Having watched Forrest Gump a few times over the years, I’ve started to see beyond the well-made tale of a simple man who seems unaffected by his (fictional) catalytic role in history. He is like the feather that appears at the beginning and end of the film: just going wherever the wind may take him, settling for a little, just doing what he does and seemingly unfazed .

I came across a site that offered a few interpretations of the messages in films and I thought the analysis of the message in Forrest Gump was something worth considering. From filmwad.com:

“…Forrest Gump never really does anything of his own free will. He listens to his momma, Jenny, Lieutenant Dan, and Bubba, but (apart from the scene where he runs back to find and rescue Bubba) he never actually shows any initiative or decision-making capabilities of his own. Jenny tells him to run, so he runs. The government tells him to fight, so he fights. Forrest is a pure, wonderful soul, but were it not for his supernatural speed and ability to play ping pong, he’d have gotten killed or screwed over roughly a hundred times over throughout the course of his life.”

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The best monster movies have always been reflections of the fears of the day. Aliens, giant insects, vampires and indestructible serial killers have been the fare at times when people were uptight about sex, worried about radiation, on Communist witch-hunts or afraid of disease; each fear could be embodied by a Hollywood monster.

But the best movies didn’t rely on how realistic the presentation was; it was more about a sympathetic hero and the terrifying opposition they must try and defeat to stay alive, rescue a loved one, save the world, etc. The typical formula is to get the audience to develop some kind of identification with the protagonist, although sometimes the monster can be portrayed as a tragic character and the audience, while understanding that he/she/it must be destroyed for the greater good, can feel compassion for its suffering, however necessary it might be so that the hero can go on.

JJ Abrams’ Cloverfield, while hyped as redefining the monster-movie genre by introducing a completely “new and unique” beast that America can call its own, the movie is more like a long YouTube video with a bigger budget.
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