The reason I showed Cocoon, as I said in class, was to help you think about what sort of things can be in sci-fi with limited special effects. Don't get me wrong, Cocoon does have glowing aliens and a space ship and what not but the core of the story is about human emotions related to age and love and lose and mortality.
So, in your comment on this post, please think about the use of special effects in this film by (1) making a list of all the elements in this film that you feel high school students could not reasonably produce and then (2) suggest how you might rewrite the film to get around those things while still keeping the core of the story intact.Then, please think about how one of the purposes of many sci-fi stories is to ask questions about society and technology and humanity. What questions does this film explore about the human experience? In what ways does the film act as a cautionary tale regarding the course of human society?
The things that couldn't be done at the school:
ReplyDeleteAnything that had to do with the aliens.
To make it possible to do:
Don't show the space ship and make the aliens something other than light creatures. You could easily tell the same story with any other type of alien. They could be aliens that slowly rot away, some sort of alien that looked liked humans but spoke strangely, something other than weird light things.
I do agree that the purpose of science fiction is to raise questions about society,(Planet of the Apes did that beautifully), but I don't think that this film did that. It almost seems like the film was made to be made. There was no character growth or anything. These characters learned nothing. Everything that happens we knew would happen at the beginning of the movie.
Carlos says that this film does not raise questions about society. Does everyone agree? Does anyone disagree? Why?
ReplyDeleteIt took me a couple of days to watch Cocoon since I left the day we watched it. But I liked it. I loved the characters in the movie and I thought they were the best part. I'm pretty sure we could do this in school but we'd have to change a lot of things. Like, don't show the spaceship unless you want it to be a really cheesy Sci-Fi movie with a spaceship on a stick or string. I think that would pretty awesome.
ReplyDeleteYou'd have to change the design of the aliens, probably to something more simple.
you'd have to change the setting from a retirement home to a school. I don't know how we would be able to do that but I'm pretty sure we would find a way.
-Koren
I think this could totally work at this school, for example: instead of showing the aliens full on, (the scene where she takes off her skin, she have her back turned to him and have the light just shine in front of her.) and instead of showing the spaceship, we could just have bright lights flashing on them.
ReplyDeleteI agree that SciFi is supposed to bring up questions about society and humanity. but I really didn't see any messages about any of these things. But maybe I just didn't see it. but i didn't see it so....