Essay/Term paper: Powder

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Music

Most likely written by some kind of nut, the film Powder is indeed strange. Powder is the story of an albilno completely hairless teenager who has the power to use an extraordinary amount of his brain capacity. Powder is the archetypal outsider.Edward Lightning Hands might be a more fitting name for all the overuse of the already worn out "Boo Radley-like misfit who is also a despised prophet" type theme. Aside from its lack of orignality it is also typically "hollywood" in it"s blatant overuse of moral superlatives.
"The most advanced intellect in the history of mankind," is how one of the films many protagonistic representatives of society describes Powders eidetic memory and off the scale IQ.The writer expects the audience to view what Powder says with more credibility because he has the use of more of his brain than they do. This is a very powerful way for the writer to communicate theme, by developing a philosophy in an attempt to affect the audience, and having powder embody that philosophy so that people will see him as some sort of role model. In general, this idea could work, but the writer of this particular film obviuosly missed the boat here.
Instead of the independence imbodied in most people, Powder belives in a unification of all humans, every single one, through some sort of single-consciousness. The idea of using Powder as a role model can work, but the audience has to view powder as being worthy. Here Powder views people, unwilling to accept the idea of a single-consciousness solely on faith, as closed-minded. This dogmatic type of view nullifies any worth powder might have had as a role model, and it dooms any chance the message of the film, which supposedly presents a different, better, and higher, view of things, ever had of influencing people.
Besides the implied message, the film itself is just plain awful. With cliché after cliché and an abundance of predictable scenes, its a wonder anyone could think this movie was worth making. A semi-conscious two-year old could predict exactly what would happen next, and who would suddenly reappear in the film. The whole addition of a love interest was inane and irrelevant to the point the writer was trying to get across. The suposedly touching scenes were obviously predictable, and although some are well acted, they add nothong but another impractical twist to the story
one good point about this movie is the addition of Jeff Goldblum as Powder"s science teacher. Whoever typecast Golblum as a nutty scientist pondering technology versus humanity really knew what they were doing, beacause it works wonderfully. His delivery of lines in the film is impeccable, often magnifying the script to more than it deserves to be. His talent as an actor shines clear and true in what is possibly the best line of the best line of the movie: "you want to know why he doesn"t have a hair on his body, beacause he is electolysis.....drink that in."
Though powder is interesting and a bit thought provoking it is best used as an example of what not to see at the theater. It is in the whole a poorly consructed and cliche film that ends up with an awkward message. In theory we are to model our lives around what Powder would do, or what he would think about what we are doing. Goldblum admits that "we live in a dark age of man," where "we are doing everythin we can merely so we don"t kill each other." Therefore, we are supposed to live our lives as pwder would have us live them? Yeah right!