A spaceship is built and Jodie Foster ends up traveling on it. Her destination and greeting party is a surprise. Waiting for her on a ride wilder than anything at Cedar Point is not a welcoming party composed of little green men but rather her long departed father. Obviously, on one level, the film is a type of space science fiction adventure film not unlike a number we've seen before. As students of film know, genre is one of the major methods a film uses to communicate in ways usually outside dialogue and action.
Place becomes a major definer of genre as well as objects within place.
The audience knows from the past experience of seeing a white hat on good cowboys in other films. And besides, white always means good and black means bad. For the most part, films for both marketing and communication purposes attempt to stay within the particular boundaries of a genre. Putting a tried and true symbolic system on your side makes the job a lot easier, and usually, the message a lot clearer. The audience gets its cues from the genre and they feel in a familiar territory they have been to before.