Has Science Fiction become a Taboo subject in Hollywood?

[DeadmeatDiggory]

It is rather baffling to me, but in recent years I've noticed that the idea of science fiction has become almost a taboo term in Hollywood. It's like one day, someone just decided that no one likes sci-fi anymore, and they started to shy away from it. Or at the very least, the term: Sci-Fi.

Take Battlestar Galactica and Caprica for starters. In some interviews I've seen from the Powers That Be, it feels like it would be easier to draw blood from a stone than to have them admit that their shows (which take place in outer space, with robots and an alien human race) are actaully sci-fi. If memory serves, they promoted Caprica as a "Family Drama".

And what about Avatar. That film was crammed with everything science fiction you could imagine, and yet I can't recall hearing anyone call it a sci-fi film. A 3D action adventure, sure, but not sci-fi.

And the same goes for the new V, a show with aliens and spaceships, that seems to be doing its best to know draw attention to them.

Hell, even the Sci-Fi Channel doesn't want people to think of them as SyFy anymore.

So when exactly did idea of Science Fiction became such an embrassment for Hollywood, a dirty little secret that they would rather sweep under the rug than have people aknowledge? And why? Avatar makes near 2 billions dollars, so clearly people are not turned off from science fiction

 

[Christopher]

^You think this is recent? The attitude you're describing has been around for generations and was even worse in the past. SF has had a mass-media reputation as childish, cheesy, or not worth taking seriously since at least the 1950s, probably even earlier.

And it's a common misperception that Syfy's name change was intended to distance itself from science fiction. Rather, it was done for marketing reasons, because "sci-fi" is a generic term that can't be trademarked.

 

[milo bloom]

If I had the time, I would post that picture of that chubster in the Tron costume as a reply. It's not the material, it's the fans. (says the dork with the Luke Skywalker avatar).

 

[Solariabsg25]

^You think this is recent? The attitude you're describing has been around for generations and was even worse in the past. SF has had a mass-media reputation as childish, cheesy, or not worth taking seriously since at least the 1950s, probably even earlier.

And it's a common misperception that Syfy's name change was intended to distance itself from science fiction. Rather, it was done for marketing reasons, because "sci-fi" is a generic term that can't be trademarked.

It has been the same way for decades.
How many studios turned down Lucas when he was trying to get Star Wars made?

Larson didn't get anyone to take Battlestar seriously til Star Wars was a success .

Hell, in the 80's the BBC deliberately set up Doctor Who to fail!

 

[Christopher]

Part of the problem is that the mass media, and by extension much of the public, have a rather dumbed-down notion of what "science fiction" means, thanks to the preponderance of B-movies and lowbrow productions that have largely characterized the genre in film and television. When SeaQuest DSV premiered, its producers insisted, "We're not doing science fiction, we're doing a plausible extrapolation of real scientific and social trends into the future" -- which is a very good definition of what science fiction actually is, and indeed the first season was one of the more credible SF series ever made for television. But then in the second season, they brought in new producers who said, "Okay, now we're going to begin doing science fiction," and what they did was the lamest, stupidest fantasy crap you can imagine.

In prose, science fiction is an intellectual, sophisticated genre, a literature of ideas. Heck, it's got "science" in its name, so that should say something about its level of intelligence and complexity. But in film and television, "sci-fi" has largely been perceived as something lowbrow, silly, fanciful, frivolous, etc. It's a prejudice that's been around for decades, and for every major work that fights that perception, like the original Star Trek or 2001, there's another that reinforces it, like Star Wars. (To his credit, George Lucas has never claimed that Star Wars is science fiction; in his terms, it's space fantasy in the vein of Flash Gordon or John Carter of Mars. But because it has SF trappings, the public came to perceive it as the exemplar of what "sci-fi" meant, which just worsened the public misunderstanding of the genre.)

 

[Thestral]

Hollywood can piss and moan and maybe nobody uses the words "science fiction" but has there been a better time to be a fan of sci-fi/fantasy in movies?

 

[Davros]

And what about Avatar. That film was crammed with everything science fiction you could imagine, and yet I can't recall hearing anyone call it a sci-fi film. A 3D action adventure, sure, but not sci-fi.

Who said it wasn't Sci Fi?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

What I find interesting is that sci fi dominates movies, yet can hardly survive on TV. I suppose it's because sci fi lends itself to insane mindless visual spectacle but it's too hard to actually come up with a sci fi story that takes advantage of TV's strengths of ongoing plot, long-term development of themes and ideas, and character-based writing.

Which of course is lunacy in the case of sci fi, which should be about ideas and should be perfect for TV. GAH!

And what about Avatar. That film was crammed with everything science fiction you could imagine, and yet I can't recall hearing anyone call it a sci-fi film. A 3D action adventure, sure, but not sci-fi.

Who said it wasn't Sci Fi?

Avatar is sci fi as Hollywood defines sci fi. Let's not start in with the nitpicking. It's boring.

 

[RoJoHen]

And what about Avatar. That film was crammed with everything science fiction you could imagine, and yet I can't recall hearing anyone call it a sci-fi film. A 3D action adventure, sure, but not sci-fi.

Who said it wasn't Sci Fi?

He means that they were avoiding using the term "sci-fi" to describe it, not that they were denying that it was a science fiction movie. It was obviously science fiction, but Hollywood felt more comfortable focusing on other aspects of it.

 

[RoJoHen]

Which of course is lunacy in the case of sci fi, which should be about ideas and should be perfect for TV. GAH!

Any genre is perfect for any medium. Some are just easier than others. In the cases of science fiction and fantasy, one of the most common obstacles is building a believable world. And even if you can do that, you then have to get someone to pay for your believable world.

With many other genres, you can just use the existing world as a backdrop, which makes it both easier and cheaper to make.

And then there are reality shows. You don't even need to create characters for the world. You just throw a bunch of people in a house and watch them go!

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Any genre is perfect for any medium.

No, movies are better for simplistic stories, visceral impact and visual spectacle. TV shows are better for ongoing plotlines and in-depth characterization or alternatively for stories that repeat the same plotline over and over to put the audience in a sophorific state week after week.

So movies work well with brainless cop shows and brainless sci fi that depends heavily on visual impact and action. But you won't see, for instance, the police procedural format in movies because that's all about giving the audience the same drug every week to help them get to sleep through the familiar sameness of it all. You also won't see a whole lot of Sopranos-style sophisticated ongoing storytelling because that would require a movie series of amazing length, with dozens of sequels, which nobody is crazy enough to commit to.

The medium determines the message, and also limits what type of content can be effectively delivered.

 

[RoJoHen]

Any genre is perfect for any medium.

No, movies are better for simplistic stories, visceral impact and visual spectacle. TV shows are better for ongoing plotlines and in-depth characterization or alternatively for stories that repeat the same plotline over and over to put the audience in a sophorific state week after week.

So movies work well with brainless cop shows and brainless sci fi that depends heavily on visual impact and action. But you won't see, for instance, the police procedural format in movies because that's all about giving the audience the same drug every week to help them get to sleep through the familiar sameness of it all. You also won't see a whole lot of Sopranos-style sophisticated ongoing storytelling because that would require a movie series of amazing length, with dozens of sequels, which nobody is crazy enough to commit to.

But a brainless cop show and an on-going police procedural are still the in same genre. The length or complexity of a story has nothing to do with the genre it belongs to.

Battlestar Galactica had a long, complicated story that spanned several years. Armageddon was a one-off action movie set in space. They are still both science fiction. One isn't less science fiction than the other because of the length of the story.

Genre is not the same as Format.

 

[Kelso]

A woman recently told me that she doesn't mind science fiction in small doses (about two hours), but it's just too silly to put up with it week after week in a television series. I suspect that a lot of ordinary people feel similarly.

 

[Bonzo the Fifth]

Hollywood has a love/hate relationship with Science Fiction. They don't take the genre seriously, but a rather large fraction of big budget blockbusters typically have a lot of SF trappings to them, and some of the better known directors have a distinctive SF bent to them, but, as mentioned, movies are a bit unwieldy for SF. Great if you're going for shallow spectacle, but terrible for the more probing, socially relevant worldbuilding and commentary that the genre is better known for in it's more mature form.

Television is a much better fit for the more highbrow concepts of SF, but it's hampered by the lack of spectacle due to it's lesser budget and inferior FX... not necessarily a bad thing, but as most people associate SF with spectacle, it can be a bit of a culture shock when such things are usually doled out with a balls-to-the-wall action sequence during sweeps and long stretches of convoluted narrative in between.

Obviously a balance can be achieved, as some series have proven, but it's not easy, and it's always an uphill battle fighting the general perception.

Oddly enough, probably the best genre equivalent to this is the much despised 'chick flick', in that, the genre makes mad money for Hollywood, but rarely gets a fair shake from the general audience, even when it's done well.

 

[Admiral_Young]

The Academy certainly would seem to have this mindset when it comes to Oscar time. It will be interesting to see how many Oscars "Inception" takes or if the voters really truly understand what a brilliant film it was.

 

[Admiral_Young]

The Academy certainly would seem to have this mindset when it comes to Oscar time. It will be interesting to see how many Oscars "Inception" takes or if the voters really truly understand what a brilliant film it was.

 

[Deckerd]

The Academy certainly would seem to have this mindset when it comes to Oscar time. It will be interesting to see how many Oscars "Inception" takes or if the voters really truly understand what a brilliant film it was.

I don't think anyone needs to be particularly perspicacious to appreciate whether a film is 'brilliant' or not. All these things boil down to personal taste, even for film critics, although they would rather cut off an arm than admit it.

 

[Christopher]

A woman recently told me that she doesn't mind science fiction in small doses (about two hours), but it's just too silly to put up with it week after week in a television series. I suspect that a lot of ordinary people feel similarly.

The problem is that people forget the corrolary of Sturgeon's Law. Ninety percent of everything is crud, but that means that ten percent of everything is good. Too many people see that the majority of works produced in a particular genre are silly or bad, and so they blame the genre, rather than recognizing that the ratio of bad to good is no worse in that genre than in any other.

On the other hand, historically, the average level of sophistication in filmed and televised SF has tended to be somewhat lower than that in prose SF. The sad thing is that so many people don't realize there is such a thing as prose science fiction. They hear "science fiction" and they think exclusively of movies and TV shows, even though those represent just the narrowest fragment of the range and content of science fiction as a genre. So most people are simply unaware of the true potential and power of the genre.

 

[Greg Cox]

In prose, science fiction is an intellectual, sophisticated genre, a literature of ideas. Heck, it's got "science" in its name, so that should say something about its level of intelligence and complexity. But in film and television, "sci-fi" has largely been perceived as something lowbrow, silly, fanciful, frivolous, etc. .

Actually, that prejudice exists in prose as well. Every few years, there's some new highbrow novel, involving science fictional ideas, that that the author and/or publisher or critics fall over themselves to insist isn't science fiction. It may involve robots or clones or time-travel, but they take pains to present it as a real, serious novel, not science fiction--because sf is, by definition, that juvenile BUCK ROGERS stuff, right?

"Don't be confused by the aliens and spaceships. This isn't science fiction. It's serious literature."

As though the terms are mutually exclusive.

Thankfully, this attitude isn't as common as it used to be, but it's still out there in some publishing circles.

 

[FordSVT]

A woman recently told me that she doesn't mind science fiction in small doses (about two hours), but it's just too silly to put up with it week after week in a television series. I suspect that a lot of ordinary people feel similarly.

I feel the same way about shit like Jersey Shore and Sex and the City but million of people eat it up.

Quite frankly, the average person doesn't have the patience, interest, or education for "hard" science fiction like we frequently see in novels. That translates to there being very few "hard" science fiction movies. And people don't want to be associated with something that is deemed "geeky". For some reason, watching a Star Wars movie is a cultural event, and not "geeky" (unless you wear a costume to the theatre of course), while watching Clone Wars weekly or buying Wars novels is. There is a strange cultural disconnect there, like there is a group-mind sense of what is a culturally acceptable amount of dorkiness we all learned in school or something.

The format is also partly to blame. There's no excuse for making a stupid movie, but some of the more complex science fiction novels I've read would either make really bad movies or would be nearly impossible to accurately portray in 90-120 minutes.

Top 50 grossing movies of all time, 90% of them are science fiction, fantasy, or animated. Plenty of people like to watch fantastical things, they just don't seem to want to admit it.

http://www.imdb.com/boxoffice/alltimegross?region=world-wide