The "Star Wars" series of spin-off drama "Obi-Wan Kenobi" has been a lot of topics since the beginning of the project, although there are "Mandalorian" pearls in front, there are also original team members Maywan McGregor, Hayden Christensen returned to play jedi master Obi-Wan and Sith Lord Darth Vader, but the quality of "Obi-Wan" is not superior, more is the sentiment in addition.
The opening scene of the first episode of the desert planet Tatooine is vast and magnificent in the sky and the wilderness directly brings the audience's memories back to the era of "New Hope". The afterglow of the two days gradually faded, and some elderly Obi-Wan stood on the sand dunes of Tatooine and buried two lightsabers in the sand sea... The magnificent visual language staged a shocking "wasteland aesthetics" feast for the audience.
The star wars spin-off series Obi-Wan poster, set 10 years after Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, the anonymous Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi slowly arrives from the Tatooine Desert.
"Wasteland aesthetics" in the history of modern western popular culture has a long history, the earliest can be traced back to the Second World War, just after the end of the war, and facing the great pressure of the Cold War and nuclear crisis, the public is deeply worried about the global destruction that nuclear war may cause, the predecessor of "wasteland aesthetics" - post-Apocalyptic came into being.
The "post-apocalyptic" style, derived from the biblical Book of Revelation, is the last chapter of the New Testament and is primarily an early warning of the future of the world, including prophecies of the end of the world. As the name suggests, the post-apocalyptic era is the era after the prophecies in the book of Revelation, that is, "after the end of the world", showing the environment of human society in the post-war world.
Its most unique core lies in the fact that wars, nuclear spills, ecological disasters, resource depletion, virus epidemics and other problems have destroyed the existing developed civilization and order of mankind, but some of the remnants of the past have survived, gangsters and bandits have become rulers, and poverty and violence have filled the world. In such a barren and decadent land, barbarism and civilization coexist, chaos and order coexist, primitive and modern overlap, violence and technology intertwine, and human beings constantly struggle and plunder in order to survive.
It was not until the end of the last century that the term "wasteland" officially appeared in popular works as a classification of the subject matter, and the release of the movie "Mad Max 2" was of landmark significance to the "wasteland aesthetics", a 1981 film that brought the audience into a wasteland with yellow sand, locomotives, vast and rough, and a messy wasteland, so that everyone could visually intuitively feel the chaos after the end of the world. The film also provided a template for other cultural works on wasteland themes in later generations, many of which became iconic elements of wasteland themes.
The game field also aimed at the novel and fascinating setting of the wasteland theme, and the 1988 video game "Wasteland" announced the official birth of this term, and the 1997 critically acclaimed video game "Fallout" made the word "Wasteland" well known to the majority of game fans, triggering a wave of wasteland frenzy. However, for Westerners who have a century of pioneering history, this "wasteland" complex is not new. The American Westerns that swept the world in the last century have deeply rooted the "pioneering spirit" in this wasteland.
The world set in the game Fallout
The two desert planets highlighted in the "Star Wars" series, Tattu and Jaku, are covered with large areas of yellow sand, thieves, thugs, fugitives and scavengers have become the main inhabitants of the planet, resource plunder and interstellar warfare have also been staged on these two planets, but the cause of desertification is mainly natural formation, far from the degree of "doomsday".
The desert planet Jaku, presented in the movie Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, is home to a large number of war wreckage scattered across the vast sea of sand.
In this way, it seems that the world presented by the American drama "Obi-Wan" and the "Star Wars" series is not a wasteland setting in the strict sense, and not all the scenes of yellow sand are called "wasteland", but at least it describes the world of chaos, coarseness and chaos in a very simple way in visual style, and the "new hope" of rebirth under dirty decadence.
The classic scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the desert planet Tatooine lands on a double day and young Luke Skywalker looks into the distance.
This "new hope" gives rise to a strange beauty of "putting the ground on the ground and being born later". After the destruction is the rebirth, chaos reflects the truth of mankind, the bud of hope breaks out of the sand, the protagonist with an amazing life puts on a heroic aura and a bad natural struggle, confronts the evil forces, breaks the rules laid down by the barbaric powers, and creates a spiritual oasis.
Stephen C. King, George W. R.R. Martin and other Western science fiction masters created a collection of novels "Wasteland", composed of 22 apocalyptic short stories, everyone loves to watch the post-apocalyptic stories, because we secretly hope to be survivors, hoping that everything can start again.
"Wasteland Movies" is a sub-genre of science fiction films that aims to explore the world after civilizations have been completely destroyed after experiencing a great catastrophe. Issues such as resistance after class differentiation and confrontation, the game of morality and survival, reflection on war, and how to rebuild human civilization are all topics that wasteland movies are keen to explore.
Whether it is the Skywalker family in the "Star Wars" series, the Erridi family in "Dune", or the warlord Friosa in "Mad Max" and Max as the main blood, they are the most typical characters in the Wasteland story, which is also the most well-known story blueprint in the "Wasteland Movie".
In the crashing world presented in Max 4: Fury Road, where water is severely scarce, humanity has disappeared, and everyone must fight brutally in order to survive. In order to rebel against the rule of the water-possessor, the "Immortal Old Joe", the protagonist group drives a locomotive in the endless desert to find a new place to stay. In order to create a three-dimensional sense of the film's apocalyptic plot performance, the crew designed some props with apocalyptic complexes, large vehicles with spikes, postmodern punk ornaments made of metal such as nuts, steel pipes and skull-made crosses and other props, which are very absurd and strange.
The movie Mad Max 4: Fury Road presents a wasteland world
The "Wasteland" is the most important element of The Dune, a science fiction epic set thirty thousand years later, when the "Old Earth" is uninhabited, its history has been forgotten, and some historical and religious traditions have been passed down. Extreme environments, precious resources, the inheritance of civilizations, human adventures... Together, these form the creative core of Dune, and also deepen the definition of wasteland aesthetics.
The desert planet Aracis is described in the original book as follows: "A planet with a hot sun and a desolate sand and gravel wasteland, extremely dry and hot in summer; In winter, temperatures in the mid-latitudes are as low as -40 °C and in the polar regions as low as -75 °C. Extreme drought and high temperatures force people to wear special distillation suits, plants and animals are very rare, but there are unique creatures that thrive and contain minerals 'spices' that are regarded as treasures by human beings. ”
The desert planet Aracis depicted in the movie Dunes has a huge insecticide and an extremely valuable resource "spice".
For example, "I Am Legend", "Postman", "Snow Train", "The Hunger Games", "The Walking Dead", "The Book of Ellie", "28 Days of Shock", "Apocalypse Invasion", "Future Water World", "Son of Mankind", "Borderlands" are all wasteland-style film and television works, which visually or thematically convey the concept of wasteland to the audience, and also make the branch of "Wasteland Film" more vigorous.
Wasteland aesthetics is like a reflection and hypothesis of human beings on modern civilization, if there is really a "wasteland" to the day, may human beings still maintain such a vigorous vitality, of course, this setting is best to stay in the level of science fantasy and artistic creation.
New Media Producer: Li Hui
New Media Editor: Li Jing
Image source: Douban Movie