Conventions of the Thriller Genre

Conventions of the Thriller Genre

Sets:

Often Thrillers are set in banks e.g Firewall (2006) or government offices. These settings are used because of their importance in society and the opportunity for people to cause large scale damage.

On a larger scale lots of thrillers are set in France and other European countries. Not only does it make the film seem more exotic but it also adds humor for English speaking audiences as they can see how irate the foreign policemen get but without knowing what they are saying e.g The Transporter (2002). On the other hand political thrillers are often set in america as the danger is more scary the closer to the home of the audience it is.

Narrative:

Narrative often include locating and stopping ritch, foreighn and manic villains e.g. "Hans Gruber" - Die Hard (1988). Heroes or heroines also have to work for the villains at some point in order to sabotage them. Sub-narratives include a relationship between the hero and an Ex-partner and other family issues.

Dialog:

Thrillers normally contain quite allot of shouting or screaming to add drama, tension or shock to a scene. This is normally used by bystanders to emphasize how increasable stunts are or how dangerous the villain or his henchmen are.

The Hero/Heroine's voice is normally calm and controlled for most of the plot and their script contains hard boiled conversations to show their wit. Some heroes also have catchphrases e.g "Yippie-ki-yay Mother F***er" - Die Hard, which audiences will recognize and associate with the character.

Characters:

Hero: Stereotypically male, often an ex policeman who has given up becuase of a failed case or accident, sometimes divorced because of his devotion to his job, often is an anti-hero that the audience likes but doesn't know if they can trust them.

Villain: Often a leader of a terrorist organisation, very clever, rich, has lots of weapons and technical equipment, their downfall is usually caused by pride or underestimating the hero.

Love Interest: mainly ex wives or partners that have been neglected by the hero because of his job, prove to be strong characters and often help the hero or attempt to restore equilibrium themselves.

Police: often the police are shown as incompetent or at least hindered without the help of the hero, sometimes used as a means to coax the hero into working for the villain as they wouldn't understand the situation and blame the hero for the villains actions.

Henchmen: muscular men, normally fairly quickly dispatched by the hero, sometimes used to add humor through slapstick as they are picked off in different ways according to their personality, many are just filler characters with no back story that aren't very good at aiming guns and don't even scratch the hero e.g in older James Bond films.

Helper or Friend: Normally deal with computers to aid the Hero, sometimes are killed off to add another motive for the hero to defeat the villain, sometimes sacrifice themselves to aid the hero.

Props:

The props used normally appeal more to the stereotypical man e.g guns, computers, cars, airplanes and gadgets. Props like this are often assigned to characters such as a lucky gun or a painstakingly personalized car. This is used to show character traits and if the character's prop is lost or damaged the audience feels the loss with the character which endears the audience to them.