With the development of digital technology, cinema seems to be placing more and more emphasis on the use of digital technology in order to give audiences an exciting visual experience. There seems to be less emphasis on the rules of traditional cinema and the presentation of its aesthetics.

The film < Fast and Furious 8> consists of a barrage of exciting high-voltage elements, such as car racing, car crashing, gun, fire and explosions. It can be said that the film is made of various exaggerated elements formed by the accumulation of exaggerated scenes. Beside, the whole film is fast-paced, and it did not give the audience much time to think. As Mattias Stork argued in his video essay (2011), “Chaos Cinema,” in recent commercial films, “we’re not just seeing an intensification of classical technique, but a perversion,” which is “marked by excess, exaggeration and overindulgence.” Mattias Stork largely regards post-continuity cinema as “an easy way for Hollywood movies to denote hysteria, panic and disorder,” leading to audiences “sensing the action but not truly experiencing it.” 

However, Shaviro (2011) argued that post-continuity is a film-making practice in which a preoccupation with moment-to-moment excitement, and with delivering continual shocks to the audience, trumps any concern with traditional continuity. It is common to see <Fast & Furious 8> using various angles to show an exciting and thrilling scene, like a complement to that scene, it also becomes a jagged collage of explosions, of colliding fragments. Thus providing the audience with a series of sustained impacts.

Although Shaviro looks at post-continuity cinema from a different perspective, seeing it as the necessary new order, I find myself leaning more towards Mattias Stork. Although the use of chaotic cinema gives the audience a sense of better visual experience, it may seem to be a lazy way to represent chaos. At the same time, it can be seen as a way to cover up continuity itself has been fractured and devalued.

Bibliography

Shaviro, Steven. (2016). Post-Continuity: An introduction’, Post-Cinema: Theorising 21^st Century Film. REFRAME Books.

Matthias, Stork. (2011) “Chaos Cinema [Parts 1 and 2]: The Decline and Fall of Action Filmmaking.” Press Play. Web <http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/video_essay_matthias_stork_calls_out_the_chaos_cinema>. [Accessed 18/11/2022]

Yuqian Hu (33648024)

First Published on 19/11/2022