Written by: Rachel Rosenthal
There are some movies that make us want to fall in love and others that make us want to follow our dreams. And certain movies, shot in exotic foreign locations, that inspire us to shrug off the daily grind and explore the world—though a Caribbean beach setting might not be enough to draw in viewers by itself.
“We never actually know if it’s real. For all we know, everything is shot in some random studio at Warner Bros.,” said Alexandra Miller, a junior broadcast journalism major. “If the script is bad, but it was shot in Fiji, I’m still not going to like the movie.”
For certain films, viewers know when a sprawling beach scene is used purely as an advertising gimmick with no relation to the plot line.
“I think it really depends on the film,” said Emma Kantrowitz, a junior print journalism major. “The locations in ‘Eat Pray Love’ really fit into the story that was being told. However, for ‘Sex and the City 2’ there was no need for the characters to go take a vacation to Morocco. It just seemed so contrived.”
Unexpected film locations are often used in movie sequels to breathe life into seemingly drawn-out story lines.
On Dec. 21, “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol” will be released as the fourth installation in the series, which has spanned 15 years. Tom Cruise reprises his role as Impossible Missions Force Agent Ethan Hunt in the film shot in Dubai, Prague, Moscow and Mumbai. And yet an intriguing setting can also be an important part of a movie’s storytelling.
For “The Debt,” a drama-thriller film starring Helen Mirren and directed by John Madden, both cast and crew spent months in Israel immersing themselves in the language and the culture before filming the movie, Madden said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” in theatres Dec. 21, was written by Swedish author Stieg Larsson and therefore shot entirely in Sweden to ensure authenticity for audiences, promises director David Fincher. Skeptical viewers aside, Hollywood executives know what they are doing—millions of people flock theatres to see a film with an enticing backdrop.
In 2008, the 22nd James Bond sequel “Quantum of Solace” was shot in several locations including Italy, Spain, Chile, Austria and Switzerland, and had one of the most expensive movies budgets to date. The film cost MGM and Columbia Pictures around $230 million dollars, polls on the International Movie Database but turned out to be a major hit at the box office and with critics, raking in over $586 million.
“If it looks like a bad movie, then I’m not going to go out and see it,” said Dani Katz, a junior secondary education major. “But if it looks even mediocre and it was shot in a cool location I’ll definitely be seeing it!”
