Has Science Fiction become a Taboo subject in Hollywood?

[JarodRussell]

Jurassic Park is also science fiction (the cloning dinosaurs part at least), but it's more of an adventure movie, and that's what it was advertised as. Same goes for Avatar, in my opinion. Yes, it takes place on an alien planet, and there's lots of science fiction elements, but eventually, it's just Pocahontas in space (and I don't mean that in the negative way).

So I don't think SciFi, or SyFy (gahgh!), is turning into a taboo. It's just a genre name. And genre borders are always very fuzzy.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Most big-budget movies now have skiffy aspects to them - the terms "science fiction" or "sci-fi" may be out of favor, but there's more of the stuff being made right now than probably at any point in the past.

 

[Deckerd]

Most big-budget movies now have skiffy aspects to them - the terms "science fiction" or "sci-fi" may be out of favor, but there's more of the stuff being made right now than probably at any point in the past.

I agree with Dennis.

I'll have to go and lie down in a darkened room now.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I agree with Dennis.

There's hope for you yet.

 

[Jetfire]

At some point or another we all agree with Dennis.

 

[MichaelDornFan]

Most big-budget movies now have skiffy aspects to them - the terms "science fiction" or "sci-fi" may be out of favor, but there's more of the stuff being made right now than probably at any point in the past.

Maybe in film, but I want sci-fi TV shows.

The current season of Fringe has been excellent sci-fi, but it still had to masquerade as a boring cop show for much of its first two seasons.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

At some point or another we all agree with Dennis.

This is because I post 24/7, and most of it is free association.

 

[melancholymecha]

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.

This. Remember that the guys on top of the ladder that rule Hollywood were the guys in high school that made fun & ostracized the guys who were into stuff like science fiction. The thing is, these same guys have now realized that sci-fi/fantasy also makes a lot of money. So the trick is to promote science fiction as something cool & popular without making it too geeky, b/c nobody wants to be like those nerds in high school.

 

[Christopher]

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?

On top of which, these "innovative" literary novels that everyone crows about are really just rediscovering ideas that SF explored thoroughly 30 or 40 years earlier, and generally handling them more ineptly.

Last year I was at a book fair for local authors, and the guy sitting next to me was going on about how he'd written this amazing, visionary book that wasn't science fiction but a thoughtful extrapolation of where current trends were headed -- and I didn't have the heart to tell him that the future he depicted in his book was just a hash of decades-old dystopian cliches. He talked about a future where resources were scarce and corporations ruled everything and freedoms were lost as if he were the only person who'd ever come up with such ideas.


In general, what I don't understand is the mindset of a person who can look at a genre that has "science" in the title and not expect it to have intelligence, innovation, and careful thought behind it.

 

[Warped9]

At some point or another we all agree with Dennis.

When it happens to me I don't feel well and have to lie down.

 

[Trent Roman]

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.

Oh yeah. Suggest to Margaret Atwood that Handmaiden's Tale or Oryx and Crake are science-fiction, and see what happens. Wear kevlar.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[USS Mariner]

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

I'd like to see an inflation adjusted list, which I'll probably end up doing later tonight as a matter of fact.

 

[Harvey]

Here's a list of the top 100 movies in worldwide grosses: http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/

And here's a list of the top 50 movies in domestic box office, adjusted for the inflation of ticket prices: http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

 

[Temis the Vorta]

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.

A police procedural is a genre, and it's very different from the genre of the buddy cop story. Procedurals work on TV. Buddy cop shows (particularly comedy) work in movies. The reverse situation happens, but not as often because it's not as good a fit.

Call it a genre or call it a format, I don't care. Fussing over terminology is a useless pastime. But there are definitely some types of stories that come off better on TV and others that come off better in movies. Those types can be grouped together and labeled: police procedural, romantic comedy, Western, murder mystery, space opera sci fi. That last one is a genre that should work both in movies and on TV, but unfortunately has been relegated to movies lately.

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.

I'm not arguing whether one is sci fi or not. I'm pointing out that while Armageddon does great as a movie, BSG barely survived as a TV show. And they both were adapted to take advantage of their media - Armageddon was big and noisy and brainless while BSG was complex and character driven and talky (and had some space battles too). BSG should have done as well in its medium as Armageddon did in its, but that wasn't the case.

Here's a list of the top 100 movies in worldwide grosses: http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world//alltime/world/

And here's a list of the top 50 movies in domestic box office, adjusted for the inflation of ticket prices: http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

Funny that the international BO lists are never adjusted for inflation. I guess it's impossible to adjust for inflation across dozens of countries over time.

But it does make that list hard to take seriously. The top Star Wars movie of all time is The Phantom Menace.

 

[MANT!]

As ticket prices have inflated over time, newer films naturally dominate the non-adjusted box office numbers..

if each ticket costs $17.00 (2010) one can gross more inflated money that when each ticket was 10 cents (1939)

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Which is why the international lists are pretty useless. They're just a list of the most recent popular movies. It provides more interesting context to realize that Avatar made less real money than Ben-Hur at least domestically but the international BO list can never really be known.

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.

Yeah, that could be it. Armageddon is okay because it's big and dumb, and it's over quickly and you can forget about it, so the weirdness of the sci fi aspect doesn't seem threatening or need to be taken seriously. But BSG forces you to follow a complicated and strange story about oppressed robots and alien religions (and robots with religious views!) and people just find that too bizarre to swallow and they don't want to be forced to grapple with ideas that are that far beyond the pale.

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.

You're giving people too much credit. Plenty of terrible movies and TV shows in any genre are rewarded with success. But why is sci rewarded in movies and not on TV, regardless of quality? I think the problem of bizarre ideas in sci fi is the issue. People want to watch TV shows about familiar types - the gritty cop, the noble doc, the crusading lawyer, the harried parent. Aliens and robots are too much for them to take, even if the alien is also a gritty cop and the robot is also a harried parent.

The sad thing is that so many people don't realize there is such a thing as prose science fiction.

Are you kidding, most people don't realize there is such a thing as a "book." I wouldn't single out sci fi as having any particular problem.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

Interesting article


Is Science Fiction This Era's Western?
Posted by John Scalzi on Dec 1 2010

 

[JarodRussell]

Interesting article


Is Science Fiction This Era's Western?
Posted by John Scalzi on Dec 1 2010

Hm, my opinion is that comic book and game adaptations are this era's western.

 

[Nick Ryder]

Kind of a dumb comment here - Rumor has it that people even write books and comic books in the genre. Westerns? Not so much at the moment: they're hanging on in books, but Western-themed video games and television shows are few and far between.

Rumor has it people write sci-fi books and comics? Uhm... where has this bozo been for the past oh I dunno 60s years?! And western themed video games and tv shows -uhm... Red Dead Revolver... not the greatest but still - and tv shows... okay he's got me there... Firefly kinda counts and kinda doesn't

But rumor has it

 

[RAMA]

Whatever they call "it", there sure is a lot of "it" around...from Moon, District 9, Avatar, Skyline, Tron, Inception, to V, Dr Who, Stargate Universe, Fringe, etc on tv. Its more successful than ever.