Hi my name is Aaron Straker. I’m studying Liberal Arts: Social Sciences
and Humanities here at Laguardia Community College. Eng 103 is one of the classes I needed
credits for. But I’m still interested in
this class because of the topics for the research paper and the movies we get
to choose. One of my favorite movies is
Alien the slow buildup in space with the Alien on ship killing members one by
one. Except for Ripley and the cat
Jones. I do think that movies can tell
us about the real world. Like in movies
you see the great lengths people go threw to achieve their goals. Which can be seen in real life whether the
goal being good or bad. For example
9/11. But they are things in movies that
aren’t true in real life in certain areas.
Such as super powers in movies.
But they are certain things in real life that will give humans certain special
abilities. Such as not being able to
feel pain but could be caused by some type of illness. Or autism can give someone abilities such as
seeing a city then being able to draw the entire city from meomory. My choice in film is Alien because I’ve seen
it a few times and it’s one of my favorite movies. But this time watching it I’ll have watch it
in a sort of intellectual way instead of seeing a Xenomorph killing members of
the ship.
The alien on the ship would not be your focus of looking at Alien the film. Instead, you would be looking at the portrayal of the robot doctor named Ash -- played by Ian Holm. So if you choose to work on this film, it will be for Research Idea #5 -- Portraying Robots in Film. Actually, in Aliens, there is another robot played by Lance Henriksen and in the most recent Alien-franchise movie, Prometheus, a robot named David played by Michael Fassbender, is also central to the plot. It would be interesting -- but not required -- to see if the portrayal of a robot from the original film in 1979 is different than in the most recent one in 2012. But I would not ask you view two films.
ReplyDeleteLook at the the research questions for Research Paper #5 -- Is the robot helpful or menacing to the human characters? Is the portrayal of artificially intelligent robots of the future threatening to humans or not? Does the film 'choose' humans over robots finally? These are the questions to answer -- combined with research on actual robotics today. What does your film get right or wrong about robots?
If you don't feel like there is enough for you to say on the film, you can choose any of the others listed on the Research Ideas #5 page -- there are some films that will work better and make your research easier. But you are welcome to work on Alien, just not on the horror element there. Hope this helps. --Prof. Dragan
I think it is pretty interesting how older movies can make pretty accurate assumptions on how the "future" will be. that "future being our present. I absolutely love films that have the ability to do that, those films tend to be more critically praised with time. I will have to watch this one!
ReplyDeleteSee my previous comment -- you'll be looking at the robot character Ash, not the alien. --Prof. Dragan
ReplyDelete