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HON 1515-107

This wiki is a class project of HON 1515 107, Games, Puzzles, and Robots, at Appalachian State University.  Students in the course are watching films that use robots as characters in the story, ranging from The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) to Transformers (2007). These films provide a medium through which to observe changes in people's ideas of robotics and advanced technology over the past 80 years.  One of the major goals in the class is to help students improve their writing skills and this wiki is one of the platforms that we are using.

As we watch the films we will answer the following questions:

• What was going on in the world when the film was created and how might that have influenced the content of the film?
• What "special effects" are used in the film and how were they created? What do these special effects say about the technology of the time?
• What do the costumes worn by the characters in the film reveal about people's ideas of the future at the time the film was made?
• What do the robots in the film look like, and what capabilities do they have? What does this tell us about how people imagined the technology of the future?
• What role do the robots play in the film? What does this tell us about society at that time?
• How do people interact with the robots? Are they beneficial or do they cause problems? 

Here is a list of the films that we have in our collection. Each link takes you to a page devoted to that film.  There you will find a synopsis of the film, its rating according to our Rating System, and all the reviews written by members of the class.  Three or four of the reviews will appear on the main page for the film; the others are on a separate page available through a link at the bottom of the main page for the film:

• The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) 1 hour 32 minutes
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 2 hours 20 minutes
• THX 1138 (1971) 1 hour 26 minutes
• The Stepford Wives (1975) 1 hour 55 minutes
• Star Wars Episode 3 (1977) 2 hours 1 minute
• Flash Gordon (1980) 1 hour 58 minutes
• Blade Runner (1982)  1 hour 57 minutes
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) 2 hours 17 minutes 
• Bicentennial Man (1999)  2 hours 12 minutes
• Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001) 2 hours 26 minutes
• Minority Report (2002) 2 hours 25 minutes
• I, Robot (2004) 1 hour 55 minutes
• Transformers (2007) 2 hours 24 minutes

Here is a page that contains links to each class member's comment page. Wiki contributors use these pages to comment on one another's work.