The Sci-Fi Movie Stigma 572
An anonymous reader writes "MSN has up an article that explores why Sci-Fi is associated with cheesy Space-Operas and children's movies, and cerebral Sci-Fi films don't make it unless they are adulterated into 'Action' flicks. The piece covers upcoming projects like 'The Last Mizmey' and 'Next', and points the finger at the ultimate culprit: George Lucas. 'When Lucas made Star Wars in 1977, he was paying tribute to a subgenre of science fiction that he loved dearly as a boy: the space opera. But although the breathless serial adventures of Flash Gordon and his ilk had their pleasures, they were often treated with tolerance, at best, by more serious science-fiction writers and readers. Nevertheless, the success of Star Wars changed the movie industry's perception of science fiction forever. As much as we love Star Wars for what it is, it nearly killed Hollywood's willingness to fund science-fiction movies that actually said something about the human condition.'"
Solaris (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No (Score:2, Interesting)
Might this yet change (Re: Ender's Game)? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bladerunner (Score:4, Interesting)
And don't just look at Hollywood. There's some great Science Fiction coming out of Japan. Such as Ghost in the Shell.
Human condition? (Score:2, Interesting)
It might be hip or even fun to blame George Lucas for ruining science fiction films, but this is just a big mistake. Hollywood was unwilling to any science fiction before George Lucas, so honestly, some sci-fi, even overly "opera-ish" is better than none. Honestly, this isn't a trend that sticks to science fiction. Look how many books they've screwed up in Hollywood.
Three things (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Related to #1, thoughtful drama is the province of television now. Movies (and this is where Lucas and Spielberg are responsible) are about explosions.
3) Realistically, how good, or how thoughtful, a movie was 2001, anyway? It's as overblown and boring as Heinlein novels that the sci-fi fanboys also insist are Really Important.
Re:Solaris (Score:3, Interesting)
Brainwave, The Caves of Steel, Blood Music, Queen of Angels, The Demolished Man, Fahrenheit 451, Childhood's End, Camp Concentration, Permutation City, Beggars in Spain, and a thousand other novels. There are some relatively legitimate reasons why you would want to set it in space, though: you want to depict a possible future, and you believe that having people in space will be an important part of that future, or you believe that, for things like first contact, colonization, or isolation stories, that space is the best place to depict those ideas.
catering to the audience (Score:4, Interesting)
The only reason the studioes release anything else is because they make money on DVD sales and rentals downstream. You want more sci-fi? Buy every battlestar galacta, star trek, star wars, dr. who, dune, LoTR, etc DVD. Individually they are about the same as a movie ticket + some popcorn; it will look awesome on your widescreen LCD; and it sends the message that sci-fi will be supported by the audience. (Star Wars actually went against this model because it took so long to get ep 1-3 onto DVD)
Not confined to movies (Score:5, Interesting)
Mrs. Carroll, my English teacher in high school, was unconvinced that science fiction was on a par with classic literature, even though I trotted out examples like "Farenheit 451", "Foundation", and "Childhood's End". I got very sick of Shakespeare, Henry James, and that lot as they were continuously pounded into my head as "great writing." And now that I am partner in a company that releases a science fiction journal, I can look back and laugh. If there's any problem with science fiction right now it's the scarcity of good writers; I have to say I don't read as much current work as I did when I was kid, when I absorbed Clarke, Asimov, Heilein, Niven, Pournelle, etc.
Re:I partially blame... (Score:1, Interesting)
Meanwhile, George Lucas can't even stop screwing up the stuff he did right the first time! Likewise the rest of the movie industry (Planet of the Apes, Time Machine anyone?)
Re:No (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:'Twas always this way (Score:3, Interesting)
(1) It had a different title
(2) It didn't have a character named Susan Calvin
or
(1) Susan Calvin was the main hero and actually solved the problems
(2) The solution was through thought and insight, not action and computer virii
Re:Not confined to movies (Score:3, Interesting)
But I agree that the problem now is that SciFi just doesn't have any superstars left. Asimov was, at his best, one of the best writers out there (though ironically he could also be one of the worst), and the Foundation series could make some pretty good movies, in the right hands. The Golden Age writers were an incredible bunch.
Re:'Twas always this way (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Will Smith vs. killer robots. Explosions and stuff! Ooh, and product placement. He can do a rap number - perfect! Ha ha, look at the funny rapping black man.
vs.
2. People thinking out their problems and using their brains. Oh, and the lead character is a woman... and she's the world's smartest person and leading expert on robotics...
But it wasn't just "I, Robot."
Look at The Postman or Starship Troopers. (These three are the best (worst?) examples of butchery I can think of right now.) I haven't seen I, Robot. (I've heard that it would remind me of Vanilla Sky - GIVE ME MY TIME BACK!)
You might be thinking, "Wait, what? The Postman was scifi?" Yeah, it was. It was a pretty good book.
Don't get me started on ST.
Gah.
Re:Solaris (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not just Sci-Fi channel; it's the market, too (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago, some friends of mine and I pitched the Sci-Fi channel, and I heard directly from a very highly-placed executive that the network was actually making a conscious effort to move away from SF programming and do more "Scare Tactics" style programming in an effort to capture portions of the SpikeTV market.
I foolishly (for the goal of selling a show to them) observed that running away from the very thing that made the network popular -- and was in the damn name, by the way -- probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but the geek in me overpowered the hopeful businessman. Oh well.
Those craptacular movies you're referring to (I did two of them: Python and Deep Core) used to go directly to video in the USA, while also being sold to foreign markets to make back money for their investors. However, with the advent of basic cable and channels like Sci-Fi, they usually are produced by, and air on one of those stations (think Lifetime, TNT, etc.) before heading off to the bargain rack at the car wash.
One of the points made in TFA is that intelligent movies have been replaced with action movies, and thoughtful plots have been replaced with explosions and spectacle. One of the reasons I tend to agree with the parent on Sci-Fi being part of the problem here is that they still translate these movies into several different languages, and distribute them all over the world; an explosion and a scantily-clad starlet are essentially the same in any language or culture, so it's easier to sell those films (to Sci-Fi and to the foreign markets) when they're simplistic, "four-color" 90-minute packages, instead of complex 2001-esque masterpieces.
Re:Deep impact, The Day After Tomorrow (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's not just Sci-Fi channel; it's the market, (Score:3, Interesting)
I honestly am starting to feel that the problem is cyclic; that the "dumbing down" of science fiction in general, and the fear exhibited by investors when those "terrible words" are used result in the inevitvable; people start hiding science fiction behind other plot devices or other means, essentially slipping sci-fi in through the back door. Although excellent in its own right, this is exemplified by the current Battlestar Galactica, which is only sci-fi in the extent that the backdrop is in space; the rest is pretty rote drama. This results in a lot of action movies and TV shows that portray a bad idea of what science fiction should really be to the young. Those young then take this flawed idea of what is science fiction, create a book / TV show / movie and create what they THINK is science fiction without actually creating anything scientific.
What does it say about the current science fiction book market that the last four books I read and enjoyed were (in order) the last three of the original Dune books (not the prequels), and "The Light of Other Days" by Arthur C Clarke; an old-school writer? Everything else I've picked up has been terrible.
What you encountered with sci-fi was further evidence that the market is indeed the problem, but that market's problem extends far beyond TV and movies. By the way, I do know what you're talking about; I've been on your side of the table a few times with Sci Fi and investors. Selling a good concept is hard, even when the stuff's good. Sci Fi particularly don't want to know. If they can't make it cheap and sell advertising high, hang the "Stargate" brand on it or cater to the lowest common denominator then they don't want to know. It's a pity because they HAVE produced some good stuff. Unfortunately they tend to be the exception rather than the rule these days.
And just FYI, a little pandering to our "celeb" here... I'm probably one of the few people who really enjoyed Mr. Stitch. I think I've got it on a VHS tape around here somewhere
Re:'Twas always this way (Score:5, Interesting)
It may have also been his way of getting out of a contract for writing so called 'juveniles' since it was the last he wrote for that genre. (I seem to recall reading somewhere that he intentionally wrote a book that was good fiction and technically fit the genre, but was too controversial for them to publish.)
Now when you get down to it, the current administration's off and on proposal for mandatory 'civil service', which can include military service, is a trend toward what Heinlein brought up in Starship Troopers.
As a long time Heinlein fan, I watched the movie and listened to the commentary, wondering if the director did much more than skim the book. I also had my doubts that he had read very much Heinlein, especially the stuff after 1959, when Starship Troopers was published.
As with many Hollywood productions of SF classics, I would have to give Starship Troopers a D minus with regards to how well the movie matched the book. While it did cover the suffrage through military service concept, with an iron hand, it missed a lot of the interesting things like the fighting suits. (Budget restrictions, according to the director.)
Primer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:'Twas always this way (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:'Twas always this way (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:'Twas always this way (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps you are simply asking to much, this is Slashdot after all, but in response to your selected quote from the article I would offer the explanation that the movie business, like the music business and indeed the rest of popular entertainment, has become increasingly focused on the blockbuster or "hit" concept where an extremely large budget, and therefore risky (financially) film, has to appeal to as many people as possible in order to generate the types of box office returns that cover the costs of the film AND the substantial risk premiums that the studio accepted in order to make the film in the first place.
It is therefore not surprising that many films of the science fiction genre in recent years have relied upon the simple good vs evil archetypes, zany antics in the "Space Balls" and "Galaxy Quest" style (which can be entertaining, but only to a point), and less complex characters with less development and more action. It is very difficult to avoid this temptation when producing a science fiction film. Even the Wachowski brothers found it difficult to resist dumbing down the Matrix, especially in the second and third films, to make time for more action and stunts, culminating in the completely over the top final showdown between Neo and Smith. Although, the Matrix series at least had some substance beneath the veneer where so many sci-fi films have none whatsoever.
Having said all of this there have been some interesting efforts in recent years, Primer [wikipedia.org] comes to mind, which actually mounted a serious challenge to the space opera stereotype, but they are few and far between. It seems that the more sophisticated amongst us will have to be satisfied with novels, independent films, some television series (the remake of Battlestar Galactica isn't bad), and perhaps computer games until the tyranny of the blockbuster and the pigeon hole of the space opera style is broken, but if history is any indication then we will have a long time to wait. I am not going to hold my breath.
Re:'Twas always this way (Score:2, Interesting)
Because Asimov never wrote a short story called 'I, Robot'
The title comes from a collection of nine short stories (which were later re-published as part of 'The Complete Robot'). They covered the rising trend of humans to delegate their leadership to humans, and even featured a story about an android world president. This theme was explored repeatedly by Asimov, who proposed through a sequence of novels that forcing robots to not allow harm to come to humans would ultimately cause significant harm to humanity; it would isolate humans from danger, and also risk. By isolating humans from risk, it would remove our greatest achievements. Societies which relied on Robots in Asimov's books invariably decayed or stagnated.
The film, 'I, Robot' managed to capture the essence of this, and so was fairly true to the original Asimov. Some of Will Smith's character's traits were very similar to Elijah Bailey, the central character to three of Asimov's books who is referenced in several others. The film was not based directly on any of Asimov's stories, but it did incorporate a lot of his ideas.
Re:Three things (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:'Twas always this way (Score:3, Interesting)
While the movie was produced in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and released as such on Laserdisc, the DVD release was changed to a 1.33:1 ratio using pan and scan, which is considered detrimental by movie audiences. As the LD (packaged with Silent Running) is the only high-quality version of this movie, it fetches high prices on auction sites such as eBay. Unofficial 2.35:1 ratio DVDs also exist, having been copied from the Laserdisc version by fans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus:_The_Forbin
Please send angry emails + snail mail to Universal. They botched the DVD release (no widescreen) and couldn't even spell the title of the movie properly on the cover.