The movie “Night at the Museum” directed by Shawn Levy and written by Robert Garant and Thomas Lennon is a fantasy-comedy film that takes place within New York’s Museum of Natural History. The movie starts with the main character, Larry (played by Ben Stiller), getting hired as the museums new nighttime security guard. His first shift is anything but ordinary when the art exhibits begin to come alive.
One of Larry’s first encounters with the live exhibits is being chased by a life-size recreation of a t-rex. The t-rex is made up of the skeletal bones and starts the history of the museum off where the world first began. Even though the t-rex comes at Larry in a very straightforward, intimidating manner, he only wants to play fetch. After being attacked by the sculpture, Larry decides to check the instructions he was given to find that he needs to throw a bone. The t-rex then drops a bone right in front of him and begins to behave like a dog, wagging his tail, waiting to play. Making such a masculine creature behave in such a puppydog way, really made the scene for me. This made the scene for me because no one was expecting such a
vicious creature to act in such a docile way. It made the T-Rex appear to be cute instead of intimidating. The purpose of this scene was to show that what the nightguard got himself into wasn’t as bad as it may seem. At first he was scared because the dinosaur was chasing him and because of the stereotype dinosaurs have, he was not expecting this to be a friendly encounter.
By the T-Rex not being aggressive and acting friendly gave hope that the nightguard wasn’t so screwed with this job after all. Shortly after Larry’s encounter with the dinosaur, he runs into a massive Easter Island Head. Easter Island Heads are actually known as “Moai” and these human figures are created by the people of Easter Island in eastern Polynesia. These statutes were created as representations of the people ancestors and covered the perimeter of their territory. This Easter Island Head refers to everyone as “dum dum” and constantly asks for “gum gum”. After Larry explaining that he has no gum to give him, the Easter Island Head warns Larry that The Huns are coming after him.
The Huns were nomadic people who traveled to Europe after leaving Central Asia, to threaten the Roman Empire. The Hun were a fearsome tribe of people. Old stories tell tales of the boys having their faces slashed with swords as infants, to teach them how to endure pain before they can receive nourishment. In the movie the Huns are wearing hats lined with fur and these headdresses are very similar, if not exactly like those you would see in old pictures/drawings of the Huns. They wear big, bulky armor covered in repeating patterns, and their clothing is heavy with fur lining the inside and out. Their clothing indicating that they can endure whatever they may face on their travels. A detail the movie missed to incorporate would be the scars that the male Huns would have across their faces. I would have liked for them to include this detail so that I could have a better visual aid as to what the scarring may have looked like. This movie portrays the Huns and their culture to all have been very aggressive, savage people. This stereotype may give off the wrong impression to those who don’t know anything about the culture because obviously not every person involved in this culture behaves in such a manner. Creating such stereotypes in a movie could be problematic but I also think they’re used to clarify who they’re trying to reference. The stereotypes weren’t used in a negative way throughout this film, I think they were just used to tell a story and make sure there is clarity between the different cultures.
Another exhibit the movie focuses on is the Roman Empire exhibit. The director decided to make the soldiers of the Roman Empire miniature figures. I think that portraying the soldiers as miniatures was a good way to be able to show just how many soldiers there really were involved with the Roman Empire. If the soldiers were created life-sized, there would be no room in the exhibit to portray how many men fought for Rome. Thousands of tiny men approach the night guard in an act to attack him. All of the men are dressed in red and silver clothing/armor. While all of the soldiers wear the same silver helmet, the Chief wears a silver and gold-trimmed headdress with red feathers coming out of the top of it. The Chiefs colors are the same as his soldiers, but his outfit differs to show that he is in a position of power. Their weaponry includes catapults that launch fireballs, shields with Roman artwork on the front of them and flaming bows and arrows. Their weaponry in the movie is simulating the weapons they’d use in the time of the Roman Empire. The characters speak in the manner they would as if they were from that time period and the Chief begins his attack by saying “The Roman Empire knows no boundaries”. This phrase sheds light on the context of how the Roman Empire was one of the most extensive and powerful empires in ancient history.
The director of this movie incorporated an immense amount of detail into each of his scenes and exhibits, making it very easy for the audience to identify the ancient context that is being portrayed. All of the clothing that the characters wear symbolize the period that they are from and show a lot about the individual cultures at hand. When all of the exhibits interact with each other, it is clear that they are only aware of what they know from their specific time frames. A lot of historical context was needed in order to create this film and after further research, all of the context that was used within the movie, their recreation of ancient history is pretty spot-on. I
think the overall outcome of this movie was positive. They didn’t try to use the stereotypes in a negative way and they helped to clear up confusion between the cultures mentioned. Considering this movie was created for a younger audience, the stereotypes help to not complicate the story too much and highlight the main aspects of the cultures. The effect that the stereotypes had on this movie was a positive effect and honestly made this movie enjoyable for me.
