Hidden in the Woods (2014)

Outer Banks (2020-) knows its audience: young adults in a country that can’t stop romanticizing good ole’ treasure hunts. Add a little of Riverdale’s (2017-) sex appeal, and no one can look away. Forty years after The Goonies (1985) America’s consciousness hasn’t strayed from the same tropes: treasure hunts, a vulnerable white male lead, and the whitewashing of a racially segregated setting.

The film exhibits a respect for the craft and an empathy for human tribulations that have historically been ignored.

"There is something going on between us that I cannot unravel."

We can criticize depictions from old media, but they weren’t simply “good for their time”. They were fighting and struggling in a world we can’t imagine.

What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.

The nations of Wakanda and Talokan enter war over their opposing viewpoints on dealing with the destructive hearts of humankind on the surface world.