I had to do a doubletake, when I read the following:
At the Venice Film Festival for a special screening of his seminal noir thriller Blade Runner, Sir Ridley said that science fiction films were going the way the Western once had. “There’s nothing original. We’ve seen it all before. Been there. Done it,” he said. Asked to pick out examples, he said: “All of them. Yes, all of them”. #
Strong words, sure. But wrong? I can’t quite disprove his accusations as such. Consider after all Hollywood’s output of sci-fi over the last decade, and the words ‘questionable quality’ comes to mind. Summer blockbusters like Transformers, sure, but not since The Matrix, has there been something which truly boggled the mind. It might be a different story on TV, but even there, a lot of it feels like it’s treading old grown, even if it’s in a slightly new way.
I hear what you’re saying Ridley.
But I also think you’re just old and grumpy, and that you will be proven wrong, any day now.
Any day…
Though, to be fair I think what he means, which is perhaps not how it’s quoted, is that nothing comes close to 2001: A Space Odyssey. And sure, in that he has a point, but then it’s not really a fair comparison, now is it?
You mention 2001, the movie which brought SF to the main stream. Prior to 2001, SF was for kids.
Following that was a myriad of other 2001-alikes that tried the “serious take” on SF. I count Zardoz as one of those. Which was, of course, a miserable (but amusing) failure.
Then there was Star Wars.
Then there was a bunch of bad ones.
The pattern is the same as it is for other movie genre. Ridley might as well have said “The drama is dead. Been there, done it.” Or. “The comedy is dead. Been there, done it”. Etc.
It’s marketing speak for “buy Blade Runner, it’s good”. It’s not actually that insightful. The genre is dead, but only until the next good SF comes around. Ridley doesn’t own good SF, as much as I rate both Alien and BR as the best of the crop.
I guess it doesn’t really fall under the category ‘sci-fi’, but I’m looking quite forward to see, what the Wachowski brothers is up to with that Speed Racer thing.
I read somewhere about using multiple cameras for the background or something like that (I admit I didn’t quite understand it, but it sounded interesting).
I have little to no knowledge of Speed Racer (the cartoon), so I have no expectations to the movie with regards to content, but as for the special effect, I’m quite curious to see if the brothers can do it again.
Hopefully, they will prove Scott wrong.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but every Friday I check to see what’s playing at local theatres just to see if there’s some under the radar sf flick out there that’s going to blow my mind. There never is.
Transformers and it’s ilk are good, fun romps but I crave something different, something deep, something epic.
So in that regard, Ridley is right, we’re all just waiting, but I for one will keep waiting as long as it takes.
What you probably should’ve said was, SciFi was considered a ‘genre’, which is to say, not serious ‘art’.
I agree with the generalization, though I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that. Yes 2001 is pretty much the most grown up sci-fi film ever made, and I love it dearly. But while they may have been slighty more ‘fantastic’, classics like Forbidden Planet, When Worlds Collide, and The Day the Earth Stood Still (not to mention War of the Worlds, but since it’s an adaptation, it doesn’t quite make the cut) were quite progressive, and they in fact lean more in to adult territory than most give them credit for.
Personally, I think A.I. comes about as close to serious sci-fi as anything since 2001.
Zardoz is pretty fucked up :) — I love the, bohemian surely, grade a balls of steel it took to do something as abstract and art-filmish as that. That’s the upside of making something like that, you might not make a good film, but you’ll nonetheless get some respect for trying something new, and that’s something (even if it isn’t money in the bank).
Then there was a bunch of bad ones.
Not fair. Both Alien and Blade Runner were largely born from Star Wars, and they’re surely high up on the sci-fi list, even if Alien is just a very well done creature-feature.
Well, I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, and now I’m just being pedantic, but… Science Fiction hangs itself on high concepts and strong ideas, and that’s often what carries the films. Something that is certainly true for 2001.
But comedy on the other hand isn’t so much idea-driven, and has a tendency to diminish over time (in fact, the only comedy I can think of, which hasn’t diminshed as much, is Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove).
Drama; perhaps. But then, which is the ultimate drama film of all time? :)
From what I’ve read, they’re trying to get rid of depth of field, to reach the same look as comics have, in which both the foreground and background are in sharp focus (which is true for most older, hand-drawn comics, but not necessarily in this, the age of Photoshop).
Yeah, me too.
2001 will always be the high water mark for science fiction. There’s nothing wrong with this. We shouldn’t feel ashamed that, in nearly 40 years, nothing has come close to its genius, because it’s such a great movie. This should be celebrated instead of being used as a stick to beat all other science fiction movies.
Although it is funny that Ridley Scott is complaining about the over-reliance on special effects wizardry in modern sci-fi movies, because 2001 was criticized for the very same thing on its release.
Maybe it’s because science fiction, on its own, is not a very successful (read: profitable) genre, but I’m finding that the most enjoyable and thought-provoking sci-fi movies of the last twenty years have all been low-to-no-budget movies. There’s plenty of science fiction to be explored without needing pixel-perfect renders of giant spaceships. Has Ridley Scott not seen “Primer” (which still blows my mind)? “The Fountain”? The fairly high-budget “Children of Men”?
Hell, can we even count Donnie Darko? Or is that a little too Livejournal-ish?
Adam (and others), well I’ll give Children of Men some chops, though the ‘SciFi’ was more backdrop than it was part of the film. But as such it was a great flick.
Indeed. Now if only I could make Rikke see it :)
Hell, can we even count Donnie Darko? Or is that a little too Livejournal-ish?
Primer was definitely a great take on an ultra low budget way of doing scifi, but while I enjoyed it, it’s little more than a blip on the radar.
And strictly speaking, neither The Fountain, nor Donnie Darko (which we can so count), aren’t science fiction (one is about transcendental meditation, the other is about a mentally ill kid).
You need to enable proper textile asap :). It’s probably your quote comment plugin that disables textile formatting in comment. But I’ll quote as you do.
Make no mistake, I’m not at all discounting all prior SFs than 2001, I dearly enjoyed all those movies you mention (though forbidden planet was a bit of a snooze fest at parts). What I’m actually saying is that it took 2001 to make the genre respectable. Prior to that it was still a good genre with good movies, that were unfairly discounted.
I’ll grant you that: I won’t movie showdown you. I think I even have some dates wrong. Point was that there were good SFs and bad ones.
I’m talking more generally than that. I’m saying “movies aren’t like they used to make’em”, so when I say “comedy is dead” or “drama is dead”, I’m the grumpy old man who prefers Chaplin and Gone with the Wind over Dumb and dumber and Crash. Again, neither genre is “dead”, and yet they are “dead” until something that revives ot for me comes along. Serenity came pretty close to reviving SF, for me. It probably didn’t, for Ridley, so SF is still dead, for Ridley.
Correction: “if the siblings can do it again”. It’s now Lana Wachowski.
Indeed it was my quoter plugin… Grrr, dammit! Oh well.
I shall have you killed.
Oh snap :D
I think you’re all missing something, no offence.
When I read Ridley’s comments, he seems to be actually illustrating an incredibly important point – Hollywood’s take on Sci-Fi is dead. It’s rehash after rehash. There is precious little new, because the Industry isn’t geared towards new.
He says quite clearly that it’s all been done before. And much of the Sci-Fi films released are based, very much, on repeat themes.
It’s rare events like The Matrix that prove as an amazing exception, they are not the rule.
Much of the edgier material has come via independent production that is then distributed main-stream by the big boys, whom are more interested in directly funding things they can take to the bank such as the umpteenth remake and it’s associated sequels.
The Star Wars prequels didn’t get funding because they were Sci-Fi, or because they were Star-Wars per say, rather it’s because that universe is so easily marketed. Even crummy acting didn’t slow down the box office take and much of the funding came from sales of previous material that ironically, happened to be a re-release.
Studio’s are often bent on the sure thing. Sci-Fi is seldom a “sure thing” and as such it’s fighting for funding just as hard as any hard-to-sell art-house flick might be.
The next great Sci-Fi epic has a better chance of coming out of the UK, or one of the number of countries producing great work, as it is the US.
Other than JJ Abram’s upcoming movie, or perhaps the Wachowski driven Speed Racer, there’s not a lot to look forward to — at least genuinely new at any rate.
Not included Children of Men for the reason’s you have already pointed out, I think Sunshine is the best recent original SciFi. It really had something abuot it that 2001 had.
And I think Alien had much more inspiration from Vogt’s Black Destroyer than Star Wars:
— Wikipedia
Although it is heartening to see Babylon 5 make a partial comeback, even if it is direct-to-dvd. :)
I don’t know the exact figures, but I’m fairly certain that Lucas paid for the prequels out of his own pocket (they are after all the most successful indie films ever released…), though he may have had additional funding from Fox, if for nothing else, then marketing.
Let’s all just remember for a second, that Mr. Abrams did in fact direct Mission Impossible 3 (and he was responsible for Alias)… That, and no one has really seen anything, other than buildings being destroyed, and that is, strangely enough, my default pitch for any sci fi movie (“Well, there’s a city, right? And it gets, like, destroyed, right? And that’s when the robots land!”).
I must disagree. While I was largely entertained throughout Sunshine, afterwards it felt as if I had been watching segments from Solaris, Alien and Event Horizon. And the ending?… Ugh.
I wasn’t debating inspirational sources, as such. But Ridley Scott got into science fiction because of Star Wars, as he has stated in numerous interviews. That was merely my point. As for Alien’s inspirational sources, take a look at the (largely horrendous) Planet of the Vampires :)
Well I think it’s a question of the bottomline. And just as it is with games, people don’t want new, they want what they know. And I don’t point fingers, saying that. It’s simply the way we as humans work. We can be coerced into something new if it’s wrapped delicately (The Matrix), or if we’re slowly waned onto it (2001, Blade Runner. Both of which initially sucked at the box-office).
If you want to make big-budget SciFi, you’ve got to make it generally accessible, and that’s the real problem. And that’s also why I personally believe that the next big SciFi ‘thing’, will come out of comics.
It’s cheap to produce, and it retains some of the appeal film has, which regular books do not.
PS: Notice how I don’t mention Babylon 5 :)
> And that’s also why I personally believe that the next big SciFi ‘thing’, will come out of comics.
You only have to look at “300” to see that graphic novels can be brought to life on the silver screen. When was the last time you heard someone shout “This is Sparta!” and immediately thought “oh shit, another remake”.
But to make it happen, you must have the right director. Uwe Boll perhaps would not have been the best man for the job, as an example.
And perhaps we’ll ignore the umpteen other comic book heroes that have fizzled, like Captain America, The Flash, The Mantis and so on, yes? ;)
Like virtually any other source, comics and (graphic) novels have not been immune to hit-and-miss results historically.
> And just as it is with games, people don’t want new, they want what they know.
Perhaps, although whilst people “like” safe, they also “like” a little risk. Indeed other than the porn industry, I would humbly suggest the Sci-Fi demographic is likely to have a greater tendency to accept something new, given it’s a genre that keeps, well, ahead of the times.
Prior to blade runner, Sci-Fi consisted primarily of b-grade Sunday Matinee and shoot-em-up westerns such Star Wars.
2001 was a product of Kubrick, who was one of the most avant-garde and down right balls-to-the-wall directors of his time. Apart from Eyes-Wide-Shut his output was nothing short of stunning. Virtually every film he released, was ground breaking in some way or other.
The Matrix, just by the way, is in many respects just as much a modern-day ass-kicking Alice in Wonderland as it is purely Sci-Fi. The references to it were everywhere.
My point is, there is a lot of stuff that isn’t “brand new” in the sense that it’s written material that hasn’t made the cross over, but it is brand new, as far as Films and Television are concerned.
Be it from comics, graphic novels or fiction, there is an infinite supply of material, so to suggest Sci-Fi is dead, doesn’t make sense in the broader view when so much of it remains untapped.
> PS: Notice how I don’t mention Babylon 5 :)
Well, technically I wouldn’t have noticed if you didn’t draw attention to it. Since you have, I’ll take it as read that you’ve pretty much not followed recent activity. ;)
In the meantime, I wait for someone to do justing to The Foundation
See, it’s not that I hated 300, nor Sin City; both are great popcorn flicks. But as graphic novels; they’re epic, in some ephemeral way that for unknown reasons cannot be put to celluloid.
If you haven’t read either of the two as graphic novels, do yourself a favor and get them. Well, get some of Sin City; it’s quite extensive.
The Flash already had his adaptation :)
I’m not necessarily so sure. I can’t disprove it, but when I consider how many people still hold Aliens as the numbero uno SciFi film of all time; well…
Again, not entirely true. The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, When Worlds Collide, hell, even Soylent Green, are all fairly serious and mostly non-violent films.
I think I just swallowed my tounge! Eyes Wide Shut might be an unfinished film — despite what ‘they’ say — but it is one of the most adult-oriented films I’ve ever seen. Imagine it, a film which treats adult themes in an adult way.
I shall you killed, right next to Joen!
The Matrix is post-modern, so in ways it is a bit of everything (and contains, and I’m not exaggerating, references to just about everything).
See now, this is where it gets a bit hairy. I understand why people often feel that being adapted to film is where everything must eventually end up, if it is to ‘make it’. Film is after all the closest sembleance to reality as we see it, since it is a streaming series of photographs with corresponding sound.
But I’ve got an issue with the idea nonetheless. For some adaptations, the film treatment can work wonders, like Starship Troopers, which, if you ‘get it’, is much more enjoyable than the book, which is mostly one long ‘ah, to live in Trojan times’ propaganda piece.
But for 300, Sin City, V for Vendetta and (probably) Watchment, the books are simply better.
Some of, if not the best teams of writers and aritsts worked on these books, and they are stunning!
So why are we looking to adapt them? I mean, I know why the studios are; they look at these books and see dollarsigns, the way Wile E. Coyote looks at the Roadrunner and sees a chicken.
But why are we looking to adapt them? Don’t they live well enough on the pages of the graphic novels? What do we gain exactly, by seeing them adapted, other than lunch-hour bitching sessions over who was mis-casted and how they mis-fired on the style of Hellboy, completely (which they did).
No, I’m just not ‘atuned’, shall we say, to B5 :)
I’m not sure Sci-Fi films are ‘dead,’ at least, no more than any other genre. The innovation in other genres comes from the independent and low-budget markets. It’s not easy making a low-budget Sci-Fi film.
I think, ‘it’s all been done before’ is a little rich. So have most stories. Westerns died out partly because of bad stories, but also because they didn’t reflect society, we couldn’t connect with them, but there’s still be a few good ones rumbling by. Sci-Fi represents the current trends for modernity and gadgets, it won’t be going away anytime soon.
Film genres are cyclical anyway. Don’t forget that Stargate supposedly was the start of the modern re-birth of Sci-Fi, before that it was considered ‘dead.’
I think you missed my point Michael, I’m not suggesting everything should end up on celluloid, as some graphic novels and comics just won’t work as well. But there is a goodly amount that would work, none-the-less.
The genre still has a lot of fresh ideas and material.
Starship Troopers is a Heinlein classic which captured a great deal of humour from the book which itself is just dripping with situation comedy wrapped in an insanely graphic killer insects theme.
I could well imagine “Friday” being adapted, not to mention a number of the other books, because they have some pretty good story lines and some wickedly inspired black comedy.
Ok, let me put it this way.
Sci-Fi cannot be dead, if it were none of us would have any emotional attachment to the claim and we’d simply not be arguing the point (whatever that turns out to be).
If it were dead, we wouldn’t be wasting time debating it. I’d not be here having a rollicking debate.
I don’t know if you mean to imply that the book itself is humorous; I sure don’t (controversy).
The film on the other hand, is perhaps Paul Verhoeven’s best; dripping with sweet irony, considering the material on which it is based.