I have never blogged before so this feels a little awkward, but I will do my best to write to the best of my abilities.
The machine stops starts off like many Sci fi stories, Dropping you in the middle of a world that leaves you with many questions and does not answer them until later in the story. It describes a world where Humans have stopped doing anything themselves, merely relying on survival through the actions of the Machine. The Machine seems to be some kind of large construct that was built to help make lives easier, but over time, became the hands of man. Doing everything in order to keep its former masters alive. The description provided of the lives of these individual paints a bleak outlook on the way humans have progressed into the future. A progression that can be called a regression.
They have no understanding of what it means to be human and just reading their views and actions, represented by the actions of Vashti, filled me with anger. They believed themselves so sophisticated and civilized when everything they did, did not make any sense and was backwards. This is obviously influenced by my views as a normal semi healthy human being and could be different had I been in their shoes, but the views of Vashti’s son after he begins to recapture what it means to be humans enforces my feelings. Here is a man that began to question his way of living. A man that felt there was more to life than just living in a box. His adventure out into the world filled me with hope for these people, but reading how they became less humans by completing their isolatons and worshipping the hand that feeds them made me lose all hope.
At this point I felt that there was no point for the to live, and as dark as it may sound, death was the only way for them to really be free. This probably sounds psychotic, but once the machine began to fail I hoped that their whole world would end. The only reason I welcomed their death was because of what Kuno said. He saw actual humans living outside their cells. Humans who were actually Humans. This meant that our race would continue to live, without the dependence on a machine and with everything that makes us human. I consider the ending to be a happy ending, even with all the death and chaos that happens at the end. Perhaps a bit dark, but I did enjoy the story, or rather I really liked the end. Reading their reactions as their world fell apart brought me joy.
The movie Metropolis is a silent movie about a great city and the struggle of the workers within. I really enjoyed the music and I’m sure if it was the original soundtrack, I would not have felt the same way. The acting was well done, being able to convey the emotions and at the same time making the movie much darker. I honestly did not finish watching it so I cannot say much about. although I did like the dark nature of it, its something I like in my stories.
