What movies, books or tv shows are meant to spoof/parody a particular genre while actually being a great example of the genre?
What movies, books or tv shows are meant to spoof/parody a particular genre while actually being a great example of the genre?
The 3 that come to mind for me are Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The Princess Bride. All three are poking fun at their respective genres but also are great examples of the genre. I'm curious if Lemmy has other such examples.
Austin Powers was such a good spoof of the genre that it killed the genre it was spoofing (for a little while). It was also a great movie in its own right!
To this day I'll say "There you are!" And if someone asks if they know me, or if I was looking for them, or any number of things, I'll say, "No, but there you are! You're there!"
So a deconstruction / reconstruction shuffle. A work picking apart the tropes of a genre, making you question them... and then putting them back together in ways suited to a self-aware audience.
One Punch Man looks like a decent example. The premise is a rebuke of who-is-stronger anime, like the endless power-level treadmill of Dragonball Z. The main dude is stronger. Next question. And the next question is, well, what does a setting with assorted superheroes and supervillains look like, if there's some guy who is unbeatable 1v1, but is otherwise just some guy? Does society support him, after he's basically relegated to an occasional "come save our asses" phone call? How do other supers proceed with their equally-cliche motivations, when SSJ4 Goku showed up in episode one?
Shaun Of The Dead is definitely a reconstruction of zombie tropes - timed right at the crest of the 2000s zombie-movie revival. But Hot Fuzz is a little odd to mention here because it's actually three distinct genres. It goes from screwball comedy to murder mystery to blockbuster action without missing a beat. Ironically I'd say the weakest part is the screwball comedy at the beginning. It's very sedate compared to what it almost was: there's a deleted scene where Angel did Word-art banners for each department, ending on rainbow lettering reading "sexual assault." The opening we got is held-back to ease the later shifts in theme. And while each of these shifts is truly masterful, I'm not sure I'd call the movie as a whole a great example of anything it riffed on.
Really - does it fit any movie marathon that would unironically include Point Break?
Glee. It started out as a parody of musicals and high school dramas in Season 1. Then went on to be a musical high school drama for the rest of the show.
The Simpsons started out as a parody of sitcoms and has since become the longest running sitcom.
The 1960s Batman was a campy satire of comics and itself influenced comic adaptations for decades after.
Hot Fuzz is what I came here to suggest - it's the best ACWATNOBI (A Cop With A Theory No One Believes In) spoof/film ever.
I also think Cabin in the Woods did a great job balancing spoof (or at least meta) with actual horror.
The Cabin in the Woods is pretty good. It tells an interesting story while still hitting its marks to be a "college kids getting picked off by the supernatural far from civilization" horror movie parody.
This Is Spinal Tap.
Get Smart
Tucker and Dale Vs Evil. Starts fine and eventually becomes a horror. It's great.
Starship Troopers
DO YOU APES WANNA LIVE FOREVER!?
The Venture Bros is the only superhero adjacent anything I give a shit about. Greatest adult animation show ever. Making fun of comic books and old Hannah Barbara cartoons but better and more rich and consistent than any of them.
While it's not a direct parody I think The Nice Guys used and subverts a lot of 70s buddy cop tropes.
And after rewatching that trailer I found it refreshing to see it didn't spoil the story and didn't have any BWAAAAAAAAAH
JFC in this thread: People who don't know what a parody is.
One Punch Man
This is such a quality question. But a lot of people are just naming their favorite movies in the comments.
What you want is Moore's Watchmen. It is a deconstruction and reconstruction of the Superhero as an American trope.
What I loved about HBO's continuation is that they focused on how white supremacy is intertwined with heroism, just as Moore wrote in his original IP.
Then you got the Zack Snyder movie which was mostly, "ooh, look at these people with powers fight crime". None of the impending doom of the fall of society from nuclear war and/or fascism, and how the heroes were pointless because they were the ones pushing forward this doom. "Who watches the Watchmen?" etc.
Cool supplementary article: https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/watchmen-creator-alan-moore-says-superhero-genre-remains-a-white-supremacist-dream-of-the-master-race
'The 3 Musketeers' with Raquel Welch and Oliver Reed. Completely aware of how ridiculous all this nonsense is, and loving it.
The more I watch of 'Succession' the more I think it is close to perfect in terms of family/executive drama. It started almost as cringe inducingly funny as say 'The Office' but it has just become amazingly accurate and dramatic. Recommended.
"Cabin in the Woods" kind of fits.
Not a movie, book, or TV show, but Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" was supposed to be satirizing progressive rock, and turned into one of the best prog songs/albums ever made.
Walk Hard The Dewey Cox Story
Not a funny watch but I'd consider Neo Genesis Evangelion a great deconstruction of the Gundam genre.
Konosuba. It's a parody of the Isekai Anime genre. And holy shit is it funny 🤌🏼.
Isekai refers to the trope in many popular anime where the main character or MC (majorly a male, also majorly either socially awkward, inept or both) either dies in the real world and somehow gets reincarnated/transported, or plays a VR game or reads a book that sucks them into that world.
These shows tend to have many recurring cliches; a harem of attractive women that all want the attention of the MC, MC being essentially OP at whatever fantasy world skill structure exists, shitloads of fan service (mostly overly sexual portrayal of the women in those worlds, but also random and long action sequences), overly complicated rules that they will somehow obey and many many more. I'll be here all year listing each trope.
But Konosuba mocks the concept of the Isekai genre, and actively makes sure to do something that wouldn't occur in a typical show.
What ended up happening was that in their quest to make the perfect parody, they ended up striking gold, and created one of the best Isekai shows. All because they wanted to make fun of that exact genre.
It's not even like they "became the very thing they swore to destroy", since the show doesn't at all take itself too seriously...
There's 2 seasons, a movie and a spin-off prequel that follows one of the main characters and leads upto the first episode of the main story. All of which is amazing and insanely hilarious.
100% recommended.
Genre satire is different than political satire in that most people who make it often do so out of love for the genre not hated. In fact these works of media aren't nearly as funny if you aren't familiar with the tropes and story beats within a genre, so the audience also ends up being fans. The people who watch slasher parodies are the same people who enjoy slashers.
I like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, a farcical noir film that is like a quilt made from the footage of a bunch of other films with original fabric connecting the pieces.
Heathers. it was made to parody adolecent movies and its considered the mother of all adolecent movies (like, the mother of netflix-like movies.)
Star Wreck was a cool parody of Trek/B5 space sci-fi stuff while also holding up against them. (And being a 100% indie production to boot.)
The Orville had some genuinely good episodes that told a great message.
Deadloch for sure