DANGERLION

On F-box:

Fantomex in x-men was raised in a virtual world, might be worth checking out.

I also thought one of the themes could be nature vs nuture. People could be raised in a utopia to try and break a nature that would leave them predisposed to crime or something? Maybe they were kids of bad up bringing and had thier minds wiped and were re-educated.

Just based on the questions and thought process you had in your last post, I would watch the crap out of F-Box if it were an actual movie.

The trick, from my perspective, is how do you put a unique spin or ask a question in a different way than has already been done. You've got a market already flooded with these kinds of ideas. Everything from 1984 to Aeon Flux has taken a crack at social commentary through totalitarian government/false utopia/orderly dystopia.

Can f-box be a euphoric state of mind that these people inhibit when they are in this city state. Think the lotus eaters but in fact is a place that is causing great harm endangeringeverything within the convides of the surrounding planet for it to exist.

@QED Fantomex is cool! I like the idea that F-box is designed to break some kind of undesirable behavior. What if it began as a technological fix to the education problem plaguing the US? It could have been designed as a way to make children smarter. There could be many F-boxes, some owned by the government and used to pacify the population, brainwash those most likely to pose threats to peace, etc. They are prisons that don't seem like prisons. Has anyone seen Joss Whedon's Dollhouse? Or played Fallout3? What if they were underground, or floating in the sky?

@Luke we are a long way away from a watchable movie but I am hopeful the end result is full of badassery! And that is the trick. How to ask an interesting question in an intriguing way? A story is a model of the human mind trying to solve a problem. Characters in a story represent different motivations deployed by the "mind of the story" to solve that problem. So what problem can we address in a relevant way? The more I think about the failing of America's education system, the more I want to dive into that space...

@Cloudy The problem I see with f-box being a euphoric state of mind/drugs is that it seems difficult to depict cinematically... But maybe that can be an aspect of being inside the f-box. Like punishment if you try to escape.

The education system is an interesting topic and one that fits well into a dystopian future/fake utopia.

With the internet and the ability to find the answer to any specific question at the tip of our fingers, I think it's becoming more and more important to teach people how to think correctly, rather than memorizing a bunch of facts. Take World History as a topic. What's more important? Knowing the exact date/time the Magna Carta was signed, or being able to understand the implications of the document and the fundamental shift in social power that the document began?

Maybe in your story, people live in a utopia but are no longer/intentionally not taught how to think critically or question their existences. What happens if that utopia fails or people are forced to adapt to a new situation out of their control? Not only would they face a lack of information about a new situation, they wouldn't have any previous experience or education on how to approach the situation.

Could be interesting.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/11/book-review-mitch-pearlstein.html