Evaluation

My study on my critical essay is on how the Promethean theory and Oedipus theory are represented in science fiction films over the past 40 years, the macro aspect I chose to cover was narrative. The main aspect I was looking for was more the hatred and rebellion against your creator and wanting to kill them rather than sexual acts towards a parent. But the sexual acts are still present in one of the films I have chosen for my critical essay. Both the Promethean theory and Oedipus theory come up in films that are mainly about cloning of a human. Where as in majority of other science fiction films the Promethean theory is heavily present as they rebel against their creator or their leader for the good of humanity. All these aspects would come across in Mise-en-scene but mostly through the narrative and dialogue.

The main aspect in my work I was looking at was the connection between the Greek myths of Prometheus and the Oedipus and how they link in to science fiction films over the past 40 years. What I learned from my research is that in the science fiction films I chose for my study (Womb (UK name Clone) 2010, Starwars original trilogy 1977 - 1983, and Prometheus 2012) all have aspects of the Promethean theory in them as at some point as the protagonist has a hatred for their creator or the creator has a hatred for them. In star was Luke has a hatred for his father who is Darth Vader and wants to kill him to stop the empire taking over as Luke has become one of the rebels. In Prometheus when Doctor Elizabeth saw find the last Engineer on the alien ship and wakes him up the engineer goes on a murderous rampage ripping the head of David and killing various characters including Peter Weyland and in Womb the clone of Thomas started to show signs of hatred towards Rebecca once he has found out that he is a clone of her dead boyfriend. The Oedipus theory show up in two of the three films I looked at Starwars and Womb. It is easier to spot in Womb than it is in starwars. In womb when the Clone Thomas is struggling with who he is and his mother is jealous of his girlfriend the sexual tension breaks the both of them when she tells him that he is a clone of her ex and they have sex and this is shown on screen not just assumed and he impregnates her as the last shot is of her on the beach say’s “thank you for the last gift you ever gave me”. But in starwars it is not as obvious it is more to do with that he falls in love with his sister and kisses his sister with out knowing they are related, this links in to the story of Oedipus by the fact that he married his both mother with out knowing that she was his mother as he was adopted.

The way I showed the aspects of Promethean and Oedipus theory through my course work was through the use of dialogue in my script I used this to build the back-story and have all the information the Protagonist Annabel being killed then being reborn in a cloned form. Admittedly my script does not show any aspects of the Oedipus complex apart from the character that is killed at the end of my script the only link to the story of Oedipus is that the character that is killed by Annabel had a relationship with her at some point. The way I showed the aspects of Promethean and Oedipus through my key frames was through the narrative on there own you can work out a vague story but they make a lot more sense when they are put together with the script. I tried to keep my photos minimalistic by not having two many things going on in the background it is mainly just the actor’s as I wanted the focus to be on the actors rather than the things happening around the actors.

In my personal opinion there are a lot of things that I would do differently next time. For example I would make a time management plan and give myself deadline rather, than going with the teachers deadline and leaving my work till a few days before they need it in, if I managed my time better I could get them to mark my work and improve on points I have missed out on. I believe that my 20 key frames could have been better than they are as well due to the same fact time management, I could have used a better camera for clearer images and also I could have used Photoshop to a better standard then I did. Admittedly if I had a bigger budget I would have liked to turn my 20 key frames in to 5 minuet short film following my script as I personally think that would have worked quite well, the only difficulty would be getting the science fiction aspect across well enough to make it look good. The one piece of work out of the creative artifact that I am happy with is my script I believe that it has quite a good story line and drives the narrative forward and at a good standard. I also believe that my script heavily follows the Promethean theory. If I spent more time and research in to the Oedipus theory I believe that in my script I could have added more aspects of it to my script.

Overall I think my creative artifact could have been a lot more successful if I put more work and research in to it. But also I think if I picked a different study to do rather than the one I did. I found it very difficult to find any resources that related to the Oedipus and Promethean theory in film where as if I did a research on the male gaze it would have been easier to find it. But the main reason I struggled was down to my self and my lack of organizational skills.