TROPIC THUNDER OR TROPIC MOUSE TRAP?

Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder was an award winning comic movie that shaked the world of arts, This picture featured an old-style situational humor; since the  story portrayed in the movie is not implicitly humorous, but the  situations are funny. This is the fisrt clue that tells us that there might be a relationship between the world of Tropic Thunder, and another world that we may encounter in the universe of Shakespeare. Here I present two key points that feel like the  Shakesperean Mouse trap scene.

The actors playing actors
A the beginning of the movie, there is a section of mock trailres of movies made by the character who hapend to be actors, very succesful actors that are producing a movie based on a real life situation that is about a story someone has lived in first place , but the story is not about the story, it is about a book that some other person wrote about the story. Tricky as it is, this whole inceptional situation can be sum up with the simple fact that this movie feautures actors (Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Blak, among others) playing actors. It does sound a lot like the mouse trap scene from Hamlet. Many paralelisms can be pointed out from here. Actors asking the director what to do. Actors being actors; obnoxious, selfifssh, self-centered. Actors acting in the jungle, in the wild, while real action happens in the civilized world, becoming inmediately more serious and less hilarious.  It is importan to point out thate the scriptwritter of the movie was Ben Stiler who also is the protagonist in the movie, and the main character from the movio inside the movie. He is the smartest yet more real character, and he becomes the leading character. Here we have a another paralelism between Hamlet and Tropic Thunder.

The story within the movie
Roughly I have mentioned the conflict of the plot.  The movie´s plot is a deep critic to the industry of filmaking, as well as it is a ironic view of the phenomenum of "idolization" of real life characters. The plot becomes more intreseting when the actors are set to perfome in the jungle, What the actors do not know, is that in the dephs of the forest, there is a heavely armed tribe that will (eventually) chase them to their deaths.   Likewise, is some other Shakespeare´s play, the actors have no knowledge of the army untill it is too late. In a way, the movie is putting words to the problem of ambiguity between reality and roles. When the actors are playing roles, the amry is not, and when the army is having fun, the actors are being realistics.

In a way, Ben Stiller´s movie is not entirely Shakesperean. Eventhough, Tropic Thunder happens in a different moment and with different settings, the movie promotes Hamlet logics.  Seeing the movie from a Shakesperean point of view, changes the whole plot. Perhaps Stiller´s vision is a projection of Hamlet, modernized and humoristic, but still a good reflection about life, the false dream of control and the awkward relations of power.  There is this inherit need reckon in Hamlet that drawn us to refect over the pupose of playing roles, and the compariso among life, art, playing and the crisis of the self. It is too much to afford no to make the reflection over these topics after having seen this movie.