Reconstruction: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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This is where Reconstruction comes in. A Reconstruction ''accepts'' the criticisms of the initial fantasy made in the previous [[Deconstruction]] and then ''modifies'' the initial fantasy into something that would not be so bad in reality. Basically, where a [[Deconstruction]] frequently shows fantasy X as being much darker than you thought it would be, a Reconstruction ''corrects'' the fantasy to have less awful results.
Thus, [[Princess Classic]] is not being married into a fairy-tale monarchy, but into a post-Napoleonic 19th- or 20th-century
The new age [[Super Soldier]] is not a new recruit trained from recruitment, or even from birth, to have unwavering loyalty and superhuman skills; he's a seasoned, decorated veteran who's already been to Hell and back, chosen to try out miraculous new equipment because of his proven skill, steadiness, and reliability.
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** As well as various AU series like ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam Wing|Gundam Wing]]'', ''[[After War Gundam X]]'' and ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00|Gundam 00]]'', which addressed the fundamental causes of why the Universal Century was doomed to constant infighting and never improves.
** The movie of ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00]]'', ''[[Gundam 00: Awakening of the Trailblazer|A Wakening of the Trailblazer]]'', is a reconstruction that follows right after the [[Deconstructor Fleet]] TV series.
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's]]''
* ''[[Rebuild of Evangelion]]'' implies reconstruction [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|right in the title]]. It essentially takes the [[Dysfunction Junction|main cast]] of the [[Neon Genesis Evangelion|original series]] and shows how the series would play out if they asked themselves "[[Angst? What Angst?]]" But it is by no means [[Lighter and Softer]].
* [[Tiger and Bunny]] is a curious case: it's a reconstruction of American Superhero Comic Books done as a Japanese animated show! In-universe, despite seemingly being sellouts, the heroes keep their moral ground even when an [[Anti-Hero]] and a [[Smug Snake]] mock them for it.
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* ''[[Hard Boiled]]'' features every single police officer character as unambiguously heroic, as an apology by [[John Woo]] for the way Chinese films had started to glorify criminals (including some of Woo's previous films). Their conduct in the hospital sequence in particular puts an extra helping of "Heroic" in [[Heroic Bloodshed]].
* ''[[Hot Fuzz]]'' was partially an attempt to revive the British police officer as a credible movie hero after almost every British crime movie of the previous decade (or at least since ''[[Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels]]'') had instead focused on glorifying criminals. Hot Fuzz spent its first half brutally deconstructing the police-action movie, then used its second half to gleefully rebuild it.
* Some recent Westerns seem to be attempts at this (the ''<nowiki>[[3:10 to Yuma]]</nowiki>'' remake, ''Appaloosa'') in contrast to some of the more post-modern examples of the genre (such as ''[[No Country for Old Men]]'' and ''[[The Proposition]]''). Or they may be seen as straddling the middle ground between [[Deconstruction]] and
* ''[[Silverado]]'' reconstructed the Western in [[The Eighties]].
* When the [[James Bond]] series appeared dead (and had been somewhat deconstructed in the Timothy Dalton era), ''[[True Lies]]'' appeared to reconstruct the spy-action-adventure genre by way of [[Affectionate Parody]]. Ironically, it is a remake of a French ''parody'' of Hollywood action-adventure movies.
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** Ten years later, ''[[Hatchet (film)|Hatchet]]'' and ''[[All the Boys Love Mandy Lane]]'' did the same thing, albeit in two very different manners (''Hatchet'' was a [[Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror|more comedic]] [[Bloody Hilarious|form of horror]], while ''Mandy Lane'' was [[Darker and Edgier|far more serious and gritty]]).
* ''[[Cloverfield]]'' does this to [[Kaiju]] movies. Ironically, people believed it to be a [[Deconstruction]], forgetting [[Unbuilt Trope|what a horrific anti-atomic weapons allegory]] the [[Trope Codifier]] ''[[Godzilla|Gojira]]'' really is. It started out horrific, got light and fluffy, and returned to being horrific. The film performs this recontruction by showing the events of the film through the perspective of normal civilions. It's a surprisingly effective way to show just how gut-wrenchingly brutal and terrifying a giant monster attack would be in real life.
* ''[[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]]'' could be seen as a
* Although it didn't stick, [[The Outlaw Josey Wales]] can be seen as an attempted reconstruction of the old-style "sagebrush" western, with a more ambiguous and nuanced view of morality, the Civil War, and Indian raids. Essentially, The Man With No Name leads a group of pioneers to seek their fortunes in Texas.
* ''[[Good Bye, Lenin!|Goodbye Lenin]]'' reconstructs, of all things, Marxist Socialism. The film blatantly acknowledges the problems of socialism and the good things provided by the West but by the end of the film we see that the hopes and dreams of the East German people are not necessarily defeated.
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* [[Michael Chabon]] loves these. He's one of the most respected writers in America, yet many of his books take on subjects usually seen as meaningless pop culture, as if to prove that they ''can'' have literary merit if done right.
** ''[[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay]]'' reconstructs [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] superheroes by telling a story from the POV of the men who created them, showing how important they are to American culture.
** ''[[Summerland]]'' reconstructs adolescent [[High Fantasy]] like ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'' by giving it a fresh
** ''Literature/Gentlemen Of The Road'' reconstructs [[Two-Fisted Tales]] and pulp adventure stories.
** ''[[The Yiddish Policemen's Union|The Yiddish Policemens Union]]'' reconstructs traditional [[Film Noir]] and [[Hardboiled Detective]] stories, again, by giving it a fresh
* [[Harry Potter]] takes the idea of the inherent corruption that comes from magic, but thanks to a little something called [[The Power of Friendship|humanity]] and [[The Power of Love|pure hearts]], it turns from a [[Crap Saccharine World]] to [[A World Half Full]].
* ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' seems to do this with the courtly love genre in the ''Franklin's Tale''. Chaucer had parodied the genre in both the ''Miller's Tale'' and the [[Stylistic Suck|deliberately sucky]] ''Tale of Sir Topas'' (which Chaucer [[The Danza|assigned to himself]]). The ''Franklin's Tale'' Reconstructs it by keeping the postive genre element of celebrating honorable conduct, but jettison's the genre's stance that love only exists outside of marriage.
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* Boris Akunin's ''[[Erast Fandorin]]'' detective novel series was made with the specific intention of reviving and uplifting the Russian detective genre after it sunk to a particularly terrible low.
* Charles Dickens' ''[[A Christmas Carol]]'' actually deconstructed the idealistic Self Made Man with Ebeneezer Scrooge, a man who had become wealthy through greed and at the expense of other people. However Scrooge learned the error of his ways and became a good person and thus an idealistic Self Made Man.
* ''[[Sunshine (novel)|Sunshine]]'' by Robin McKinley may be a reconstruction of urban fantasy and vampire books. Instead of accepting a secret world of magic or trying to rationalize it, it's thrown out: vampires and magic have always been around. Enough names are droppped to indicate that history hasn't remained the same, it's a different world than ours, but the protagonist is young and focus-minded enough that the author can get away without describing the details. Magical superpredators of humans (vampires) come across as physically and mentally
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== Theater ==
* ''The Ibsen Follies'' has a sufficiently loose relationship with the fourth wall for the [[Interactive Narrator]] to discuss this. She's based on a real-life woman whom [[Henrik Ibsen]] fell in love with and then broke up with, and whom he fictionalized as a selfish schemer in his tragedy ''The Master Builder''. At the play's beginning, she watches Ibsen sitting in his chair, and speaks of how they could have lived a romance of [[Returning the Handkerchief|dropped handkerchiefs]] and humorous
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