Thriller
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Thriller (disambiguation).
The thriller is a broad genre of literature, film, and television. It includes numerous, often overlapping sub-genres.
Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing, frequent action, and resourceful heroes who must thwart the plans of more-powerful and better-equipped villains. Literary devices such as suspense, red herrings, and cliffhangers are used extensively.
Contents |
[edit] Characteristics
Thrillers often take place wholly or partly in exotic settings such as foreign cities, deserts, polar regions, or high seas. The heroes in most thrillers are frequently "hard men" accustomed to danger: law enforcement officers, spies, soldiers, seamen, or pilots. However, they may also be ordinary citizens drawn into danger by accident. While such heroes have traditionally been men, women are becoming increasingly common.
Thrillers often overlap with mystery stories, but are distinguished by the structure of their plots. In a thriller, the hero must thwart the plans of an enemy, rather than uncover a crime that has already happened. Thrillers also occur on a much grander scale: the crimes that must be prevented are serial or mass murder, terrorism, assassination, or the overthrow of governments. Jeopardy and violent confrontations are standard plot elements. While a mystery climaxes when the mystery is solved; a thiller climaxes when the hero finally defeats the villain, saving his own life and often the lives of others. In thrillers influenced by film noir and tragedy, the compromised hero is often killed in the process.
In recent years, when thrillers have been increasingly influenced by horror or psychological-horror exposure in pop culture, an ominous or monstrous element has become common to heighten tension. The monster could be anything, even an inferior physical force made superior only by their intellect ( as in the Saw movies), could be a supernatural entity (Dracula, Christine books, The Amityville Horror, Ringu films), aliens (H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos books), serial killers (Stepfather, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre films), or even microbes or chemical agents (Cabin Fever, Richard Matheson's The Last Man On Earth). Some authors have made their mark by incorporating all of these elements (Richard Laymon, F. Paul Wilson) throughout their bibliographies.
Similar distinctions separate the thriller from other overlapping genres: adventure, spy, legal, war, maritime fiction, and so on. Thrillers are defined not by their subject matter but by their approach to it. Many thrillers involve spies and espionage, but not all spy stories are thrillers. The spy novels of John LeCarre, for example, explicitly and intentionally reject the conventions of the thriller. Conversely, many thrillers cross over to genres that tradtionally have had few or no thriller elements. Alistair MacLean, Hammond Innes, and Brian Callison are best known for their thrillers, but are also accomplished writers of man-against-nature sea stories.
Thrillers may be defined by the primary mood that they exhibit: excitement. In short, if it thrills, it is a thriller.
[edit] Sub-genres
The thriller genre can include the following, which incorporate elements of a thriller genre along with other the other type of genre listed :
- Spy thrillers (also a subgenre of spy fiction), in which the hero is generally a government agent who must take violent action against agents of a rival government or (in recent years) terrorists. Examples include From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming, The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, and television series such as Mission: Impossible and 24 (the second demonstrating a break from the norm by Robert Ludlum, as it is as much a psychological thriller as a spy thriller.)
- Political thrillers, in which the hero must ensure the stability of the government that employs him. The success of Seven Days in May by Fletcher Knebel and The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth established this subgenre in the early 1960s.
- Military thrillers, in which the hero is typically a uniformed military officer operating behind enemy lines alone or as part of a small team of specialists. The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean is a well-known example of the type, as are films such as The Dirty Dozen and Rambo.
- Conspiracy thrillers, in which the hero confronts a large, powerful group of enemies whose true extent only he recognizes. The work of Robert Ludlum, for example The Chancellor Manuscript and The Aquitane Progression, falls into this category, as do films such as Three Days of the Condor and JFK.
- Technothrillers, in which technology is prominently described and made essential to the reader's understanding of the plot. Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy are both considered to be the "Fathers of the Technothriller."
- Medical thrillers, in which the heroes is generally a principled physician who must fight corrupt drug companies or colleagues engaged in unethical experiments. Coma, Mutation (novel), Chromosome 6 (novel), and other novels by Robin Cook are examples of this type.
- Legal thrillers, in which the lawyer-heroes confront enemies outside, as well as inside, the courtroom and are in danger of losing not only their cases but their lives. The Pelican Brief by John Grisham is a well known example of the type.
- Forensic thrillers , in which the heroes are forensic experts whose involvement with an unsolved crime puts their lives at risk. Balefire by Ken Goddard and Red Dragon by Thomas Harris are examples, as is Harris's later Silence of the Lambs.
- Psychological thrillers, in which (until the often violent resolution) conflict between the main characters is mental and emotional rather than physical. The Alfred Hitchcock films Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, and Strangers on a Train are notable examples of the type, as is The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (who also wrote Strangers).
- Horror thriller, in which conflict between the main characters is mental, emotional, and physical.
What sets the Horror Thriller apart is the main element of fear throughout the story. The main characters are not only up against a superior force in the form of a monster or monsters, but they are or will soon become the victims themselves and directly feel the fear that comes by attracting the monster's attention.
- Serial killer thrillers
- Romantic thrillers
- Supernatural thrillers
- Most thrillers are formed in some combination of the above, with horror, conspiracy and psychological tricks used most commonly to heighten tension. Combinations are highly diverse, including:
- Science Fiction/Techno/Horror Thrillers: Jurassic Park, Aliens vs. Predator
- Techno/Political/Conspiracy/Military/Horror Thriller: Predator, Robocop, S.M. Stirling's Draka novels
- Legal/Forensic/Psychological/Horror Thriller: Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs, novel, Seven (film).
[edit] Examples
[edit] Fiction and literature
Homer's Odyssey is one of the oldest stories in the Western world and is regarded as an early prototype of the thriller. The hero Odysseus makes a perilous voyage home after the Trojan War, battling extraordinary hardships in order to be reunited with his wife Penelope. He has to contend with villains such as the Cyclops, a one-eyed giant, and the Sirens, whose sweet singing lures sailors to their doom. In most cases, Odysseus uses cunning instead of brute force to overcome his adversaries.
The Count of Monte Cristo is a swashbuckling revenge thriller about a man named Edmond Dantès who is betrayed by his friends and sent to languish in the notorious Château d'If. His only companion is an old man who teaches him everything from philosophy to mathematics to swordplay. Just before the old man dies, he reveals to Dantès the secret location of a great treasure. Shortly after, Dantès engineers a daring escape and uses the treasure to reinvent himself as the Count of Monte Cristo. Thirsting for vengeance, he sets out to punish those who destroyed his life.
Dracula is a gothic supernatural thriller told in the first person (diaries, letters, newspaper clippings). A young Englishman named Jonathan Harker travels to the Carpathian Mountains to meet a client named Count Dracula. But when the Count shows his horrifying true colours, Harker barely escapes with his life. The Count soon arrives in England, bringing with him death and menace. Harker and his terrified friends are forced to turn to Dr. Van Helsing, who uses modern science to battle ancient superstition.
The Thirty-Nine Steps is an early thriller by John Buchan, in which an innocent man becomes the prime suspect in a murder case and finds himself on the run from both the police and enemy spies.
Heart of Darkness is a first-person within a first-person account about a man named Marlowe who travels up the Congo River in search of an enigmatic Belgian trader named Kurtz. Layer by layer, the atrocities of the human soul and man's inhumanity to man are peeled away. Marlowe finds it increasingly difficult to tell where civilization ends and where barbarism begins.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre is set in the world of Cold War espionage and helped to usher in an era of more realistic thriller fiction, based around professional spies and the battle of wits between rival spymasters.
The Bourne Identity is one of the first thrillers to be written in the modern style that we know today. A man with gunshot wounds is found floating unconscious in the Mediterranean Sea. Brought ashore and nursed back to health, he wakes up with amnesia. Fiercely determined to uncover the secrets of his past, he embarks on a quest that sends him spiraling into a web of violence and deceit. He is astounded to learn that knowledge of hand-to-hand combat, firearms, and tradecraft seem to come naturally to him.
First Blood is widely considered to be the father of the modern action novel. A young Vietnam veteran, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, encounters an older sheriff who is a Korean War veteran. When the sheriff tries to drive him out of town, a version of the Vietnam War erupts in the woods, hills, and caves of rural Kentucky. This becomes not only a clash of generations, but also a clash between conventional and guerrilla warfare.
Novelists closely associated with the genre include Robert Ludlum, David Morrell, Frederick Forsyth, Dan Brown, James Phelan, Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, Ian Fleming, and Alistair MacLean.
[edit] Film
The Bourne Identity was adapted to a movie starring Matt Damon which used many of the thriller conventions of the plot. Though its sequels, The Bourne Supremacy and the planned Bourne Ultimatum, depart significantly from Ludlum's storyline, the conspiracy-thriller genre is still well-preserved.
The Manchurian Candidate is a classic of Cold War paranoia. A squad of American soldiers are kidnapped and brainwashed by Communists. False memories are implanted, along with a subconscious trigger that turns them into assassins at a moment's notice. They are soon reintegrated into American society as sleeper agents. One of them, Major Bennett Marco, senses that not all is right, setting him on a collision course with his former comrade, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, who is close to being activated as an assassin.
Phone Booth is a thriller about a selfish man trapped in a phone booth by a deranged sniper. Framed for the murder of a pimp, he finds himself surrounded by police who have no idea of the sniper's presence.
Ronin is a suspenseful tale of conflicting loyalties. A team of post-Cold War mercenaries gather in France to carry out an ambush and steal a mysterious suitcase. The mission goes awry when the group turn on each other. The contents of the suitcase are never revealed but it is something worth killing for.
Other examples of the thriller in movies include: Red Eye, Psycho, North by Northwest, In the Line of Fire, The Fugitive, and Marathon Man.
Notable thrillers that have made an impact both as novels and as films include Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal, Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October and successive Jack Ryan stories, Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs and related novels, Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and Congo, and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
[edit] Television
24 is a fast-paced television series with a premise inspired by the War on Terror. Each season takes place over the course of twenty-four hours, with each episode happening in "real time". Featuring a split-screen technique and a ticking onscreen clock, 24 follows the exploits of Federal agent Jack Bauer as he races to foil terrorist threats.
LOST, which deals with the survivors of a plane crash, sees the castaways on the island forced to deal with a monstrous being that appears as a cloud of black smoke, a conspiracy of "Others" who have kidnapped or killed their fellow castaways at various points, a shadowy past of the island itself that they are trying to understand, polar bears, and the fight against the elements as they struggle simply to stay alive.
Thrillers have also made the leap from television to film, including the Mission: Impossible franchise.
[edit] See also
- Horror Thriller
- List of thriller authors
- Conspiracy thriller
- Techno-thriller
- Spy fiction
- International Thriller Writersde:Thriller
nl:Thriller ja:スリラー映画 no:Thriller pl:Dreszczowiec ru:Триллер
