Check out my comments in various Lounge posts about "that movie", but think of sci-fi like this:

[Deja Q]

Sci-fi is supposed to be complex. Any sci-fi storyline that "makes sense" to mass audiences has to be more vapid and brain-dead than Britney Simpson Duff Cyrus Hilton while drunk.


I'm just sorry people prefer visuals and seeing remakes than to suspend disbelief and take a real intellectual risk.

:shrug:

[Orsino]

1. Sci-fi doesn't need to be complex. (minor Trek spoilers)

It is supposed to have some cerebral component, though. At its heart, science fiction is supposed to map out the consequences of scientific or technological change. This should be more than "What if knights had swords that looked like laser beams, and could fly to other planets?"

Take Niven's "There Is a Tide" or "The Hole Man." These are not complicated stories, but they are exciting tales that extrapolate from the necessary what-if: what would it be like to get too uncomfortably close to a black hole? The former is a pure adventure story told at breakneck speed, while the latter is a character study that nearly becomes a whodunit.

The Trek which I presume has set you off has some complexity to it--time travel necessitates that--but focuses on characters trapped in events that unfold rapidly. Along the way, we see some good science (silence in vacuum) up against some ludicrously bad juggling (where the hell is this 1g planet/moon from which one can see Vulcan with the naked eye, and why should Kirk, Spock and Scotty all arrive there within walking distance of one another?).

I, too, would have preferred seeing Abrams loosed on the entire Trekiverse. Enterprise bugged me, a little, by not daring even to give the new vessel a unique name, and being, ultimately, just another starship adventure. The new Battlestar Galactica was a mystery to me, too--why bother making good science fiction constrained by the ridiculous early series? Why not step away and take risks? In all these cases, though, Good Stuff has resulted. Honor is satisfied.

A subsequent Abrams Trek seems inevitable. Perhaps next time he'll be allowed to break away from the goddamned Yet Another Accented Villain Who Gets Blowed Up formula, and we'll see some more chances taken if Paramount permits. I think he's good at taking chances.

[needledriver]

2. Good science?

"we see some good science (silence in vacuum)"

Yeah, right - and fifteen seconds later we see the doors of Nero's ship open up- and hear them rumble. Through the vacuum of space. This movie is so devoid of good science that people weep to see any example of it, however small.

ST-XI is ESFP

Extruded Science Fiction Product

[Orrex]

4. What part of "fiction" don't you understand? :evilgrin:

I mean, if the genre itself is fictional, then I don't see why the "science" needs to be real. As long as the particular universe's "science" is self-consistent, I don't see the problem. Perhaps that makes it "Fantasy" rather than "Science Fiction," but that's really just an academic and nebulous distinction.

Heck, the whole premise is artificial, right down to the choice of lighting and camera angle, so why is it a bigger deal that an engine rumbles or an explosion booms? These are conceits of the genre, and I can think of only one film that defied these conceits, and that was four decades ago.

Consider this: science fiction has been available in both "hard" and "soft" varieties for a long time, and "soft" preceded "hard" by quite a few years, if not decades.

[Orsino]

5. Yes. Good science.

It's in service to good drama, though. That silence is there because it's terrifying, not because it's scientifically accurate. Abrams could have had slam-bang noise all over that sequence, but was aware enough of the science to imagine using it in the effective way that he did.

However, slavish devotion in to accuracy in every scene wouldn't have been as exciting.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. You're a ST:TNG fan and your complain about scientific accuracy?

Huh?

[Orrex]

9. Sounds like his Heisenberg Compensators need a tune-up

[Orrex]

3. I agree with Orsino

Science fiction absolutely doesn't need to be complex. And it's simply elitist to complain that some particular work of science fiction is appealing to the masses.

The very act of going to see a movie involves suspending disbelief, so that complaint doesn't make sense to me.


Can you name an example of a recent film in any genre that required its audience to "take a real intellectual risk?" I'm not saying that such films don't exist, but I'm not sure what that means, exactly, so I'd like some examples.

[Iggo]

6. Hmm...I think I may agree with the OP.

People have been conditioned over recent years to accept an action movie with a spaceship as a science fiction movie.

Is that basically what you're getting at?

[wyldwolf]

8. Last time I considered it, it takes loads of science to build a spaceship...

... and spaceships are still fiction for the most part.

science + fiction = science fiction. :)

[Touchdown]

10. I never considered Star Trek to be "real" sci-fi.

I always saw it as a social studies show. Sci-fi has always been used to tell allegorical stories of the human experience at the time, and aside from Twilight Zone, Star Trek did it best. It was entertaining and gave us a little to think about after the end credits. I don't think it was ever conceived to be hard sci-fi in the Prisoner, Andromeda Strain or 2001 vein. It's more science driven than the total fantasy of Star Wars, but it's never been hard sci-fi. C'mon... seeing a rabbit in a suit late for a party on a planet, or Spock singing some hippy song is supposed to be complex sci-fi?

The closest to hard sci-fi it came to was ST: The Motion Picture, and many find that one a little light on the humanity, in which ST always excelled.

[SheilaT]

11. The problem with most "science fiction" movies

is that they are made by people who know how to make movies, but know very little about science fiction.

They're good at special effects and CGI stuff and lots of action, but apparently have read almost nothing in the field and have no clue that it is above all IMHO a literature of ideas.

I've also long been surprised that more of the classics of science fiction have not been made into movies.

[mzteris]

12. they also know very little about

SCIENCE.

[SheilaT]

13. That too.

I'm constantly made crazy by some huge plausibility gap that will exist in so many movies, things that simply can't happen the way shown. All too often I find myself having arguments with people who think something is possible just because it's shown in a movie. Outrunning an explosion is constantly shown in movies, not possible in real life. Unseatbelted occupants of vehicles surviving a crash with at most a scratch and a bruise is another.

Or how about that silly Jody Foster one a few years back where she was apparently the sole designer of a jumbo jet which had very large spaces where the electronics were, just for her to walk around and foil the bad guys out to get her.

[MrModerate]

14. Errm . . . books and movies are different art forms?

Movies, to be congruent with the essentials of their mode of expression, rely on externally projected vision/action, whereas books (or word-based art, if you will) take place entirely in your head.

What movies do better than other art forms is take you through an emotional arc that is crafted second-by-second by the director, screenwriter, and editor. Books -- which are generally read in irregular, unscheduled segments (often over days or weeks) -- can't do this in the same way. Of necessity, movies are visceral rather than intellectual. They also cost umpty-jillion dollars to produce and quite logically appeal to mass audiences so they can be made at all.

Only snobs think that appealing to a broad section of one's fellow humans is somehow bad.

[wyldwolf]

15. If the great unwashed likes it, it can't be any damn good!

:)