Planet of the Apes

The second movie that my group watched for the Film Project was Planet of the Apes. I had also seen this movie before but watching it again I noticed more things. The long drawn out scenes reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The apes also reminded me of this movie. In the movie, four astronauts are sent to a space mission that will last a few thousand years. On the voyage, one astronaut dies. When I saw this movie as a kid, the image of her laying there always scared me. The three remaining astronauts land on a planet that does not have much on it. They search all over for life. They soon find a group of primitive humans, although none of them can speak. Apes on horseback come and hunt the humans. One of the astronauts is killed and the other two are captured. In this parallel universe, the humans are the animals and the apes are human-like. Somehow, all of the apes speak English. Taylor is helped by a woman scientist, Zira. Taylor sees that the other astronaut had a lobotomy and he says his famous line "you damn dirt apes"! Zira and her fiance take Taylor and the woman he is with to 'the forbidden city' to try and find a way back home. Taylor finds that the world he is on is, in fact, Earth and he sees the Statue of Liberty and then the movie ends.

I Am Legend

For our science fiction film project, the first movie that our group watched was I Am Legend. I saw this movie when it first came out in theaters and I really liked it. When I watched it again recently I noticed more things then the last time I watched it. I thought that this movie was really scary because it is something that could happen at one point. With all of the news coverage on the new H1N1 vaccinations, I cant help but be reminded of I Am Legend. In the movie, the cure for cancer causes a new virus. The virus transforms people into zombie-vampire creatures called Darkseekers and becomes airborne. Robert Neville is the only man living in New York who is not infected because he is immune. Throughout the movie he looks for a cure by testing on lab rats and occasionally infected humans that he captures. He thought that he was the only person in the world who was not infected but a woman and boy come to him. The woman, Anna, tells him about a colony of people who are not infected. Robert does not believe her. Later, the infected people follow Anna, Robert, and Ethan back to the house. They attacked the house and Robert Neville realized at the last minute what the cure was. He gave the cure to Anna and sacrificed himself to save them. At the end of the movie, Anna and Ethan find the colonly and five them the cure, the immune blood.

Contact

I thought that Carl Sagan's movie Contact was good. This movie reminded me of X-Files because of the government trying to cover up what really happened in the end. The government tried to make Ellie Arroway seem crazy to cover up the fact that she may have actually visited aliens since there was 18 hours of video footage. The end of the movie also reminded me of 2001: A Space Odyssey. In both movies, there were lots of lights flashing and they both went through a worm hole. Also in both movies, I didn't really understand what was going on in the end. I did not understand why the aliens 'downloaded her memories' and showed her the illusion of her father and a beach. I liked that at the end of the movie, the audience is left to decide what they think actually happened. If I were to make this movie, I would choose different actors. I couldn't really take Matthew McConaughey seriously.

Ender's Game: Part II

I really enjoyed the book that we read in class, Ender's Game. In the second half of the book, Ender was given his own army, Dragon Army. His army was undefeated and the school administrators kept changing the rules to make it harder for Ender, but he always found a way. Ender got in a fight with Bonzo and ended up killing him. We later found out that he also killed Stiltson. Not long after this, the military strategists make Ender go to Command School. Before he goes, he stays on earth for a while. While on earth, Graff makes Valentine go to talk to him. At Command School, Ender has to use a 'stimulator' for battle practice. When the stimulator was first introuduced, I thought that it was actually real. As I read furter I saw that I was correct. Ender killed all of the buggers and ended the war. I did not understand why he went into a coma-like state after this. He had killed all of the buggers, but he saved humanity. Peter's plan worked in the end, he had total world domination. Valentine left earth to help start a colony and she convinced Ender to go too. On the colony, Ender found the last bugger queen. This was important because he felt so bad about killing all of them. He heald in his hands the last hope for them. Ender knew that the buggers had changed so he spent the rest of his life trying to find somewhere that they can live in peace. While reading the first half of this book, I thought that it would be really fun to have fake warfare in the zero-gravity rooms. Although, I would not like to have lived like Ender.

Martian Landscapes

I thought these were cool.

A Sound of Thunder

In class we read Ray Bradbury's short story, A Sound of Thunder. This story used the idea of the Butterfly Effect, which correlates to Ian Malcolm and the Chaos Theory in Jurassic Park. The Butterfly Effect is the idea of cause and effect. If a butterfly flaps its wings in one place, there could be a rainstorm in another. If a hunter goes to the past and touches anything, it could completely change the future. In this case, Eckels is taken on a 'hunting safari' to the past which is carefully planned out by the hunting guides. They only kill animals that would have died so that they do not change the future. Eckels is warned of this but still goes off of the path. He is forced to go retreive the bullets from the dinosaur because they can also cause changes in the future. When they return to the future, everything is spelled differently and the facist candidate has won the presidential election. When Eckels went off of the path, he stepped on a butterfly which brings a literal sence to the Butterfly Effect in the story, since the butterfly could not flap its wings, certain events could not happen in the future. We also watched The Simpsons episode, Time and Punishment in class which is similar to the short story we read. Homer travels back in time and keeps touching things so every time he goes back to the future, there is a big change.

The X-Files

I found the X-Files movie we watched in class interesting. In the movie two FBI agents, Mulder and Scully, are trying to figure out what the government is trying to cover up. The beginning of the movie took place thousands of years ago when someone was killed in a cave in Texas by an alien. This happened again when a kid fell into the cave thousands of years later. The alien blood went beneath his skin and crawls up towards his head and his eyes turned black. This is an important element of science fiction that we have seen a lot. The most prominent work that we saw that used eyes as a symbol was 2001: A Space Odyssey because it is both human and alien. In the movie Mulder found a bomb in a building in Texas after receiving a tip of a terrorist attack in the area. While he and Scully evacuate the building, another agent is supposed to disarm it but does not because the bomb was meant to cover up what the government did about the boy and a few firemen who experienced the same fate as the kid. Mulder and Scully have to go to a hearing because the government was trying to blame them for the death of the boy and firemen to cover up what really happened when they were not informed that there was anyone else in the building. Mulder and Scully investigate this and find that the people left in the building had died before the acual explosion. Soon after this, I thought the movie started to get interesting. They had found that the virus was being trasmitted through bees and Scully was infected. She was being heald in Antartica where there were many other people with the alien living and growing inside of them. Mulder and Scully got out of there and the entire 'alien ship' took off and left. The last part was interesting because Scully is skeptical throughout the movie and she is in such a weakened state that she cannot look up to see the space ship.

Ender's Game

So far, I have found the book "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card to be very interesting. This book is hard to put down just like everything else that we have read in Science Fiction class. The book is about Andrew Wiggins (who was given the nickname 'Ender' by his sister Valentine) a 'Third Child' who was sent into space for military training in case of another attack by alien buggers. In the novel, the government only gives families money to send two children through school except for special cases. Ender's sibilings were both geniuses but Peter was too cruel and Valentine was too sensitive, so his parents had a third child in hopes that he would be a perfect mix of both, and he was. I noticed a few things that reminded me of other pieces we studied in Sci-Fi. The rotating space ship reminded me of in 2001: A Space Odyssey when they did the same thing to stimulate gravity. Also, I notesed the usage of insects as an enemy. Although in this novel, these are alien buggers, but it is still a similar theme to short stories we have read like the Sandkings. I look forward to reading the rest of this book.

The Thing

This week in class we watched the sci-fi horror film, "The Thing". I thought this movie was disturbing, but almost comical. The effects looked really fake which made it kind of funny. I found the plot of the movie interesting. The fact that anyone can have a 'thing' living inside them is strange. A similar idea has been used in other pieces of science fiction, and the idea that people can be living among us with super powers like in the television show Heroes. Also when I was a kid I used to think that my parents were aliens and would un-zip their human exterior while I was sleeping, so this movie reminded me of that. The most memorable moment for me in this movie was when the man he was trying to recesitate's stomach opened up like a mouth and bit his arms off. Strange bloddy tenticals were everywhere and then the thing was lit on fire but the head dripped down the table onto the floor, used its tounge to move away from the flame and sprouted legs. I don't think I will ever forget that image. I also liked how the end of the film ended and you don't know what happens to the only two survivors.

Sandkings

I found the story Sandkings to be extremely disturbing, yet impossible to put down. At the beginning of the story I did not understand what was going on as he was naming strange pets, but the story only got stranger. When Wo first explained the Sandkings to Kress I thought that their abilities were interesting, that they create and live in their own complex community and have their own rulers. Their ability to worship and create intricate portraits out of sand on their castles was another thing that I found intersting. After that, the story took a strange turn. Kress became obsessed with creating wars between the Sandkings and became an evil god to them. What he failed to realize was that they hated him. They expressed this hatred in subtle changes in the scupltures of his face. I found it interesting that they changed the likness of his face with the way that they percieved him. They gave him an evil look because he was starving them and killing them. I thought it was stupid of Kress to kill Cath in the first place, but then he became a killing machine. It was disgusting to me that he kept feeding his friends to the Sandkings. It seemed as if the Sandkings were doing to him what he did to them, they left him caged up in the house without any food and forced him to go crazy. In the end, his cruelty was avenged when he was ultimatly killed by what he thought were the weak Sandkings.

Dinomania

In Stephen J. Gould's essay "Dinomania" he discusses the fact the differences between the movie Jurassic Park and the book. In previous essays that we have read by him, he disscussed how Hollywood 'dumbs down' books into movies for their audience. This is a reoccuring theme in this essay. He talks about how Stephen Spielberg gives Ian Malcolm a small role in the movie, and he talks about the chaos theory only a few times throught the film because this Speilberg thought it to be too complex an idea for movie viewers. This dumbs down the movie and changes the plot and the explanation as to why the park failed the way it did. Also at the end of the book, Hammond and Malcolm died and the park was destroyed but in the movie they both lived and the park was left entact. In the book Hammond was a greedy man, who only cared about money and his death was meant to be ironic, being killed by his own creations and what he fought for as being harmless as the scientists said otherwise. In the movie, Hammond made the park for the enjoyment of children and discovery and lived as a hero. In the book Malcolm was a trendy chaotician who gave long complex speeches about the chaos therory. In the movie, Malcolm was annoying and had few lines. A scene was also added where he places a water droplet on Dr. Sattlers hand, a dumbed down explanation of the chaos theory. Another topic that Gould disscussed is how he was thought of as strange as a kid because of an interest in dinosaurs, but now, dinosaurs are popular. I thought that this was an interesting point because I do not understand what brings along 'dinomania' at some periods in time but not others, or any trends for that matter.

2001: A Space Odyssey

I found the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey difficult to watch. The scenes were long and drawn out with little diolauge. It took me awhile to understand that the entire movie showed the evolution of man, which is why the movie started with apes. I thought that after the scene with the apes, and before the strange ending, that the movie was good. It showed typical science fiction elements, like the computer trying to take over and space travel. I liked the simplicity of H.A.L. being just a circle with a red light in the middle. After awhile this design somehow seemed evil with the glowing red that is always watching and the soft, calm, slow-moving voice given to the computer. The concept that a computer can rule everything even to the point of killing people is a scary concept because this could happen in the near future. This idea is also shown in the science fiction movie I, Robot where the supercomputer, V.I.K.I, manipulated the robots to become evil. Once the movie passed the point where Dave 'killed' H.A.L, it became strange. He landed his pod in a fourth dimension and saw himself age until death. Finally, he becomes the 'star child' and is shown as a baby next to earth. While watching the film, I thought this was weird and I did not understand it at all.

Jurassic Park: Book vs. Movie

I enjoyed the book Jurassic Park that we read in class but just like every book that is turned into a movie, the story line is twisted by hollywood movie makers. While I was reading the book I couldn't help but think of the movie the entire time, constantly comparing every scene and how it differentiates from the motion picture. In the novel, the main predator was the velociraptor. However, in the movie Steven Speilberg changed the villan of the story to the tyranosaurous rex. This difference stood out to me the most while comparing the pieces. I could not understand why Speilberg would want to make this change. Is a t-rex simpler for an audience to understand than a velociraptor? Is it scarier? Would chaning the predator from the sleek, vicious and inteligent raptor to a large and powerful t-rex really help the movie in the box office? I still cannot figure this out. It seems that all that movie makers care about is what will improve ticket sales so that they can make more money and they do not care if they change a piece of literature to do so. This is shown in countless movies and it is an issue we have disscussed in class from studying Frankenstein as well as reading essays by Stephen Gould. These issues put aside, I still enjoy both the book and the movie. While the movie keeps the audience captivated by the exciting adventure, action, and science fiction elements the book challanges the audience intellectually while still keeping you on the edge of your seat.

Gould Essay

I agree with Stephen Jay Gould in the article "The Monster's Human Nature". In this article, Gould talks about books that have been made into movies. He believes that the film makers distort the book into their vision. Gould says this began with the movie Frankenstein in 1931. I thought it was strange that the movie makers would go so far to change the story as to even change Victor Frankenstein's name to Henry. The movie did not only drift from the plot, but did not even maintain the same message as Mary Shelley had intended. Movie makers transformed the book into a horror film to grab the attention of viewers. Also the film directors 'dumbed down' the book for the film. Hollywood perceived their audience as stupid and they believed that they would not be able to handle the 'intellectual complexity' in Shelley's original storyline. This idea is also shown in movies that are based on books like in My Sisters Keeper where in the movie they completley changed the end of the book changing the story completly.

"Playing God"

The past few weeks we have been reading and discussing the novel "Jurassic Park" about an island containing genetically recreated dinosaurs. I found it interesting that the scientists in the book have the ability to 'play god' by being able to create anything they desire. This theme reminded me of Frankenstein because in both stories the scientists 'played god' by creating life from something that is not intended to still be living. I also found it interesting that not only could they create new species and bring back extinct species, but that they could also modify existing species. For example, in the novel they mentioned making a certain kind of trout lighter in color to make them easier to catch and gave them certain abilities so that they could swim upstream easier. But, like in Frankenstein, this ability did have its consequences. The fish, just like Hammond's elephant, had strange ailments and did not behave how it was expected. Because of this, I can assume that later in the book something similar will happen on the Island to the dinosaurs just like Ian Malcolm predicted with his chaos theory. The genetic engineering aspect of the book reminded me of this video from The Onion.

Young Frankenstein

This week in class we have been watching "Young Frankenstein", I thought that this movie was one of the funniest movies that I have seen. My favorite character was Igor who's strangely large eyes, moving hunchback, random appearances, and witty comments added even more humor to the movie. One of my favorite parts was when he was breaking into the brain depository and took the 'abby normal' brain since he smashed the other one because he was afraid of his own reflection in the mirror. I liked the fact that Mel Brooks was able to take such a dark, scary story and transform it into a hilarious movie. While many comedys made during the same time period as "Young Frankenstein" I do not find funny because there was a different type of humor then. The great thing about this movie, is that it will always be funny.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

I thought that the movie we watched in class "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" was entertaining, but not for reasons intended by the people who created the movie. The book was intended to have a dark tone scare people and the movie was supposed as well but I did not interpret the movie in that way. I thought the movie was entertaining because it was kind of stupid which made it funny. The first thing that I found humourous was that Dr. Frankenstein was not wearing a shirt in a good portion of the movie for absolutley no reason. I also found it strange and gross when the doctor first gave life to his monster and they were wrestling in the amniotic fluid. I found this part way too drawn out and completley unneccesary. I also found it funny when the monster ripped out Elisabeth's still beating heart and she fell to the ground catching on fire. After Victor revived her it was also funny that she caught on fire a second time, and that the whole house strangely exploded.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

I found the film "The Day the Earth Stood Still" to be a very good movie. The movie reminded me of "The Twilight Zone" with the spooky music, black and white picture, and the science fiction aspects. I also found the 'special effects' funny because they were so fake but it was still interesting to watch. My favorite character in the movie was Gort because of his incredible abilities of melting and tanks. Gort was capable of even destroying the world. I thought it was interesting that they actually made Lock Martin (a 7 foot 7 inch man) stand in the robot suit all day even though he repeatedly passed out from the heat. Another part of the film I found interesting was that everyone smoked. It seems so strange that the doctors in the film were smoking in the hospital. Finally, I thought the language used in the film was funny. One part that stood out to me was when Bobby called Klatu a "real screwball". This comment was intended as a compliment but to me, it doesnt really sound like something that someone would want to be called.

Atomic Cafe

I found the documentary "Atomic Cafe" to have sort of a dark humor. While nuclear war is not something that is considered funny, the way that scientists carried out experiments and the things people in the country were told were funny because of their ignorance. While watching the "Duck and Cover" clip, the fact that people believed that by simply ducking on the ground in a fetal position would protect them from the explosion and radiation was strange. I then realized that if I were living in that time period, it would be comforting to believe that there was something that could be done to protect myself when in reality there was not. I also found it interesting that in the video they were telling people about the dangers of the atomic bomb and to make sure to protect themselves in whatever way possible, but when the government was testing the bombs on soldiers, the generals told them there was no harm and that they had nothing to worry about. They even said that the atomic bomb is one of the most beautiful sights they will ever see. They put the soldiers in trenches dug out from the ground to give them some idea of safety but after the explosion, soldiers stepped out of the trenches and towards the explosion not worrying about radiation because they could not see it and they were told that it would not hurt them. It was strange to me that they said the radiation can only enter through the mouth, nose, and cuts because with more research we have found that this is not the case.