"Science fiction" films.
I think sci fic tv series are getting main stream.
But all too often I see just action films masking as sci fic such as the current star trek incarnation.
I want those space opera and space ship and hard stuff.
I think sci fic tv series are getting main stream.
But all too often I see just action films masking as sci fic such as the current star trek incarnation.
I want those space opera and space ship and hard stuff.
I've been watching The Expanse on SyFy lately and it's quite good! I enjoyed it so much I'm now reading the book series it's based on, and really enjoying that as well. They're slightly different, but both good in their own way.
I really enjoyed the first 3 so was disappointed. Does it get better? Was it a temporary drop?
Thanks!
Things get rather interesting in 5&6 though. Scale gets quite good!
As for the world, there seems to be a lot of nonsense tech such as see-through cell-phones? No way to even hide what you are doing, even crucial characters and VIPs have see-through communication devices, whilst they steal/look at top secret information? Why is AR (using HUGE eyeglass-like devices) reserved only for very special engineers/scientists? Haven't the shows creators heard of Hololens? It's like they took VR/AR and took it back to the 80s. Why do they need to do so many things manually, yet not completely manually e.g. control an antenna, but they can do it remotely they just have to be within 20 meters? How can they open solid metal doors without electricity in zero-g? It feels a bit like Star Trek back in the 60s, before they had any clue about what was to come, except it's 50 years later and they are still using similar ideas without adding anything new. I understand compromises need to be made to adapt to the screen so that viewers can understand the world, but it seems like there are tons of areas where a bit more creativity should be order.
I'm sure that's just for TV viewers to be able to see their screens. It is better than projecting the screen over the face or reflecting it on the glasses of the actors like other TV shows do.
If you don't like it, that is OK, no one is forced to like anything. I don't like The Walking Dead, and it doesn't mean a lot of people is wrong, just that we have different tastes.
But to be fair the show is ages ahead of Star Trek TOS in terms of plausibility.
In fact, the lack of the fantastic technologies indistinguishable from magic that are present in Star Trek is very much part of the appeal. Is what makes the show more real. There's no faster than light space travel for a start. They have to use orbital mechanics to move around. They have to accelerate half of the way and deccelerate the other half. They have to dock very carefully instead of saying 'beam me down'. It is a very welcome change.
Yeah. The "mainstreaming" of sci-fi has been kind of a mixed blessing. We got all the PEW PEW PEW lasers and blinking computer lights but none of the thought-provoking stuff.
God, I want some space opera. Doesn't even have to be "hard" sci-fi that aspires to realism (though it's a bonus)
I liked the first Star Trek reboot movie, but I saw STAR TREK EXTREME or STAR TREK BEYOND or whatever it's called a few weeks ago and it was just atrocious. Just mind-numbing, generic action. Reminded me of the Transformers movies. I love me some giant robot fights, but the Transformers movies are just a big visual mess to me.
I'm inclined to agree with you, but then I also saw a couple of big Hollywood sci-fi movies this winter that were actually thought-provoking.
1. Arrival - adaptation of a really challenging short story. Drops most of the physics stuff, but keeps the linguistics, and the human element. Only adds a little action.
2. Passengers - lots of action, but centers around an ethical conundrum that will give you plenty to talk about afterwards.
Agree on the new Star Trek reboot. It really offers me nothing of what I like about Star Trek.
But I agree, there are some pretty bad films being made under the science fiction genre. I want movies referencing hard science fiction (was wondering the other day what an adaption of 'The Three-Body Problem' might be like) and space operas too (Culture series is dying for a film adaption).
But in terms of science fiction, I think it's great seeing non-space material being made too. Stuff like 'Dark Mirror', 'The Man from Earth', and 'Safety Not Guaranteed' are pretty good indicators to me that good science fiction has gone mainstream.
There was a recent discussion in /r/TheCulture about who Culture fans would like to see direct a movie adaptation of one of the books [1]. I'm dubious a live action film could be successful and at the same time live up to one of the books; it would take some mighty fine screenwriting to not slip into excessive expository minutiae about The Culture, and so much of the attraction of the books to many fans was the reader wasn't repeatedly hit over the head with explanations of the setting.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCulture/comments/62g6mk/if_you_c...
After posting that comment I spent a while wondering which novel would be best to jump start that sort of franchise and agree it's tricky to condense a novel into a movie. A lot of science fiction probably works better as a mini series or full TV series (could be interesting to have Culture take an approach like American Horror Story where each season is a self-contained story)
If only animation automation got sufficiently good and economical enough that long-form (40+ hours) video storytelling was practical for more stories. I sometimes wonder if there is a Sapir-Whorf-style equivalent hypothesis for how we exchange our stories, where the storytelling modality (starting with just the time length our formats allow, but going much further afield with complexity management/expectations, formulation of models, etc.) shapes how our aggregate civilization thinks.
I do think Use of Weapons could make a splendid movie - but it might be tricky hiding the basis for the twist at the end?
Any movie treatment of The Culture runs the constant risk of only getting the glossing highlights reel version that Dune received, and I'd be concerned that the mechanics of the story setting, neat as they are, in a movie would get in the way of telling the real story of Banks' more interesting themes via his incisive commentary delivered by holding up The Culture mirror-like, comparing to our own civilization.
The earliest science fiction I recall set in a post-scarcity environment is "Star Trek: TNG". Granted, the socio-economic impact of replicators is not a focus of the series or the movies, replicators are more of background/world-building device ("Tea, Earl Grey, hot")
Even more important than the sheer existence of the Minds was their egalitarian disposition and relationship to their pan-human co-citizens, and interesting tangentials like the Minds' polite yet firm declination to Sublime. I will sorely miss Banks' weaving of the tales of the proto-Culture, and how the early Minds came about to that position.
Post-scarcity and post-singularity are orthogonal - The Culture is both, Star Trek TNG is post-scarcity only, Rapture of the Nerds[1] (Stross & Doctorow) is post-singularity only.
1. http://craphound.com/rotn/Cory_Doctorow_and_Charles_Stross_-...
Use of Weapons might work too. I can't see Player of Games translating to the big screen well, though. So much of it is about the game itself and the protagonist's thinking around it. And I do think the rest would be hopeless.
It's how they deal with not having the budget to actually put people in a desert so it's rather visibly a desert backdrop at some points, it's why the lighting is often so strong and monochromatic like a theater's lighting, it's why the acting is with all the characters projecting as if they are speaking to an audience rather than in a TV production. At one point they even use a very theatrical special effect based on backlighting through a thin cloth representing a tent to show Paul's hallucinations/thoughts, rather than even a simple bluescreen or conventional image compositing effect.
The effort is interesting, but I'd have to call it ultimately a failure (even if I personally ultimately enjoyed it) as it almost completely failed to speak to its audience. I also think you can't really follow it if you didn't read the books, which I consider a major flaw of an adaptation.