Bad guys across the decades

We looked into different things that Hollywood can portray as the 'bad guy'. We were given examples and in groups we linked them up with the decades we were given. Some of the examples included: aliens, Germany, Russia, Japan, disease, atomic bombs, terrorists, natural disasters and intelligent computers. Our groups were given 2 decades to research; we had to look into public fears during those decades. We then started linking subjects to our decades and backing up our answers with facts and film examples. We had the 70s and 10s. For the 70s we linked the subjects Russia and Communists. We backed up our subjects using information about the Cold War. In the 70s there was a large worry that WW3 may occur if the Soviets joined the Vietnam war. This particular war was the fist televised war, so US residence knew a great deal about what was going on and were highly concerned. The Soviets were communists. The US were afraid of the US throughout the 70s because the USSR continued to work with experimental versions of missiles. This was a worry until 1979 when the SALT II was signed banning missile programs. During the Vietnam war there was a fear of North Vietnam because they were communists. US President Nixon decided to extend the Vietnam war to Cambodia which caused a lot of problems in the US with anti-war protests. Nixon then declared that the US would withdraw from the Vietnam war.

The executioner. (1970) This film portrayed Russian spys and Soviet agents as the bad guys. The film is about a British spy who is up against Russian spys and there is a mole who is giving the soviets false information. This links to the fear of both the Russians and Communists.

Limbo (1972) This film is about a woman who hears that her husband has died in the Vietnam war. She then attends a peace conference because of it and learns that the American soldiers did horrible things in Vietnam. After learning this she starts anti-war protests. This relates to the many anti-war protests that would have been happening in the US.


For the 10s we linked overseas terrorists, natural disasters, drug dealers and genetic engineering.

Overseas terrorists is an important public fear in the 10s. After terrorism bombings by Islamists in London etc. (This could also be linked to cyber attacks after some computer hackings). Attacks on the government are a popular topic in films during the 10s. Skyfall, Unthinkable, White house down and Zero dark thirty all follow the fear of terrorists. Zero Dark Thirty is about tracking down Bin Laden and his death. He died in 2011 which is why this film was made.

Natural disasters Arctic blast and 2012: Ice age are films about a new ice age linked in with the worry of global warming. 100 degrees below 0 is about the Ash Cloud. There are a lot of natural disaster worries because of Earthquakes, tsunamis and Hurricanes.

If a 70s film was to re-made in the 10s i'd say it would be developed to be about terrorists. The executioner could be re-done, still about a British spy but instead of having trouble with soviet agents it could be big time terrorist groups. It would create fear of terrorists and the country that they are portrayed to come from. They would have to be careful with this because there is a lot of hate towards certain religions because of certain terrorist attacks.