The myth of Cthulhu is an overhead legend system created by novelist Howard Philip Lovecraft and his successors. It is different from the myths and legends circulated by various peoples in the human world. The cornerstone of its thinking is: the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear; and the oldest and strongest fear is the fear of the unknown.
It has almost influenced the fantasy of horror in the West for nearly a century, and it has been reflected in many movies and games.
In "Pirates of the Caribbean 2", the sexy, lively beard of Captain Octopus-David Jones is one of the most common features of the old rulers in Cthulhu mythology.
Another example is "The Shining" and "The Mist", these two classic thriller horror films, which are full of humans' deep fear of the unknown world. In the face of the unknown, the so-called civilization is vulnerable, killed, dominated, and mad. The order and consciousness formed by humans through tens of thousands of years of evolution vanished in an instant.
In the "Warcraft" and "StarCraft" series of games, a large number of creature images and background stories have also borrowed from the Cthulhu system. For example, Cthun is a typical Cthulhu derivative. Good guys! The planning of World of Warcraft is really easy, and you can change the word directly and you will become the ancient god of your own family. The image of Zerg in StarCraft is also mostly born out of the appearance of some old rulers in Cthulhu.
And the "Terror of the Black Hole" to be talked about today perfectly presents the temperament of the Cthulhu myth in both the story structure and plot display.
1. Story structure
The protagonist of the film, Trent, is a private investigator invited by the publisher to track down the strangely missing best-selling horror novel writer Kane.
At that time, Kane's novels were like drugs that caused fans to fall into his story and couldn't extricate themselves. Some people even lost their rationality and acted violently.
In order to find clues, Trent also bought Kane's novels to read, hoping to have a breakthrough. In the end, I found the answer on the cover of Kane's novel. Putting all the covers together turned into a map, and everything seemed to be designed.
Trent and Styles, the female editor in charge of Kane's novel, set off on a journey according to the clues on the map.
They came to the small town described in the novel, which was full of weird atmosphere: the crazy villagers would always return to the path where they started, the scary creatures behind the gate. Trent didn't believe it at first, and told himself over and over again that it was just a well-designed hoax. And the bizarre events that followed one after another made him slowly fall into an unknown fear, and completely collapsed mentally.
In the end, he escaped from the world in the book and returned to the real world, because no one believed that his remarks were sent to a mental hospital as a lunatic.
However, things were not as simple as he thought. He brought the final chapters of the novel back to the real world and was made into a movie by the publisher. The doomsday scene in the novel world is mapped to the real world. People lose their humanity as if possessed by a demon, continue to destroy and kill frantically. The mental hospital where he was detained was also in a mess. He ran out and saw the whole world plunged into darkness. In the movie theater, he saw that the film he made was exactly what he had experienced, like a nightmare in an endless loop.
This is a typical recurring movie. The director "Master of Horror"-John Carpenter, conveys to the audience a philosophical speculation of "real and virtual" through this weird story structure. Is there a clear boundary between the real world and the virtual world? Perhaps there is no distinction between real and virtual at all. This is just a concept defined by humans.
Just like the male protagonist in the movie, he has always felt that he is a real existence, and has never doubted the authenticity of this world. Little did he realize that he was just a character in the novelist's pen and was created. All he did was to follow the plot of the novel, to deny and destroy himself. Even the female editor Stiles with him can be written off by the novelist, as if he had never appeared before. The world in the book and the real world are connected from the beginning.
Human consciousness seems to be a unique existence in nature. Let us think, develop technology, and reveal the secrets of the universe. When if one day, we suddenly discovered that what we call consciousness is just "God" the wrong code written by the programmer, a product of accident. Will he be desperate in the abyss of fate like the hero in the movie? And the so-called universe just repeats explosion-expansion-collapse-destruction-explosion again and again?
2. Plot display
There are three places in the film that personally feel horrified and strange, which embodies the connotation of Cthulhu in the atmosphere.
1. Bicycle boy
The male protagonist and the female editor Stiles head to the small town on the map. Stiles sees a little boy on a bicycle while driving.
The hostess didn’t care, she continued to drive the car, and suddenly the cyclist appeared in front of the car again, and this time it was oncoming. Only a few seconds before the last time, the boy turned into an old man. , The atmosphere instantly became weird, really scared the heroine.
When the heroine calmed down, the bicycle boy appeared for the third time, and the heroine knocked him down in a panic. The male protagonist was also awakened in his sleep, and he quickly got out of the car with the female protagonist to see how the boy was injured! The boy stood up again, and after showing an indescribable smile, he rode on the car and left!
In a bizarre experience, the director showed a kind of unknown fear in only about 3 minutes through the rapid switching of the camera: three times a boy riding a bicycle appeared, from a teenager to an old age, as if he would never escape from the strange circle. From birth to death has been riding on this road non-stop. I feel terrible when I think about it!
2. Varying oil painting
The host and hostess came to stay in a hotel in the small town. Behind the wall at the front desk is a very ordinary oil painting: a couple walking by the lake.
When the heroine looked at the painting again, the woman's head slowly turned around. At this time, the heroine had already found something wrong, because it was exactly the same as the plot in the manuscript of Di Kane's novel she had read. Of course, the hero at this time still didn't believe what she said.
The third time was when the male lead came downstairs to look for the old lady in the hotel, the characters in the painting changed again, and the couple revealed the spooky skulls. The male protagonist repeatedly checked whether the painting had any mechanism to change the content of the painting.
The last time the male protagonist was about to call the police, under the flickering lights, the couple became demons.
This small oil painting is like Satan's dark bible, predicting that the world will eventually be destroyed, demons will rule the world in the near future, and human history will become the bedtime story of their children. I'm scared of thinking about it, okay? Think of our ancient gods Nuwa, Fuxi, Xing Tian, Chi You, and the Western Zeus, Medusa, and Athena. Could it be that it was eaten by the ancestors of the ancient Pei? If the artificial intelligence produced consciousness that day and wiped out human beings, then would we be the ancient gods in their stories.
3. Scripts that can't be thrown away
The male protagonist is asked to bring the manuscript back to the real world. After he throws the manuscript away again and again, the manuscript will always be returned to him in various ways. All of this is like fate and cannot escape anyway.
We might as well imagine when you throw away something one day. Appeared on your bedside intact the next day. The second time you went over the mountains to the seaside and sank into the deep sea because it didn't appear anymore. As a result, it appeared on your bedside again in the morning. You say you are afraid or not, anyway, I will have a nervous breakdown. Isn't this TM a hell of a life?
Because of the fear of the unknown, mankind began to look for a kind of spiritual sustenance to offset this fear, that is, religion. Use myths and legends to explain all the inexplicable things and tell yourself not to be afraid.
When human beings entered the era of science and technology, they were more anxious to explore the nature of this world, hoping to use science to defeat religion. Newton's three laws, the theory of relativity, and Ohm's law consolidate the scientific ground step by step. People began to cheer for joy, and they were discovering the truth step by step, approaching God step by step, and even defeating God. In the double-slit interference experiment, quantum mechanics has given science a big slap in the face. The deeper the study, the more slowly it turns to religion. Will science and theology end up at the same time by different paths?
Is our world real or virtual? I cannot give an answer. Compared with the known, we still have 99% unknowns. The more we know, the more we don't know. Humans are insignificant. In the face of unknown fear, they are like humans looking at ants carrying things on the ground. They will never know that they are watching their every move with their eyes, and they can even destroy them without warning.
Did you hear Cthulhu's call? You are pulling you down the abyss!
This is an interesting public account, a concentration camp for movie lovers, and a frontier of current affairs politics. Share the stories around you with you. Wait!
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