Heroism as a concept in cinema

Heroism as a concept in cinema The protagonist versus antagonist which also can be termed as hero versus anti-hero is one of the basic constituent elements of narrative structures in the cinema industry. Stories need an anti-hero who has bad intentions and a hero who has an aim to stop this anti-hero. Graham and Hvited-Andersen mentions about cinematic narratives are still following the anti-hero or other character models from the traditional Hollywood cinema. With the period of masked heroes, Hollywood heroism found it's new form and this form still continues in current movies. The effects of masked heroes do not only show their effects in superhero movies. In all movies, these effects can be observed. For example, in Blade Runner (1982) Rick Deckard is a character who has different characteristics from a superhero but when the movie moves on audience starts to see his transition to a hero. This is one of the examples of superhero narrative structure. The audience watches the transition and maturation of the protagonist. The Difference of Heroism between Yesilcam and Hollywood Cinema 4 Adaptation of movies Movie adaptations are playing an enormous role on the development of worldwide cinema industry. In the process of writing scenerio or shooting, producers, screenwriters are being inspired by movies of other countries. Even most famous movie awards of the World, Oscars, has a category of adapted screenplay. These adaptations can be separated in multiple ways like book to movie adaptations, movie to movie adaptations and so on. Hollywood is being fed from Asian cinema and Middle-Eastern countries are being fed by Hollywood by making adaptations. There are lots of examples about adaptations like, Lost in Translation, Oldboy. Like all the other information exchanges between countries, cinema also a multi-cultural system and most of the times cinema industries are inspired from each other. To show the differences between two cinemas' heroes, heroes from the same time period and the adapted version and the original version has been chosen. Adaptations of Hollywood movies are undergoing a change in the process of adaptation. Outcomes of the adaptation process is so different from the original version because of this, movies with same titles (adaptation vs original) has been chosen to show the contrast between two. ''The Mark of Zorro'' is the first movie of sub-genre of superhero fiction. The movie is produced by Douglas Fairbanks in 1920 and the movie's title is the same with the title of an original novel which is a movie adapted from. As the genre keeps gaining popularity all over the world. People start to see adapted superhero fiction movies in cinemas in different countries. First fantasy movie of Turkish cinema is an example of this situation at the same time. Drakula İstanbul'da (1953) is the first fantasy movie and this movie is the adaptation of original Dracula in Hollywood. Even movie posters are so close to each other. The movie The Difference of Heroism between Yesilcam and Hollywood Cinema 5 was adapted by the structure of Turkish society and culture to draw the attention of the Turkish people. The main problem with adapted movies was, lack of popularity of these movies in Turkish cinema and because of this reason producers were trying to make these movies with a very small budget. This is one of the main reasons why these adaptations are half adapted rather than full adaptations. Budget is the key to the filmmaking industry and with small budgets, Hollywood movies can not be fully adapted. Kadir Güneytepe gives an amusing example about these movies were extremely lack of budget and because of that, they were trying to find creative solutions like 30-40 people smoking a cigarette on the scene in order to create fog. One of the inevitable point in the process of adaptation of the movie was changed in the location because these adaptations have to be shot in Turkey. This is one of the consequences of lack of financial sources as mentioned before. Without changing the background information, taking the hero and putting him in a different Turkish location is creating an enormous gap in the narrative. Since changing only the name of the hero and where he is coming from is not enough as a background information. In the adaptation process, either all background will be changed like why he is fighting with the antagonist, why these actions are happening in Turkey or any part of the background information will be changed. This situation may lead to divergence on consideration of the concept of heroism by American society and Turkish society. Because these movies were based on written sources and some of these sources are based on cultural myths and incidents. Kadir Güneytepe mentions about the characters which are coded by traditions were being blessed, except these traditional characters, all the other characters are over-caricatured. Therefore, when adapting the movie to Turkish culture producers were changing the background information and this means that the story was not based on myths anymore and because of this Turkish society and American The Difference of Heroism between Yesilcam and Hollywood Cinema 6 society perceived the concept of heroism or superheroism in different ways. This difference in perception caused to direct these two cinemas to different ways in further times even they were started at the same point. Two countries' cinema industries were separated into different roads and when the masked heroes era started, this separation was becoming bigger. Yesilcam cinema started to create the adaptations of masked hero movies and the first one was Super Adam Istanbulda which is based on the original series of Superman. Movies were looking similar to each other but the way how people perceive these movies was not the same. According to Andreas Rauscher superheroes has to cope with their private life while trying to save people and for example, like said in Spider-Man ''with great power comes great responsibility'' and many people consider Spider-Man as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Actually, this is a valid fact for most of the superheroes in Hollywood cinema. The main thing about why American people consider these heroes as their friends, their neighbors and why Turkish people can not even if these movies are adapted into Turkish culture. American people know the full background story of the hero, the actions are happening and related to their country and some other reasons like these. Movies couldn't fully adapt the Turkish culture and people can still see that the hero is a foreigner. Because there is a tiny difference between adapting the full background information and changing the whole story and creating a brand new character. Turkish producers were abstainer to change the full background due to financial issues and lack of sources. This is because in Yesilcam these movies couldn't adapted properly. Turkish people can not identify themselves with these foreigner masked heroes but this is not a problem because of hero movies. Based on political circumstances, Turkish producers of Yesilcam wanted to create a social hero by movies. They created multiple heroes and selected one actor to play these roles at the same time. Cüneyt Arkın played 5-6 different roles with The Difference of Heroism between Yesilcam and Hollywood Cinema 7 different characters in the same period. These characters were Malkoçoğlu, Battal Gazi, Kara Murat and lots of other characters. Aim of this movement was, according to that period's political situation, society was under lots of pressure. Yesilcam wanted to create a social hero that people can find themselves when watching him. Characters and roles were different from each other but the enemy was always the same. Enemy was Byzantines and Greeks which means stories were fictions but based on historical truths. Choosing the real enemies from history helped Turkish viewers to find themselves in the protagonists. This is the main reason why Turkish people couldn't relate with adaptation movies and why they find themselves in Turkish cultural heroes. To conclude, the adaptation process of hero movies from Hollywood to Yesilcam was not a successful period. Yesilcam producers tried to localize foreigner heroes and make them look like Turkish. Changing the nation of hero and changing locations of narratives was not enough to localize movies. The whole background should be changed to adapt to a movie. When they couldn't do it properly, they tried to change all concept of heroism and create local social heroes who are only on battlefields and this caused separation in the concept of heroism in the aspects of production and narrative structures. Since Turkish people watch different heroes than Hollywood heroes, they started to perceive heroism in another way. Reason for this is, Hollywood heroes also have daily lives and in normal life, they are ordinary individuals who have a job and social problems, but Turkish heroes only seem in preparing for battle and inside of battle. Because of that, Turkish people couldn't consider heroes as a friend a neighbor, they can only consider these heroes as heroes.