12/5/16 Soumya

We started our class off today by watching a few sci-fi trailers.

The first trailer we watched was that of the new Guardians of the Galaxy movie. It started off very serious, with Rocket Raccoon in the background warning about a really powerful bomb. Then it cuts the him telling Groot not to press the button, and after that funny dialogue follows. We discussed how Guardians of the Galaxy itself shifted away from the darker source material to an enjoyable comedy adventure movie, and how for other movies, like certain 90s Batman movies, it didn't work so well. I've yet to watch or read anything of Guardians of the Galaxy, but I definitely plan to, and I appreciate the tonal shift, as I like comedies. I can also imagine that it was a risk on the creators' part, since there are so many people that normally complain for shift from source material.

We then watched The Last of US trailer, a trailer for a zombie videogame, which I actually never knew much about until today. The trailer we watched wasn't that sci-fi itself, but it did hook me in. The girl's singing was haunting, and it set the tone for the post-apocalyptic world. What she said at the end got me excited.

The last trailer we watched was that of Mass Affect Andromeda, another video game. The discussion that came out of this one was about what brings together, or separates, space sci-fi and stuff like Bradbury. Both have room for advanced technology (space obviously). Anything set in space has more room for bending rules, only because physics is so different in space.

The main part of the class was exploring foils in Fahrenheit 451. One group had to come up with ways Clarrise and Mildred were foils, and the other had to do Montag and Beatty (I was in this group). We didn't do much except talk within our own group; half our class time was towards talking about trailers. I think we're going more into this tomorrow.

Now that we're focusing on foil for Fahrenheit 451, I recognize it more often. I mean, I knew what is was before, but I didn't think about it as often. Here's a video about foil examples in popular texts.