Scanning Darker

The entire movie is a narration told from an unreliable narrator. You think you can trust the narrator, although it might be a little wonky, but then it's revealed that actually he's been hallucinating since Bob is on the drugs. Bob has to be our narrator because we only ever see his side of the story. But when he gets told that he himself is Bob and he is surprised by this, the audience becomes omnipotent since we see Bob as Fred. I remember being angry that Fred is shocked when he gets told and shouting "but you're Bob! You were just watching yourself!". I think here, with the help of Substance D, Fred would take the drug and the hallucinations were so strong that he became another person. Or it might have been the other way around. Maybe Bob became addicted and then created Fred as an alter ego, including all the memories of having an old family. However, since the government Bob works for knows he doesn't have a family, maybe they just picked Bob off the street, gave him some drugs and some memories so that they could control him. Bob goes through testing to make sure he's not on drugs, but looking it back on it, those might have been to ensure he was now addicted. He would have been useless otherwise.
This makes me think about whose story we're actually getting. We see Bob the most, see everything he does, but since he was not the one being targeted in the end and was actually being pushed away, perhaps the story wasn't supposed to be for him. Maybe this was Donna's story. Donna is revealed to be Frank, both seemingly inconsequential characters in Bob and Fred's life, but when they turn out to be one and the same, they cause Bob's downfall. Same thing applies to Barris. Barris was just his annoying friend, and since Bob didn't know he was Fred and vice versa, he didn't know that Barris was actually trying to turn against him. Yet both of these characters were just pawns in Donna's plan. She used Bob to get to Barris, and Barris to try to get to Bob. Although watching Bob had no affect on her plan, she told Fred that he was watching Bob, maybe to try to get him off Barris' back and not raise suspicion since Barris was the one that was feeding them information. At the end, someone talks to Dona about what happened and she tells them that it had to be for the greater good. The movie feels like it ends there. But then we get the scene with Bob (now Bruce) spraying pesticide and finding the blue flowers, Bruce doesn't get the closer he needs, the audience just gets confirmation that Donna's intuition about New Path being the proprietor of Substance D is correct.

Scanning

A Scanner Darkly wasn't so much plot as it was just a series of events. The beginning was so uncomfortable and made me so upset I couldn't handle it. Thinking back on it now, I think it serves as trying to bring us into the drug world. As if we are also on Substance D. Maybe the whole movie is like that.
The end of the story hit you ala Soylent Green. Until my viewing companion remembered the blue flower, I thought everything was just a fever dream from Bob and that he was still on the drug. I was shocked when they told him his name (Bruce) and he just accepted it. In the end of the movie, you realize that Bob isn't the main character (or he might be who knows), but the victim. You think everyone else is dumb and confusing and that Bob seems to be above everyone, but actually he's below them. They used him, and that made me angry.
I don't know what Bob's real name is. It could be Bob or Fred since we don't know if he was actually a cop before he got addicted or if he was always Bob and just became a cop for some reason. Drug reasons. I think the former, since Bob says he didn't want to become addicted, but they showed a scene that might have been Bob's life with a family and stuff.
The scene that wasn't further explained and felt left out to me was when Bob and Donna are talking and some government worker is watching them. I guess since it was later revealed who they both where but that scene just felt off to me.
The most unrealistic aspect of the film, however, is that they thought that seven years into the future they thought everyone would still have flip phones.

Star Stoof

Both Star Wars and Star Trek higlight something really similar...wars. Obiviously. Because wars are interesting, even though we don't like to admit it. Fighting against the bad guys and kicking butt is just our favorite form of entertainment. Whatever, anyways, what I find interesting is how both of these two franchises choose to tackle this topic.

Both came out around the same time (60s-70s) so there wasn't really a big difference in the politics or culture at the time of both of these coming out. Star Trek is very obviously about the Cold War and our beef with Russia, with the whole Klingons and etc, and it's very blatant in the show. The tensions are quite high between the two species, they take sides in a fight that isn't theirs (Proxy Wars...), just the mentioning of a Klingon is enough to set a human off. If this is the case with Star Trek, why can't we see that way in Star Wars? To me at least, it seems more cut and dry. There is a the resistance and the empire and the empire is bad and we have to overthrow them. It isn't so much as a awkward family dinner with people you've never met before yet still have to be cordial or else you'll get in trouble as it is seeing your arch nemesis and being allowed to go completely beserker because you hate eachother. 

I never really know though so sorry if this all sounds like nonsense.
P.S Also what's with the choosing sides deal? Both franchises are good in their own way. :3

Frozen Journey

This is a mess of thoughts I had while I read the story.

I may be looking too much into this, but I think that the ship was partly to blame for messing up Victor. He was in charge of bringing up the memories, but he failed because he didn't know how to deal with scary human emotions that with them. Memories are emotional, which is why we remember them. We remember the emotions that are tied to memories, regardless if the memories are actually accurate. 

For this reason, I don't think the ship was sentient. Although a funny character, it only cares about having to deal with Victor for the next ten years rather than caring about how much he's suffering. In the end, he contacts Martine to travel to the their destination. The ship is probably only does this because it doesn't want to be responsible with the death of a human, because then Asimov's robot rules (I'm assuming this applies). But that doesn't mean sentience, like we see in the I, Robot short stories. Victor was just a really fragile person to begin with, that needed humans to deal with him because only humans have the compassion. 

Overall, I just really pitied Victor. I completely sympathized with what he went through because that would totally be me if I was in that situation. If the story continued, I wonder if Victor could be able to return to (somewhat) normal self, at least one that could tell the differences between reality and fiction. Our own minds can play a pretty convincing part in tricking us, like with illusions and stuff or those dreams that you have where you wake up and get ready for school but then you wake up again and realize you were asleep the whole time. And then you really have to get out of bed now.

2OO1

Well, Ms.Swan was right, definitely the weirdest movie I'd ever seen (and probably will ever see). I tried to explain to my friend the plot, only to realize their was no plot. There were just a lot of stories smooshed together that shared a central theme. If there were to be a 'story', I would have to say it'd be the story of Hal and Dave, since we actually get names from them, making it a more personal connection for the viewer. The movie also ends with them, so I think it's supposed to be the one you think about last, like it's supposed to stay with you.
The whole heavy breathing deal made me so mad, until I realized that it's supposed to be like the monkeys (things) from the beginning, telling us that we are just like we were back then. Vulnerable and afraid, but strong. I read an online thing that talked about how it's supposed to show how machines can be more human than humans. They backed this up with evidence about Hal being the only one that talked about emotions, (like Frank being asleep whilst his family wished him a happy birthday), although I agree to some extent, I don't think that was the whole point. Sometimes humans are driven to do some pretty non-human things. Like when Dave let Frank go so he could get into the station. Although one might argue that there was a way that he could have brought them in, there really wasn't. Dave was forced to do that. Between his life and Frank's already dead self (harsh I know), he had to chose himself. Maybe Hal is supposed to be a human in our most primitive state (like Dave was forced to be after letting go of Frank). He acted impulsively after he heard that Dave and Frank were planning to shut him down, and when Dave does unplug him, he goes back to saying things like his name, and his birthday, some of the first things we learn as children. Maybe this isn't anything just some ideas that were floating around.
Total disclaimer, I didn't really understand the story line of the guy with the space conference and sippy cup food. Maybe I missed something.

The Martian Chronicles

Whenever I start reading a book, I always start imposing my own thoughts on where the book will go. For example, after reading the first couple of stories, I thought the entire book was going to be about different expeditions to Mars in a horror and scifi mesh. It didn't go that way at all, well, nit really. Then, I thought perhaps that Earth would be the new Mars, since all the Earth people were coming to Mars. I thought maybe that some other species would colonize Earth and then take over Mars and see how those Earth people like their planet being taken over. But no. It just ended with everyone dying.

I was very confused on where all the Earth people on Mars went though. I knew that on Earth they all died from war and stuff, which ok fair if the world was going to end my first thought would be world and disease. Ray Bradbury wasn't really creative on that one. Anyways, but the death of the Martian Earth people isn't ever really explained. That bothered me. But I assume that perhaps the Martians drove them out, as confusing as that sounds. Like their memories in some way kind of what I thought was happening in the story about the martian (I think?) that was pretending to be everyone's old dead relative. Or maybe it was just a it didn't really work out kind of thing. 

Also, Captain Wilder went out to freaking Jupiter and Pluto and stuff and he didn't find anything worth something? No civilizations no precious elements? That seemed off. Also, I found their lack of high tech really strange. I know they're telepathic, but they never seem to able to contact or be aware of everyone else on the planet. Mars just felt very small. That's all.

My Thoughts So Far

I started reading some of The Martian Chronicles and honestly I'm hooked. I only stopped reading because I had other homework. It's a page turner for me because it's actually kind of freaky and scary and it's the kind of feeling where I just have to know more. The stories of the different expeditions are frightening, and bothered me. But I couldn't stop. I'm still not far enough to know what has happened to the first expedition, but considering how the two following it turned out, I'm guessing pretty bad. The stories are set in the very early two thousands, so I think it's funny that the author thought we would have achieved sending mankind onto Mars. Maybe this book is what's holding us back.
I think it's interesting how the Martians think. They don't even call it the planet Mars, they call it Tyrr. All their names are just consonants, so it's kinda hard to pronounce it in my head. At one point they say that the children curl up with their spiders and honestly that's terrifying. It also mentions how they feed flowers, which sounds awesome. The Martians speak telepathically, which is how they're able to understand english, which is kind of confusing. When the Earth men land how are they not questioning the fact that they use their mouths to speak? There were also a lot of descriptions of things that I couldn't really wrap my head around because of how strange they sounded.
I think this book helps perpetuate the fear that space wants to kill us, but what if space doesn't really care? In Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim tries to scare the aliens (I cannot remember their names) by telling them that humans should be feared and that they probably destroyed the universe. However the aliens are just like "no actually it was one of us lol sorry", like humans are a joke. Maybe we are a joke, I mean the Martians speak TELEPATHICALLY. That's freaking cool. Science on Earth can't even do that. I definitely believe we're not the only ones in the universe, because come on space is freaking huge, but we envision ourselves as the best. We're so self centered. But the Martians are the same way. They say that life on Earth can't exist because there's too much oxygen. If only we could see everyone else perphaps we wouldn't think this way.