supplement, but not all of the extra features from the 10th Anniversary edition.[57] In particular, the interviews with the cast and crew were removed, and a new 48-minute-long feature called "Tributes and Dedications" was included.[57]
Lionsgate Home Entertainment celebrated the 30th anniversary of Reservoir Dogs with a 4K Blu-ray release, which was released in the U.S. on November 15, 2022.[58]
The Reservoir Dogs: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack was the first soundtrack for a Tarantino film and set the structure his later soundtracks would follow.[59] This includes the extensive use of snippets of dialogue from the film. The soundtrack has selections of songs from the 1960s to '80s. Only the group Bedlam recorded original songs for the film. Reasoning that the film takes place over a weekend, Tarantino decided to set it to a fictional radio station 'K-Billy' (presumably KBLY)'s show "K-Billy's Super Sounds of the Seventies Weekend", a themed weekend show of broadcasts of songs from the seventies. The radio station played a prominent role in the film.[60] The DJ for the radio was chosen to be Steven Wright, a comedian known for his deadpan delivery of jokes.[61]
An unusual feature of the soundtrack was the choice of songs; Tarantino has said that he feels the music to be a counterpoint to the on-screen violence and action.[62] He also stated that he wished for the film to have a 1950s feel while using '70s music.[62] A prominent instance of this is the torture scene to the tune of "Stuck in the Middle with You".[63]
A video game based on the film was released in 2006 for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2. However, the game does not feature the likeness of any of the actors with the exception of Michael Madsen. The game was received unfavorably, with GameSpot calling it "an out and out failure".[64] It caused controversy for its amount of violence and it was banned in Australia,[65] Germany and New Zealand.[66]
Another video game, Reservoir Dogs: Bloody Days, was released in 2017.[67]
On December 14, 2017,[68] Overkill Software added a heist to Payday 2 inspired by Reservoir Dogs in which the player is contracted to rob a jewelry store in Los Angeles with the Cabot family. It is unique in that the heist is played in reverse order, with day two occurring prior to day one, similar to how the film's plot is out of chronological order.
Kaante, a Bollywood film released in 2002, is a remake of Reservoir Dogs, combined with elements of City on Fire.[69] The film also borrows plot points from Heat and The Killing. Tarantino has been quoted as saying that Kaante is his favorite among the many films inspired by his work.[70] Tarantino later screened Kaante at his New Beverly Cinema alongside Reservoir Dogs and City on Fire.[71]
Tarantino revealed in June 2021 that he had at one point considered remaking Reservoir Dogs as his tenth and final directed film, though he quickly iterated that he "won't do it".[72]
Tron theme by opy01
Download: tron2.0.p3t
(1 background)
Tron | |
---|---|
Directed by | Steven Lisberger |
Screenplay by | Steven Lisberger |
Story by |
|
Produced by | Donald Kushner |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Bruce Logan |
Edited by | Jeff Gourson |
Music by | Wendy Carlos |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by | Buena Vista Distribution |
Release date |
|
Running time | 96 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $17 million |
Box office | $50 million[1] |
Tron (stylized as TRON) is a 1982 American science fiction action adventure film written and directed by Steven Lisberger from a story by Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird. The film stars Jeff Bridges as Kevin Flynn, a computer programmer and video game developer who is transported inside the software world of a mainframe computer where he interacts with programs in his attempt to escape; it also stars Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, and Barnard Hughes. Tron, along with The Last Starfighter, was one of cinema's earliest films to use extensive computer-generated imagery (CGI).
The inspiration for Tron dates back to 1976, when Lisberger became intrigued with video games after seeing Pong. He and producer Donald Kushner set up an animation studio to develop Tron with the intention of making it an animated film. To promote the studio itself, Lisberger and his team created a 30-second animation featuring the first appearance of the title character. Eventually, Lisberger decided to include live-action elements with both backlit and computer animation for the actual feature-length film. Various studios had rejected the storyboards for the film before Walt Disney Productions agreed to finance and distribute Tron. There, backlit animation was finally combined with the 2D computer animation and the live action.
Tron was released on July 9, 1982. The film was a moderate success at the box office, and received positive reviews from critics, who praised its groundbreaking visuals and acting but criticized its storyline as being incoherent. Tron received nominations for Best Costume Design[2] and Best Sound[3] at the 55th Academy Awards. It was however disqualified from the Best Visual Effects category because at the time the Academy felt that using computer animation was "cheating".[4][5] Tron spawned multiple video games (including an arcade tie-in released shortly after the film), and as it became a cult film, a multimedia franchise including comic books. A sequel titled Tron: Legacy, directed by Joseph Kosinski, was released in 2010, with Bridges and Boxleitner reprising their roles and Lisberger acting as producer. A commercial success, it was followed by the XD animated series Tron: Uprising in 2012, set between the two films.[6]
Kevin Flynn is a leading software engineer, formerly employed by large technology corporation ENCOM. He now runs a video game arcade, and attempts to hack into ENCOM's mainframe system; however, ENCOM's Master Control Program (MCP) halts his progress. Within ENCOM, programmer Alan Bradley and his girlfriend, engineer Lora Baines, discover that the MCP has closed off their access to projects. When Alan confronts the senior executive vice president, Ed Dillinger, Dillinger says the security measures are an effort to stop outside hacking attempts. However, when Dillinger privately questions the MCP through his computerized desk, he realizes the MCP has expanded into a powerful virtual intelligence and has been illegally appropriating personal, business, and government programs to increase its own capabilities. As Dillinger rose to the top of ENCOM by presenting Flynn's games as his own, the MCP blackmails Dillinger by threatening to expose his plagiarism if he does not comply with its directives.
Lora deduces that Flynn is the hacker, and she and Alan go to his arcade to warn him. Flynn reveals that he has been trying to locate evidence proving Dillinger's plagiarism. Together, the three form a plan to break into ENCOM and unlock Alan's "Tron" program, a self-governing security measure designed to protect the system and counter the functions of the MCP. Once inside ENCOM, the three split up, and Flynn comes into direct conflict with the MCP through a laboratory terminal. Before Flynn can get the information he needs, the MCP uses an experimental laser to digitize and upload him into the ENCOM mainframe cyberspace. There, computer programs are living entities appearing in the likeness of the human "Users" (programmers) who created them. The space is ruled by the MCP and its second-in-command, Sark, who coerce programs to renounce their belief in the Users and force those who resist to compete in deadly games.
Flynn is put into the games and plays well; between matches, he befriends two other captured programs, Ram and Tron. The three escape into the mainframe during a round of Light Cycle (an arcade game Flynn created and is skilled at), but Flynn and Ram become separated from Tron by an MCP pursuit party. While attempting to help a badly injured Ram, Flynn learns that he can manipulate portions of the mainframe by accessing his programmer knowledge. Just before Ram "derezzes" (dies), he recognizes Flynn as a User, and encourages him to find Tron and free the system. Using his newfound ability, Flynn rebuilds a broken vehicle and disguises himself as one of Sark's soldiers.
Tron enlists help from Yori, a sympathetic program, and at an I/O tower receives information from Alan necessary to destroy the MCP. Flynn rejoins them, and the three board a hijacked solar sailer to reach the MCP's core. However, Sark's command ship destroys the sailer, capturing Flynn and Yori and presumably killing Tron. Sark leaves the command ship and orders its deresolution, but Flynn keeps it intact by manipulating the mainframe again.
Sark reaches the MCP's core on a shuttle carrying captured programs deemed powerful or useful. While the MCP attempts to absorb these programs, Tron, who is still alive, confronts Sark and critically injures him, prompting the MCP to give Sark all its functions. Realizing that his ability to manipulate the mainframe might give Tron an opening, Flynn leaps into the beam of the MCP, distracting it. Seeing a break in the MCP's shield, Tron attacks through the gap and destroys the MCP and Sark, ending the MCP's control over the mainframe and allowing the captured programs to communicate with users again.
Flynn reappears in the real world, rematerialized at the terminal. Tron's victory in the mainframe has released all lockouts on computer access, and a nearby printer produces the evidence that Dillinger had plagiarized Flynn's creations. The next morning, Dillinger enters his office to find the MCP deactivated and the proof of his theft publicized. Flynn is subsequently promoted to CEO of ENCOM and is happily greeted by Alan and Lora as their new boss.
The inspiration for Tron occurred in 1976 when Steven Lisberger, then an animator of drawings with his own studio, looked at a sample reel from a computer firm called MAGI and saw Pong for the first time.[7] He was immediately fascinated by video games and wanted to do a film incorporating them. According to Lisberger, "I realized that there were these techniques that would be very suitable for bringing video games and computer visuals to the screen. And that was the moment that the whole concept flashed across my mind".[8] The film's concept of entering a parallel game world was also inspired by the classic tale Alice in Wonderland.[9]
Lisberger had already created an early version of the character 'Tron' for a 30 second long animation which was used to promote both Lisberger Studios and a series of various rock radio stations. This backlit cel animation depicted Tron as a character who glowed yellow; the same shade that Lisberger had originally intended for all the heroic characters developed for the feature-length Tron. This was later changed to blue for the finished film (see Pre-production below). The prototype Tron was bearded and resembled the Cylon Centurions from the 1978 TV series Battlestar Galactica. Also, Tron was armed with two "exploding discs", as Lisberger described them on the 2-Disc DVD edition (see Rinzler).
Lisberger elaborates: "Everybody was doing backlit animation in the 70s, you know. It was that disco look. And we thought, what if we had this character that was a neon line, and that was our Tron warrior – Tron for electronic. And what happened was, I saw Pong, and I said, well, that's the arena for him. And at the same time I was interested in the early phases of computer generated animation, which I got into at MIT in Boston, and when I got into that I met a bunch of programmers who were into all that. And they really inspired me, by how much they believed in this new realm."[10]
He was frustrated by the clique-like nature of computers and video games and wanted to create a film that would open this world up to everyone. Lisberger and his business partner Donald Kushner moved to the West Coast in 1977 and set up an animation studio to develop Tron.[8] They borrowed against the anticipated profits of their 90-minute animated television special Animalympics to develop storyboards for Tron with the notion of making an animated film.[7] But after Variety mentioned the project briefly during its early phase, it caught the attention of computer scientist Alan Kay. He contacted Lisberger and convinced him to use him as an adviser on the movie, then persuaded him to use real CGI instead of just hand-animation.[11]
Bonnie MacBird wrote the first drafts of Tron with extensive input from Lisberger,[12] basing the original personality of Alan on Alan Kay.[13] As a result of working together, Kay and MacBird became close and later married.[12] She also created Tron as a character (rather than a visual demo) and Flynn.[12] Originally, MacBird envisioned Flynn more comedically, suggesting the then 30-year-old Robin Williams for the role.[13] Besides many story changes after the script went to Disney, including giving it "a more serious tone with quasi religious overtones",[12] and removing most of the scientific elements,[12] none of her dialogue remains in the final film,[14] and there was a "rather bitter credits dispute."[14]
The film was eventually conceived as an animated film bracketed with live-action sequences.[8] The rest involved a combination of computer-generated visuals and back-lit animation. Lisberger planned to finance the movie independently by approaching several computer companies but had little success. However, one company, Information International Inc., was receptive.[8] He met with Richard Taylor, a representative, and they began talking about using live-action photography with back-lit animation in such a way that it could be integrated with computer graphics. At this point, there was a script and the film was entirely storyboarded, with some computer animation tests completed.[8] He had spent approximately $300,000 developing Tron and had also secured $4–5 million in private backing before reaching a standstill. Lisberger and Kushner took their storyboards and samples of computer-generated films to Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Columbia Pictures – all of which turned them down.[7]
In 1980, they decided to take the idea to Walt Disney Productions, which was interested in producing more daring productions at the time.[8] Tom Wilhite, Disney's vice president for creative development, watched Lisberger's test footage and convinced Ron Miller to give the movie a chance.[15][16] However, Disney executives were uncertain about giving $10–12 million to a first-time producer and director using techniques which, in most cases, had never been attempted. The studio agreed to finance a test reel which involved a flying disc champion throwing a rough prototype of the discs used in the film.[8] It was a chance to mix live-action footage with back-lit animation and computer-generated visuals. It impressed the executives at Disney and they agreed to back the film. MacBird and Lisberger's script was subsequently re-written and re-storyboarded with the studio's input.[8] At the time, Disney rarely hired outsiders to make films for them, and Kushner found that he and his group were given a chilly reception because they "tackled the nerve center – the animation department. They saw us as the germ from outside. We tried to enlist several Disney animators, but none came. Disney is a closed group."[17] As a result, they hired Wang Film Productions for the animation.
Because of the many special effects, Disney decided in 1981 to film Tron completely in 65-mm Super Panavision (except for the computer-generated layers, which were shot in VistaVision and both anamorphic 35mm and Super 35 which were used for some scenes in the "real" world and subsequently "blown up" to 65 mm).[18] Three designers were brought in to create the look of the computer world.[8] French comic book artist Jean Giraud (also known as Moebius) was the main set and costume designer for the film. Most of the vehicle designs (including Sark's aircraft carrier, the light cycles, the tank, and the solar sailer) were created by industrial designer Syd Mead. Peter Lloyd, a high-tech commercial artist, designed the environments.[8] Nevertheless, these jobs often overlapped, leaving Giraud working on the solar sailer and Mead designing terrain, sets and the film's logo. The original 'Program' character design was inspired by Lisberger Studios' logo of a glowing bodybuilder hurling two discs.[8]
To create the computer animation sequences of Tron, Disney turned to the four leading computer graphics firms of the day: Information International, Inc. of Culver City, California, who owned the Super Foonly F-1 (the fastest PDP-10 ever made and the only one of its kind); MAGI of Elmsford, New York; Robert Abel and Associates of California; and Digital Effects of New York City.[8] Bill Kovacs worked on the film while working for Robert Abel before going on to found Wavefront Technologies. The work was not a collaboration, resulting in very different styles used by the firms.
Tron was one of the first films to make extensive use of any form of computer animation, and it is celebrated as a milestone in the industry, although only fifteen to twenty minutes of such animation were used (mostly scenes that show digital "terrain" or patterns, or include vehicles such as light-cycles, tanks and ships).[19] Because the technology to combine computer animation and live action did not exist at the time, these sequences were interspersed with the filmed characters. One of the computers used had only 2 MB of memory and no more than 330 MB of storage. This put a limit on detail of background; and at a certain distance, they had a procedure of mixing in black to fade things out, a process called "depth cueing". The film's Computer Effects Supervisor Richard Taylor told them "When in doubt, black it out!", which became their motto.[20] Originally the film was meant to use white backgrounds like in THX 1138 inside the Grid, but it would require such huge amounts of lights that it was decided to use black backgrounds instead.[21]
The computers used at the time could not perform animation, so the frames had to be produced one by one. In some of the more complex sequences, like the Solar Sailer moving through metal canyons, each frame could take up to six hours to produce. There was no way to digitally print them on film, either; rather, a motion picture camera was placed in front of a computer screen to capture each individual frame.[22][23][24]
Most of the scenes, backgrounds, and visual effects in the film were created using more traditional techniques and a unique process known as "backlit animation".[8] In this process, live-action scenes inside the computer world were filmed in black-and-white on an entirely black set, placed in an enlarger for blow-ups and transferred to large format Kodalith high-contrast film. These negatives were then used to make Kodalith sheets with a reverse (positive) image. Clear cels were laid over each sheet and all portions of the figure except the areas that were exposed for the later camera passes were manually blacked out. Next the Kodalith sheets and cel overlays were placed over a light box while a VistaVision camera mounted above it made separate passes and different color filters. A typical shot normally required 12 passes, but some sequences, like the interior of the electronic tank, could need as many as 50 passes. About 300 matte paintings were made for the film, each photographed onto a large piece of Ektachrome film before colors were added by gelatin filters in a similar procedure as in the Kodaliths. The mattes, rotoscopic and CGI were then combined and composed together to give them a "technological" appearance.[17][25] With multiple layers of high-contrast, large format positives and negatives, this process required truckloads of sheet film and a workload even greater than that of a conventional cel-animated feature. The Kodalith was specially produced as large sheets by Kodak for the film and came in numbered boxes so that each batch of the film could be used in order of manufacture for a consistent image. However, this was not understood by the filmmakers and, as a result, glowing outlines and circuit traces occasionally flicker as the film speed varied between batches. After the reason was discovered, this was no longer a problem as the batches were used in order and "zinger" sounds were used during the flickering parts to represent the computer world malfunctioning as Lisberger described it.[26] Lisberger later had these flickers and sounds digitally corrected for the 2011 restored Blu-ray release as they were not included in his original vision of the film. Due to its difficulty and cost, this process of back-lit animation was not repeated for another feature film.
Sound design and creation for the film was assigned to Frank Serafine, who was responsible for the sound design on Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.
At one point in the film, a small entity called "Bit" advises Flynn with only the words "yes" and "no" created by a Votrax speech synthesizer.
BYTE wrote: "Although this film is very much the personal expression of Steven Lisberger's vision, nevertheless [it] has certainly been a group effort".[27] More than 569 people were involved in the post-production work, including 200 inkers and hand-painters, 85 of them from Taiwan's Cuckoo's Nest Studio. Unusual for an English-language production, in the end credits the Taiwanese personnel were listed with their names written in Chinese characters.[17]
This film features parts of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; the multi-story ENCOM laser bay was the target area for the SHIVA solid-state multi-beamed laser. Also, the stairway that Alan, Lora, and Flynn use to reach Alan's office is the stairway in Building 451 near the entrance to the main machine room. The cubicle scenes were shot in another room of the lab. At the time, Tron was the only film to have scenes filmed inside this lab.[28]
The original script called for "good" programs to be colored yellow and "evil" programs (those loyal to Sark and the MCP) to be colored blue. Partway into production, this coloring scheme was changed to blue for good and red for evil, but some scenes were produced using the original coloring scheme: Clu, who drives a tank, has yellow circuit lines, and all of Sark's tank commanders are blue (but appear green in some presentations). Also, the light-cycle sequence shows the heroes driving yellow (Flynn), orange (Tron), and red (Ram) cycles, while Sark's troops drive blue cycles; similarly, Clu's tank is red, while tanks driven by crews loyal to Sark are blue.
Because of all the personal information about citizens which exist inside computer networks, such as social security number and driver's license, the idea was that each real world person has a digital counterpart inside the Grid based on information about them, which is why it was decided to use some of the same actors in both worlds.[29]
Budgeting the production was difficult by reason of breaking new ground in response to additional challenges, including an impending Directors Guild of America strike and a fixed release date.[8] Disney predicted at least $400 million in domestic sales of merchandise, including an arcade game by Bally Midway and three Mattel Intellivision home video games.[17]
The producers also added Easter eggs: during the scene where Tron and Ram escape from the Light Cycle arena into the system, Pac-Man can be seen behind Sark (with the corresponding sounds from the Pac-Man arcade game being heard in the background), while a "Hidden Mickey" outline (located at time 01:12:29 on the re-release Blu-ray) can be seen below the solar sailer during the protagonists' journey. The film set also included the arcade games Space Invaders (1978), Asteroids (1979) and Pac-Man (1980).[30]
Tron was originally meant to be released during the Christmas season of 1982, but when chairman of the Disney board Card Walker found out the release date of Don Bluth's film The Secret of NIMH was in early July, he rushed it into a summer release to be able to compete with Bluth, and it ended up competing with films like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blade Runner and Poltergeist.[31]
The soundtrack for Tron was written by pioneer electronic musician Wendy Carlos, who is best known for her album Switched-On Bach and for the soundtracks to many films, including the Stanley Kubrick-directed films A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. The music, which was the first collaboration between Carlos and her partner Annemarie Franklin,[32] featured a mix of an analog Moog synthesizer and Crumar's GDS digital synthesizer (complex additive and phase modulation synthesis), along with non-electronic pieces performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (hired at the insistence of Disney, which was concerned that Carlos might not be able to complete her score on time). Two additional musical tracks ("1990's Theme" and "Only Solutions") were provided by the American band Journey after British band Supertramp pulled out of the project. An album featuring dialogue, music and sound effects from the film was also released on LP by Disneyland Records in 1982.
Tron was released on July 9, 1982, in 1,091 theaters in the United States and Canada grossing USD $4 million on its opening weekend. It went on to gross $33 million in the United States and Canada[33] and $17 million overseas, for a worldwide gross of approximately $50 million,[1] which was Disney's highest-grossing live action film for 5 years.[34]
In addition, the film had $70 million in wholesale merchandise sales.[34]
Despite the gross and merchandise sales, it was seen as a financial disappointment, and the studio wrote off some of its $17 million budget.[35]
The film was well received by critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars and described it as "a dazzling movie from Disney in which computers have been used to make themselves romantic and glamorous. Here's a technological sound-and-light show that is sensational and brainy, stylish and fun".[36] However, near the end of his review, he noted (in a positive tone), "This is an almost wholly technological movie. Although it's populated by actors who are engaging (Bridges, Cindy Morgan) or sinister (Warner), it's not really a movie about human nature. Like Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back but much more so, this movie is a machine to dazzle and delight us".[36] Ebert closed his first annual Overlooked Film Festival with a showing of Tron.[37] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune also awarded four out of four stars, calling it "a trip, and a terrifically entertaining one at that...It's a dazzler that opens up our minds to our new tools, all in a traditional film narrative."[38] Each gave the film two thumbs up.[39] Tron was also featured in Siskel and Ebert's video pick of the week in 1993.[40]
InfoWorld's Deborah Wise was impressed, writing that "it's hard to believe the characters acted out the scenes on a darkened soundstage... We see characters throwing illuminated Frisbees, driving 'lightcycles' on a video-game grid, playing a dangerous version of jai alai and zapping numerous fluorescent tanks in arcade-game-type mazes. It's exciting, it's fun, and it's just what video-game fans and anyone with a spirit of adventure will love—despite plot weaknesses."[41]
On the other hand, Variety disliked the film and said in its review, "Tron is loaded with visual delights but falls way short of the mark in story and viewer involvement. Screenwriter-director Steven Lisberger has adequately marshalled a huge force of technicians to deliver the dazzle, but even kids (and specifically computer game geeks) will have a difficult time getting hooked on the situations".[42] In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin criticized the film's visual effects: "They're loud, bright and empty, and they're all this movie has to offer".[43] The Washington Post's Gary Arnold wrote, "Fascinating as they are as discrete sequences, the computer-animated episodes don't build dramatically. They remain a miscellaneous form of abstract spectacle".[44] In his review for
Transformers Optimus Prime theme by SILV3R_ Download: TransformersOptimusPrime.p3t P3T Unpacker v0.12 This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t) so that you can touch-up an existing theme to your likings or use a certain wallpaper from it (as many themes have multiple). But remember, if you use content from another theme and release it, be sure to give credit! Download for Windows: p3textractor.zip Instructions: Download p3textractor.zip from above. Extract the files to a folder with a program such as WinZip or WinRAR. Now there are multiple ways to extract the theme. The first way is to simply open the p3t file with p3textractor.exe. If you don’t know how to do this, right click the p3t file and select Open With. Alternatively, open the p3t file and it will ask you to select a program to open with. Click Browse and find p3textractor.exe from where you previously extracted it to. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. After that, all you need to do for any future p3t files is open them and it will extract. The second way is very simple. Just drag the p3t file to p3textractor.exe. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. For the third way, first put the p3t file you want to extract into the same folder as p3textractor.exe. Open CMD and browse to the folder with p3extractor.exe. Enter the following: DragonBall Z v1.2 theme by BenLmk Download: DragonBallZv1.2.p3t P3T Unpacker v0.12 This program unpacks Playstation 3 Theme files (.p3t) so that you can touch-up an existing theme to your likings or use a certain wallpaper from it (as many themes have multiple). But remember, if you use content from another theme and release it, be sure to give credit! Download for Windows: p3textractor.zip Instructions: Download p3textractor.zip from above. Extract the files to a folder with a program such as WinZip or WinRAR. Now there are multiple ways to extract the theme. The first way is to simply open the p3t file with p3textractor.exe. If you don’t know how to do this, right click the p3t file and select Open With. Alternatively, open the p3t file and it will ask you to select a program to open with. Click Browse and find p3textractor.exe from where you previously extracted it to. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. After that, all you need to do for any future p3t files is open them and it will extract. The second way is very simple. Just drag the p3t file to p3textractor.exe. It will open CMD and extract the theme to extracted.[filename]. For the third way, first put the p3t file you want to extract into the same folder as p3textractor.exe. Open CMD and browse to the folder with p3extractor.exe. Enter the following: Frankenstein theme by RsinArt Download: Frankenstein.p3t
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.
Shelley travelled through Europe in 1815, moving along the river Rhine in Germany, and stopping in Gernsheim, 17 kilometres (11 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where, two centuries before, an alchemist had engaged in experiments.[2][3][4][note 1]
She then journeyed to the region of Geneva, Switzerland, where much of the story takes place. Galvanism and occult ideas were topics of conversation for her companions, particularly for her lover and future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley.
In 1816, Mary, Percy, John Polidori, and Lord Byron had a competition to see who wrote the best horror story.[5]
After thinking for days, Shelley was inspired to write Frankenstein after imagining a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made.[6]
Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, and the novel has had a considerable influence on literature and on popular culture, spawning a complete genre of horror stories, films, and plays. Since the publication of the novel, the name "Frankenstein" has often been used, erroneously, to refer to the monster, rather than to his creator/father.[7][8][9]
Frankenstein is a frame story written in epistolary form. Set in the 18th century, it documents a fictional correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Robert Walton is a failed writer who sets out to explore the North Pole in hopes of expanding scientific knowledge. After departing from Archangel, the ship is trapped by pack ice on the journey across the Arctic Ocean. During this time, the crew spots a dog sled driven by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the ice splits apart, freeing the ship, and the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor Frankenstein from a drifting ice floe. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion; he sees in Walton the same obsession that has destroyed him and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning. The recounted story serves as the frame for Frankenstein's narrative.
Victor begins by telling of his childhood. Born in Naples, Italy, into a wealthy Genevan family, Victor and his younger brothers, Ernest and William, are sons of Alphonse Frankenstein and the former Caroline Beaufort. From a young age, Victor has a strong desire to understand the world. He is obsessed with studying theories of alchemists, though when he is older he realizes that such theories are considerably outdated. When Victor is five years old, his parents adopt Elizabeth Lavenza (the orphaned daughter of an expropriated Italian nobleman) whom Victor plans to marry. Victor's parents later take in another child, Justine Moritz, who becomes William's nanny.
Weeks before he leaves for the University of Ingolstadt in Germany, his mother dies of scarlet fever; Victor buries himself in his experiments to deal with the grief. At the university, he excels at chemistry and other sciences, soon developing a secret technique to impart life to non-living matter. He undertakes the creation of a humanoid, but due to the difficulty in replicating the minute parts of the human body, Victor makes the Creature tall, about 8 feet (2.4 m) in height, and proportionally large. Victor works at gathering the vital organs by pilfering charnel houses, mortuaries and by entrapping and vivisecting feral animals. Despite Victor selecting its features to be beautiful, upon animation the Creature is instead hideous, with dull and watery yellow eyes and yellow skin that barely conceals the muscles and blood vessels underneath. Repulsed by his work, Victor flees. While wandering the streets the next day, he meets his childhood friend, Henry Clerval, and takes Clerval back to his apartment, fearful of Clerval's reaction if he sees the monster. However, when Victor returns to his laboratory, the Creature is gone.
Victor falls ill from the experience and is nursed back to health by Clerval. After recovering he forgets about the Creature and goes into Clerval's study of Oriental languages, which he considers the happiest time of his academic career. This is cut short when Victor receives a letter from his father notifying him of the murder of his brother William. Upon arriving in Geneva, Victor sees the Creature near the crime scene and becomes convinced that his creation is responsible. Justine Moritz, William's nanny, is convicted of the crime after William's locket, which contained a miniature portrait of Caroline, is found in her pocket. Victor knows that no one will believe him if he testifies that it was the doing of the Creature; Justine is hanged. Ravaged by grief and guilt, Victor takes up mountain climbing in the Alps. While hiking through Mont Blanc's Mer de Glace, he is suddenly approached by the Creature, who insists that Victor hear his tale.
Intelligent and articulate, the Creature relates his first days of life, living alone in the wilderness. He found that people were afraid of him and hated him due to his appearance, which led him to fear and hide from them. While living in an abandoned structure connected to a cottage, he grew fond of the poor family living there and discreetly collected firewood for them, cleared snow away from their path, and performed other tasks to help them. Secretly living next to the cottage for months, the Creature learned that the son was going to marry a Turkish woman whom he was teaching his native language, which the Creature listened in on the lessons and taught himself to speak and write. The Creature also taught himself to read after discovering a lost satchel of books in the woods. When he saw his reflection in a pool, he realized his appearance was hideous, and it horrified him as much as it horrified normal humans. As he continued to learn of the family's plight, he grew increasingly attached to them, and eventually he approached the family in hopes of becoming their friend, entering the house while only the blind father was present. The two conversed, but on the return of the others, the rest of them were frightened. The blind man's son attacked him and the Creature fled the house. The next day, the family left their home out of fear that he would return. Witnessing this, the monster renounced any hope of being accepted by humanity, and vowed to get his revenge. Although he hated his creator for abandoning him, he decided to travel to Geneva to find him because he believed that Victor was the only person with a responsibility to help him. On the journey, he rescued a child who had fallen into a river, but her father, believing that the Creature intended to harm them, shot him in the shoulder. The Creature then swore revenge against all humans. He travelled to Geneva using details from a combination of Victor's journal and geography lessons gleaned from the family. When in Switzerland he chanced upon William who was at first frightened and the Creature held his wrist to calm him. When the boy screamed his full name and that he had powerful parents, this sparked the creature into killing the boy to spite Victor. The Creature then took William's locket and placed it into the dress of Justine, incriminating her as the murderer.
The Creature demands that Victor create a female companion like himself. He argues that as a living being, he has a right to happiness. The Creature promises that he and his mate will vanish into the South American wilderness, never to reappear, if Victor grants his request. Should Victor refuse, the Creature threatens to kill Victor's remaining friends and loved ones and not stop until he completely ruins him. Fearing for his family, Victor reluctantly agrees. The Creature says he will watch over Victor's progress.
Clerval accompanies Victor to England, but they separate, at Victor's insistence, at Perth, Scotland. Travelling to Orkney to build the second creature, Victor suspects that the Creature is following him. As he works on the new creature, he is plagued by premonitions of disaster. He fears that the female will hate the Creature - or worse still - be even more evil than he is. Even more worrying to him is the idea that creating the second creature might lead to the creation of a race of beings just as strong as the monster who could plague humanity. He tears apart the unfinished female creature after he sees the Creature, who had indeed followed Victor, watching through a window. The Creature immediately bursts through the door to confront Victor and demands he repair his destruction and resume work, but Victor refuses. The Creature leaves, but gives a final threat: "I will be with you on your wedding night." Victor interprets this as a threat upon his life, believing that the Creature will kill him after he finally becomes happy.
Victor sails out to sea to dispose of his instruments, and falls asleep in the boat. He awakens some time later, and is unable to return to shore due to a change in the wind, and falls unconscious, drifting to Ireland. When Victor awakens, he is arrested for murder. Despite the severity of the charges, he is met with sympathy from the magistrate in charge of the trial, which suggests that the case is crumbling. Victor is acquitted when eyewitness testimony confirms that he was in Orkney at the time the murder took place. However, when shown the murder victim, Victor is horrified to see it was Henry Clerval, whom the Creature strangled as part of his promise to kill all his friends and family. Victor suffers another mental breakdown and after recovering, he returns home with his father, who has restored to Elizabeth some of her father's fortune. His father does not know of the cause behind the murders of William and Henry, but senses a curse and begs Victor to honor his mother's last wish that Victor marry Elizabeth.
In Geneva, Victor is about to marry Elizabeth and prepares to fight the Creature to the death, arming himself with pistols and a dagger. The night following their wedding, Victor asks Elizabeth to stay in her room while he looks for "the fiend". While Victor searches the house and grounds, the Creature strangles Elizabeth. From the window, Victor sees the Creature, who tauntingly points at Elizabeth's corpse; Victor tries to shoot him, but the Creature escapes. Victor's father, weakened by age and by the death of Elizabeth, dies a few days later. Seeking revenge, Victor pursues the Creature across Europe and Russia, though his adversary stays one step ahead of him at all times. Eventually, the chase leads to the Arctic Ocean and then on towards the North Pole, and Victor reaches a point where he is within a mile of the Creature, but he collapses from exhaustion and hypothermia before he can find his quarry, allowing the Creature to escape. Eventually the ice around Victor's sledge breaks apart, and the resultant ice floe comes within range of Walton's ship.
At the end of Victor's narrative, Captain Walton resumes telling the story. A few days after the Creature vanishes, the ship is trapped by pack ice for a second time, and several crewmen die in the cold before the rest of Walton's crew insists on returning south once it is freed. Upon hearing the crew's demands, Victor is angered and, despite his condition, gives a powerful speech to them. He reminds them of why they chose to join the expedition and that it is hardship and danger, not comfort, that defines a glorious undertaking such as theirs. He urges them to be men, not cowards. However, although the speech makes an impression on the crew, it is not enough to change their minds. Knowing that continuing on would surely result in mutiny, Walton agrees to abandon the voyage and return home, but Victor, despite his condition, declares that he will continue to hunt the Creature, and is adamant that he must be killed.
Victor dies shortly thereafter, telling Walton, in his last words, to seek "happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition." Walton discovers the Creature on his ship, mourning over Victor's body. The Creature tells Walton that Victor's death has not brought him peace; rather, his crimes have made him even more miserable than Victor ever was. The Creature vows to burn himself on a funeral pyre so that no one else will ever know of his existence. Walton watches as the Creature drifts away on an ice raft, never to be seen again.
Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died from infection eleven days after giving birth to her. Shelley grew close to her father, William Godwin, having never known her mother. Godwin hired a nurse, who briefly cared for her and her half sister, before marrying second wife Mary Jane Clairmont, who did not like the close bond between Shelley and her father. The resulting friction caused Godwin to favour his other children.
Shelley's father was a famous author of the time, and her education was of great importance to him, although it was not formal. Shelley grew up surrounded by her father's friends, writers, and persons of political importance, who often gathered at the family home. This inspired her authorship at an early age. Mary, at the age of sixteen, met Percy Bysshe Shelley (who later became her husband) while he was visiting her father. Godwin did not approve of the relationship between his daughter and an older, married man, so they fled to France along with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont. It was during their trip to France that Percy probably had an affair with Mary's stepsister, Claire.[10] On 22 February 1815, Shelley gave birth prematurely to her first child, Clara, who died two weeks later. Over eight years, she endured a similar pattern of pregnancy and loss, one haemorrhage occurring until Percy placed her upon ice to cease the bleeding.[11]
In the summer of 1816, Mary, Percy, and Claire took a trip to visit Claire's lover, Lord Byron, in Geneva. Poor weather conditions, more akin to winter, forced Byron and the visitors to stay indoors. To help pass time, Byron suggested that he, Mary, Percy, and Byron's physician, John Polidori, have a competition to write the best ghost story to pass time stuck indoors.[12] Historians suggest that an affair occurred too, even that the father of one of Shelley's children may have been Byron.[11] Mary was just eighteen years old when she won the contest with her creation of Frankenstein.[13][14]
Shelley's work was heavily influenced by that of her parents. Her father was famous for Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and her mother famous for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her father's novels also influenced her writing of Frankenstein. These novels included Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, St. Leon, and Fleetwood. All of these books were set in Switzerland, similar to the setting in Frankenstein. Some major themes of social affections and the renewal of life that appear in Shelley's novel stem from these works she had in her possession. Other literary influences that appear in Frankenstein are Pygmalion et Galatée by Mme de Genlis, and Ovid, with the use of individuals identifying the problems with society.[15] Ovid also inspires the use of Prometheus in Shelley's title.[16]
The influence of John Milton's Paradise Lost and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are clearly evident in the novel. In The Frankenstein of the French Revolution, author Julia Douthwaite posits that Shelley probably acquired some ideas for Frankenstein's character from Humphry Davy's book Elements of Chemical Philosophy, in which he had written that "science has ... bestowed upon man powers which may be called creative; which have enabled him to change and modify the beings around him ...". References to the French Revolution run through the novel; a likely source is François-Félix Nogaret 's Le Miroir des événemens actuels, ou la Belle au plus offrant (1790), a political parable about scientific progress featuring an inventor named Frankésteïn, who creates a life-sized automaton.[17]
Both Frankenstein and the monster quote passages from Percy Shelley's 1816 poem, "Mutability", and its theme of the role of the subconscious is discussed in prose. Percy Shelley's name never appeared as the author of the poem, although the novel credits other quoted poets by name. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798) is associated with the theme of guilt and William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" (1798) with that of innocence.
Many writers and historians have attempted to associate several then-popular natural philosophers (now called physical scientists) with Shelley's work because of several notable similarities. Two of the most noted natural philosophers among Shelley's contemporaries were Giovanni Aldini, who made many public attempts at human reanimation through bio-electric Galvanism in London,[18] and Johann Konrad Dippel, who was supposed to have developed chemical means to extend the life span of humans. While Shelley was aware of both of these men and their activities, she makes no mention of or reference to them or their experiments in any of her published or released notes.
Ideas about life and death discussed by Percy and Byron were of great interest to scientists of that time. They discussed ideas from Erasmus Darwin and the experiments of Luigi Galvani as well as James Lind.[19] Mary joined these conversations and the ideas of Darwin, Galvani and perhaps Lind were present in her novel.
Shelley's personal experiences also influenced the themes within Frankenstein. The themes of loss, guilt, and the consequences of defying nature present in the novel all developed from Mary Shelley's own life. The loss of her mother, the relationship with her father, and the death of her first child are thought to have inspired the monster and his separation from parental guidance. In a 1965 issue of The Journal of Religion and Health a psychologist proposed that the theme of guilt stemmed from her not feeling good enough for Percy because of the loss of their child.[14]
During the rainy summer of 1816, the "Year Without a Summer", the world was locked in a long, cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815.[20][21] Mary Shelley, aged 18, and her lover (and future husband), Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, in Switzerland's Alps. The weather was too cold and dreary that summer to enjoy the outdoor holiday activities they had planned, so the group retired indoors until dawn.
Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves by reading German ghost stories translated into French from the book Fantasmagoriana.[22] Byron proposed that they "each write a ghost story."[23] Unable to think of a story, Mary Shelley became anxious. She recalled being asked "Have you thought of a story?" each morning, and every time being "forced to reply with a mortifying negative."[24] During one evening in the middle of summer, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated," Mary noted, "galvanism had given token of such things".[25] It was after midnight before they retired and, unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the "grim terrors" of her "waking dream".[6]
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.[26] In September 2011, astronomer Donald Olson, after a visit to the Lake Geneva villa the previous year and inspecting data about the motion of the moon and stars, concluded that her "waking dream" took place between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. on 16 June 1816, several days after the initial idea by Lord Byron that they each write a ghost story.[27]
Mary Shelley began writing what she assumed would be a short story, but with Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded the tale into a fully-fledged novel.[28] She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life."[29] Shelley wrote the first four chapters in the weeks following the suicide of her half-sister Fanny.[30] This was one of many personal tragedies that impacted Shelley's work. Shelley's first child died in infancy, and when she began composing Frankenstein in 1816, she was probably nursing her second child, who was also dead by the time of Frankenstein's publication.[31] Shelley wrote much of the book while residing in a lodging house in the centre of Bath in 1816.[32]
Byron managed to write just a fragment based on the vampire legends he heard while travelling the Balkans, and from this John Polidori created The Vampyre (1819), the progenitor of the romantic vampire literary genre. Thus two seminal horror tales originated from the conclave.
The group talked about Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment ideas as well. Mary Shelley believed the Enlightenment idea that society could progress and grow if political leaders used their powers responsibly; however, she also believed the Romantic ideal that misused power could destroy society.[33]
Shelley's manuscripts for the first three-volume edition in 1818 (written 1816–1817), as well as the fair copy for her publisher, are now housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The Bodleian acquired the papers in 2004, and they belong now to the Abinger Collection.[34][35] In 2008, the Bodleian published a new edition of Frankenstein, edited by Charles E. Robinson, that contains comparisons of Mary Shelley's original text with Percy Shelley's additions and interventions alongside.[36]
Although the Creature was described in later works as a composite of whole body parts grafted together from cadavers and reanimated by the use of electricity, this description is not consistent with Shelley's work; both the use of electricity and the cobbled-together image of Frankenstein's monster were more the result of James Whale's popular 1931 film adaptation of the story and other early motion-picture works based on the creature. In Shelley's original work, Victor Frankenstein discovers a previously unknown but elemental principle of life, and that insight allows him to develop a method to imbue vitality into inanimate matter, though the exact nature of the process is left ambiguous. After a great deal of hesitation in exercising this power, Frankenstein spends two years painstakingly constructing the Creature's body (one anatomical feature at a time, from raw materials supplied by "the dissecting room and the slaughter-house"), which he then brings to life using his unspecified process.
Part of Frankenstein's rejection of his creation is the fact that he does not give him a name. Instead, Frankenstein's creation is referred to by words such as "wretch", "monster", "creature", "demon", "devil", "fiend", and "it". When Frankenstein converses with the creature, he addresses him as "vile insect", "abhorred monster", "fiend", "wretched devil", and "abhorred devil".
In the novel, the creature is compared to Adam,[38] the first man in the Garden of Eden. The monster also compares himself with the "fallen" angel. Speaking to Frankenstein, the monster says "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel". That angel would be Lucifer (meaning "light-bringer") in Milton's Paradise Lost, which the monster has read. Adam is also referred to in the epigraph of the 1818 edition:[39] Some have posited the creature as a composite of Percy Shelley and Thomas Paine. If the creature's hatred for Victor and his desire to raise a child mirror Percy's filial rebelliousness and his longing to adopt children, his desire to do good and his persecution can be said to echo Paine's utopian visions and fate in England.[41]
The Creature has often been mistakenly called Frankenstein. In 1908, one author said "It is strange to note how well-nigh universally the term "Frankenstein" is misused, even by intelligent people, as describing some hideous monster."[42] Edith Wharton's The Reef (1916) describes an unruly child as an "infant Frankenstein".[43] David Lindsay's "The Bridal Ornament", published in The Rover, 12 June 1844, mentioned "the maker of poor Frankenstein". After the release of Whale's cinematic Frankenstein, the public at large began speaking of the Creature itself as "Frankenstein". This misnomer continued with the successful sequel Bride of Frankenstein (1935), as well as in film titles such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
Mary Shelley maintained that she derived the name Frankenstein from a dream-vision. This claim has since been disputed and debated by scholars that have suggested alternative sources for Shelley's inspiration.[45] The German name Frankenstein means "stone of the Franks", and is associated with various places in Germany, including Frankenstein Castle (Burg Frankenstein) in Darmstadt, Hesse, and Frankenstein Castle in Frankenstein, a town in the Palatinate. There is also a castle called Frankenstein in Bad Salzungen, Thuringia, and a municipality called Frankenstein in Saxony. The town of Frankenstein in Silesia (now Ząbkowice, Poland) was the site of a scandal involving gravediggers in 1606, and this has been suggested as an inspiration to the author.[46] Finally, 300 theme by Gabriel Download: 300.p3t
Year 300 (CCC) was a leap year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Constantius and Valerius (or, less frequently, year 1053 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 300 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Scarface theme by bigschill Download: Scarface.p3t Scarface may refer to:
Transformers Optimus Prime
(1 background)
Copyright (c) 2007. Anoop Menon
p3textractor filename.p3t [destination path]
Replace filename with the name of the p3t file, and replace [destination path] with the name of the folder you want the files to be extracted to. A destination path is not required. By default it will extract to extracted.filename.DragonBall Z v1.2
(3 backgrounds)
Copyright (c) 2007. Anoop Menon
p3textractor filename.p3t [destination path]
Replace filename with the name of the p3t file, and replace [destination path] with the name of the folder you want the files to be extracted to. A destination path is not required. By default it will extract to extracted.filename.Frankenstein
(3 backgrounds)
Author Mary Shelley Language English Genre Gothic novel, horror fiction, science fiction[1] Set in England, Ireland, Italy, France, Scotland, Old Swiss Confederacy, Russian Empire, Holy Roman Empire; late 18th century Published 1 January 1818 Publisher Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones Publication place England Pages 280 823.7 LC Class PR5397 .F7 Preceded by History of a Six Weeks' Tour Followed by Valperga Text Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus at Wikisource Summary[edit]
Captain Walton introductory narrative[edit]
Victor Frankenstein's narrative[edit]
The Creature's narrative[edit]
Victor Frankenstein's narrative resumes[edit]
Captain Walton's conclusion[edit]
Author's background[edit]
Literary influences[edit]
Composition[edit]
Frankenstein and the Monster[edit]
The Creature[edit]
Origin of Victor Frankenstein's name[edit]
300
(4 backgrounds)
Millennium:
1st millennium
Centuries:
Decades:
Years:
300 by topic
Leaders
Categories
Gregorian calendar 300
CCCAb urbe condita 1053 Assyrian calendar 5050 Balinese saka calendar 221–222 Bengali calendar −293 Berber calendar 1250 Buddhist calendar 844 Burmese calendar −338 Byzantine calendar 5808–5809 Chinese calendar 己未年 (Earth Goat)
2997 or 2790
— to —
庚申年 (Metal Monkey)
2998 or 2791Coptic calendar 16–17 Discordian calendar 1466 Ethiopian calendar 292–293 Hebrew calendar 4060–4061 Hindu calendars - Vikram Samvat 356–357 - Shaka Samvat 221–222 - Kali Yuga 3400–3401 Holocene calendar 10300 Iranian calendar 322 BP – 321 BP Islamic calendar 332 BH – 331 BH Javanese calendar 180–181 Julian calendar 300
CCCKorean calendar 2633 Minguo calendar 1612 before ROC
民前1612年Nanakshahi calendar −1168 Seleucid era 611/612 AG Thai solar calendar 842–843 Tibetan calendar 阴土羊年
(female Earth-Goat)
426 or 45 or −727
— to —
阳金猴年
(male Iron-Monkey)
427 or 46 or −726Events[edit]
By place[edit]
Roman Empire[edit]
Asia[edit]
Africa[edit]
Mesoamerica[edit]
By topic[edit]
Art and Science[edit]
Religion[edit]
Births[edit]
Deaths[edit]
References[edit]
Scarface
(3 backgrounds)
[edit]
Characters[edit]
Other uses[edit]
See also[edit]
LOST