Reconstruction: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:Recons 4798.jpg|link=Cracked.com|right|frame|[http://www.cracked.com/article_18741_the-evolution-fictional-characters-by-medium-5Bcomic5D.html By Winston Rowntree]]]

 

{{quote|''"It strikes me that the only reason to take apart a pocket watch, or a car engine, aside from the simple delight of disassembly, is to find out how it works. To understand it, so you can put it back together again better than before, or build a new one that goes beyond what the old one could do. We've been taking apart the superhero for ten years or more; it's time to put it back together and wind it up, time to take it out on the road and floor it, see what it'll do."''|'''[[Kurt Busiek]]''', '''''[[Astro City]]''''', on the whole point of [[Deconstruction]].}}

 

Not to be confused with the [[Freeware Games|Freeware RPG]] ''[[The Reconstruction]]'', season six of [[Red vs. Blue]], or, for that matter, with [[American Civil War|the Reconstruction Era]].

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''Yuusha-Oh [[GaoGaiGar]]'' was a direct, deliberate reaction to ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]''.

== Comic Books ==

* ''[[Astro City]].'' In fact, most of [[Kurt Busiek]]'s works involve nuanced reconstruction on some level.

** ''[[Kingdom Come]]'' was a particularly famous comics reconstruction that delivered a rather heavy-handed denouncement of the [[Nineties Anti-Hero]]. Though it should be noted that the story ended up with {{spoiler|''all'' the super-heroes realizing they were flawed, removing their masks, and joining normal human society.}}

** ''[[Justice]]'' is more a reconstruction proper, as it is essentially ''[[Superfriends]]'' without the camp, token characters, and low-budget visuals. Its opening reads like a superhero deconstruction, with the rest of the series reading like a thorough rebuttal.

== Fanfiction ==

* ''[http://alaxr274.deviantart.com/gallery/33810717 Super Milestone Wars] and it's sequel is a reconstruction of the [[Deconstruction Crossover]] trope itself.

** Although not to the extreme as above, ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion: R]]'' might also be seen in this light. Sure, the series is still filled with [[Wangst]] and [[Contemplate Our Navels|navel contemplating]], but Shinji becomes a genuine hero, the characters overall become healthier psychologically, and [[The End of the World as We Know It]] is [[Averted Trope|averted]].

* ''[[Power Rangers GPX]]'' does this with ''[[Super Sentai]]''/''[[Power Rangers]]''. What makes this different is that it starts out parodying/lampshading/just plain making fun of [[Power Rangers]] tropes, begins playing it straight, then drifting towards deconstruction before veering right into Reconstruction in the penultimate chapter.

* ''[[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.

* ''[[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.