Motivation In The Film Birdman

Everybody told me that my senior year was supposed to be a blur but that wasn’t the case for me. The only thing that seemed to go by quickly was the amount of time I had to apply to colleges. It had gotten to the point where I was giving up and had no clue where I wanted to go, the only thing that encouraged me to move forward was when my teacher told me where she thought I should apply to. When I got accepted into the University of West Georgia it was like I was being brought back to life and I found the motivation I needed to keep moving and finish the school year. Riggan Thompson can relate to this in some ways in the film Birdman directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, he plays the main character who is a washed up actor currently battling …show more content…
"How did we end up here? This place is horrible, smells like balls. You had it all. You were a movie star, remember? Now you're about to destroy what's left of your career. We should have done that reality show they offered us." Birdman hints at how good they were before everything went downhill for them, he even tells Riggan what he should’ve done instead so they didn’t end up in such a horrible position. Birdman states “We don’t belong in this shithole.” referring to Broadway and expressing his disgust for Riggan’s participation in the play instead of something bigger and better. Birdman tells him multiple times how much better they were before all of this and how many other opportunities they had to be great again. Birdman compares Riggan to other actors like Ironman and tells him they have twice the talent of him. “I'm nothing. I'm not even here.” Riggan states in the play right before he shoots himself, and while it is only in the play it also applies to how he feels about himself in reality and how he sees himself as …show more content…
In this case Riggan would be our hero and in order for him to make something of himself again, he has to go through a series of downfalls or deaths when it comes to his play. Before his play was able to take off Riggan tried to cancel the preview of the show multiple times like when Ralph got injured and they needed to find another actor and again when Birdman angered him so much that he began to trash his dressing room “Oh, you really fucked up this time. You destroy a genius book with that infantile adaptation.” Another downfall to Riggan is his relationship with his family. “And I just sat there. Sat there thinking that when Sam opened that paper it was going to be Clooney's face on the front page. Not mine. Did you know that Farrah Fawcett died on the same day as Michael Jackson?” Riggan always got so caught up in the fact that he wasn’t big enough for the people around him, he always had to compare himself to better actors when he didn’t need to. His ex-wife says “That's what you always do. You confuse love for admiration.” Because he works so hard trying to impress the people around him in order to make them love him even though he doesn’t need to be a big celebrity to get the people that really mattered in his life. He thinks that he’s working towards gaining their love and respect when in reality he’s just trying to make a name for

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