First off, I want to thank John for the opportunity to write a guest post, and — if you kind readers are cool with it — ask you to send a some positive vibes to his puppy Darra, who’s been under the weather lately. My elderly cat has had some health issues recently, so I completely sympathize with John and his beloved critter. Let’s send Darra some good juju!
Now, on to my guest post about sci-fi movies, and missing maestros.
I was born in the 1970s, and grew up watching movies in what I consider the second “golden age” of science-fiction cinema. Thanks to several technological breakthroughs in that decade and the 1980s (mostly in motion-control cameras, animatronics and makeup), we were treated to some excellent sci-fi flicks: Close Encounters, Star Wars, Superman, Star Trek (Wrath of Kahn specifically), E.T., Alien and Aliens, Blade Runner, Back to the Future, Cocoon, Akira, The Thing, The Abyss, even the subversive Robocop … goodness, I could go on, and on, and on.
I try not to let nostalgia cloud my perception of these movies, but the fact that I can indeed go “on and on” is kinda my point. In my view, the late 1970s and 1980s represented a incredible time in SF cinema — and generally speaking, I don’t think it’s been as good since.
Lately, I’ve been wondering why that is. A post-Vietnam nation craving ultra-escapist entertainment? Young, super-talented creators being at the right place at the right technological time? The creative hunger to not just push the visual envelope, but strap it to a rocket and send it into the stratosphere? All? None? Hard to say, and I’m not highfalutin’ enough to make such proclamations, really.
I base most of my (highly) unscientific judgments on what I see and feel. Modern-day films can certainly deliver sci-fi spectacle in doses those earlier movies could only dream of: new locales, never-before-seen alien landscapes, battle sequences that’ll make your guts do barrel rolls. The Star Wars prequels excelled at pixel-powered spectacle, as did the Matrix and Jurassic Park sequels. Transformers unhinged my jaw with its visual effects.
And yet, those films — and a great many other SF pictures from the past 20 years — fall short for me. To be sure, there are grand exceptions (The Matrix, Jurassic Park, The Lord of the Rings, The Incredibles, WALL-E, Serenity, Dark City), but I fear most sci-fi flicks are phoning it in, funneling money into CGI that could be better spent on story. Pretty wrapping paper, empty box. There’s plenty of SF movies from all eras that suffer from such failings.
I’m a sci-fi novelist (my human cloning thriller, 7th Son: Descent, was released by St. Martin’s Press late last month), so story is awfully important to me. So is direction — having directors whose creative vision is committed to serving the story and its characters above all. Spielberg, Cameron, Lucas, Scott, Donner, Zemeckis and Howard are good examples of such creators helming 1970s/1980s projects with rich stories and characters.
The best stories — regardless of medium — place characters above all. They truly are the stars. I examine recent SF movies and feel that their characters exist simply to be yanked from one action sequence to another, with the occasional dialogue quip to satisfy “character” requirements. Also, I believe that somewhere along the line, film producers began to believe that snazzy VFX and fireballs were the only ingredients an SF movie required to be narratively successful.
Now I loves me some fireballs — my fiction’s packed with ‘em — but emotional resonance is key. I need to root for protagonists because I feel for them, not because the plot tells me to. The Matrix sequels failed here. The Jurassic Park sequels failed here. Spielberg’s The War of the Worlds failed here. Star Wars prequels. The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still and Planet of the Apes … Superman Returns, The Dark Knight, The Fifth Element, Stargate, Independence Day, A.I., I, Robot, Johnny Mnemonic, Constantine, Pitch Black, V for Vendetta, Watchmen … all decent movies with excellent premises — but a commitment to style over substance ultimately sabotaged these endeavors. They had the potential to be Great movies, in the way character-driven, ultra-violent Aliens and sublime E.T. are Great movies.
It’s disappointing. I bear witness to hundreds of millions of dollars being spent in the name of entertainment, and come away mostly seeing missed opportunities. In contrast, recent years have given us some some excellent sci-fi television: Battlestar Galactica and early seasons of Lost are the best examples; FlashForward and V appear very promising.
Are we entering a new golden age of SF cinema? My friends insist that great character-fueled SF stories are here: Iron Man, X-Men, Spider-Man (see a pattern?), District 9, Moon. I hope they’re right. I love supporting great stories — SF tales especially — and I pine for movies whose characters and stories are as emotionally moving as their visual effects.
Am I wrong, a nostalgia-addled codger in the making? Am I right? Sound off in the comments with your own opinions. I’d love to learn your take on the current state of SF cinema, and where it’s heading.
J. C. Hutchins is the author of the podcast-and-now-print-thriller novel 7th Son: Descent. The original novel was released as a podcast and some of the episodes can still be enjoyed online:Episode 1 audio download PDF version
Episode 2 audio download PDF version
Episode 3 audio download PDF version
Check out the author’s website for lots more episodes, Hutchins’ podcasts on writing and podcasting and lots of other fun promotional stuff, including an entirely FREE prequel to the novel now in stores.
GFTW is also giving away three copies of the novel for free! You only have 2 more days to send in your entries, so get moving!
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- GUEST POST: Integrating History in Your Writing Without Getting Bogged Down in the Details by Monica Burns
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Bah!
I had a long response all written up and clicked on something…and gone.
The short version is that I disagree and believe there are just as many quality SFF flicks of the 90’s and 00’s as there have been in the 70’s and 80’s
I would disagree with The Fifth Element and the two Batman flicks. I’d also disagree with Pitch Black, but I’ll grant you that one.
Also consider
Moon
Metropolis (animated)
Princess Mononoke (animated)
Spirited Away (animated)
Twelve Monkeys
Pi
Gattaca
eXistenZ
Edward Scissorhands (1990, I believe)
Groundhog Day
28 Days Later
Yes! Yes! Dammit, where’s a yes button I can push?? As a monstrous sci-fi fan, and a kid who grew up in the 70’s-80’s, I totally agree about the subversion of narrative for effects. I will give Avatar (Lt. Ripley, I love you!) a shot but will not even consider 2012 (a solid hour of explosions and tidal waves? IS there a story?).
Fireballs are awesome, but if you went to a Rush concert you’d be pissed if that was mostly what you got.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by johnottinger: NP: Guest Post: Where Have all the SF Movie Maestros Gone? by J. C. Hutchins http://bit.ly/1ePVwm #scifi #fantasy…
I see your point, Hutch, but I think nostalgia is clouding your judgment.
Your list of good movies from the 90s/00s is as long as your list of good movies from the 70s/80s. It’s just as likely that the movies you enjoyed from your childhood are the cream of the crop, just like the movies you enjoy today. After all, the 70s/80s also gave us Star Trek V, Howard the Duck, and Maximum Overdrive. I’ll take Pitch Black and The Dark Knight in that fight any day.
Yes….. but no. Yes I think that the good old days were just that but tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems (listening to Billy Joel over here). While there has been a dearth in quality SF over the last 20-30 years I think these things are cyclical. The entertainment industry latches on to things that work. Then they find a new toy after a vein gets played out. (I am the Sir Mix-a-Lot of metaphor.) But no I don’t think the maestros are missing. I think they’ve moved to TV/alt media. They can tell their stories on a budget and on the smaller screen.
I think something similar happened to one of my favorite genres, the Western. Westerns were big on the big screen in the 40s-60s and then moved on to the smaller screens.
So the wonderful thing (as you somewhat touched on) is that you can find awesome sci-fi shows, even if some of them are cross-dressing, on TV or online. Eventually, I hope, Hollywood will figure out that you don’t have to have a $200 mil budget to do good sci-fi. Then our beloved genre will return to the big screen, though perhaps never to the same degree they once did.
Of course that raises another question, should they? I mean after all what would make more sense than having science fiction reign supreme on the very devices that it predicted (albeit with varying degrees of success). There is a wealth of genre content to be found on places like http://www.strangerthings.tv/ for your video fix or http://escapepod.org/ to fill your earbuds. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see names like JC Hutchins or Mur Lafferty get their writers credits on the big screen, it just means it is no longer the only or even the best option.
They went to Hollywood and it ate their souls…. hence the soulless drek they try to pass off
I just ask myself: how would Hoth have been portrayed in a greenscreen studio rather than in Norway and with miniatures and baking powder?
SF is cyclical, science fact has caught up and a docile unimaginative people prefer zombie movies as their reflection.
Also I can remember the days when SF was SF and not sci-fi which true fans of the genre back in the day would lynch you for using!
Nostalgia is an interesting thing. We end up judging things from the past in the way we remember them then while we judge new things against our standards as we are now.
I saw “Star Wars” when I was 6 or so and it was, and to a certain extent still is “The Best Film Ever”. To my five year old son “Attack of the Clones” holds that title. I think it is a steaming pile of poopy compared to the earlier one.
Also the mainstream has often amped up the effects, action and explosions in Sci-Fi movies at the expense of story. It has been said in many places that the opening weekend box office receipts are so important to the success of a movie that the slow burn movies of the past hardly ever get the chance to enter the mainstream at all.
The other curse of the current time is that genre has been even more balkanized with each area being both highly segregated from each other and having negative attitudes to each other. For example adults don’t find out about kids shows/movies anymore (until they have kids) meaning that we miss out on the genius that is “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and “Ben 10″ where we knew all about “Batman: The Animated Adventures”.
The flip side of this is that it has never been easier to find movies from other cultures, countries, movies that generally wouldn’t have been available to you at all back in the day.
Where does that leave us? Great SF movies are still being made. But great garbage is being made to.
Great movies that I have seen in the not to distant past are:
The Lake House (Korean)
The Man from Earth
C-7 (Stephen Chow’s Chinese Kid’s movie)
The Fountain
Let the Right One In (Scandinavian)
Bow (Korean)
Star Trek (The new one – the most successful Ret-Con 5 I have ever seen)
and all those mentioned above.
Trash that I would rather not have seen:
Twilight
Transformer 2
And others that I wouldn’t touch with a 10′ foot pole.
So, I agree, I disagree, I want to watch more, I wish I had watched less… Can’t wait for the big screen debut of “7th Son: Descent” directed by someone who gives a damn about the characters.
I think I agree *mostly*. It would seem that producers assume that audiences want gobsmacking visual effects. And they seem to pump millions of dollars into the best cgi they can find.
I’m an audience member who wants authenticity in the people I’m seeing onscreen. I want rounded characters doing things that make sense.
And I think Hollywood is sacrificing authenticity of character to richness of scene.
Arnold Schwarzenneger in TOTAL RECALL was a highlight of the nineties for me. DISTRICT 9 had me tweeting that BLADERUNNER: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT was no longer at the top of my faves list. (I’ve changed my mind. BLADERUNNER has served me 20 viewings *in the cinema* and six on my big screen video projector. DISTRICT 9 didn’t survive a second viewing for me.)
Your excellent movie review was the very first thing I read this morning. My cat babies were gathered around me as I chuckled and giggled and almost nearly cried, and I do believe they also appreciated the review mightily.
I have to both agree and disagree with this opinion ( hey just call me a politician I’m wishy washy on it ) I remember the character developments from the 70’s and 80’s in scifi films and television they captured me and pulled me along in fantasy worlds. Made me feel for the characters as if they were my best friend or me in a alternative universe. Very few films from today can do that. Aeon Flux is a prime example of one off the top of my head that does fill that gap. Yeah it had great effects and yeah the babes were hot, but I got into the story and felt for the characters. Now as for reading scifi I have to say that has been my savior in these times of overdone special effects and half ass characters. Your trilogy, Scott Sigler’s books and a host of others I found through podiobooks.com have kept this trucker on the edge of my seat. Filling the gap when I cant stop to see a film. There are still good films out there. We just have to be patient and let the film makers know by our attendance to them that we demand to be fulfilled in the ways we want. Explosions and hot bods are nice but those who aren’t so shallow demand characters we can love or care for or feel for maybe even write fan fiction for lol .
So in conclusion find the films that fill this gap. Support them above the others with just flash and send a message to Hollywood where it counts, at least to them, in the box office sales. We can create the next golden age of scifi cinema just by our support of the films that do the job the best.
I don’t think that there were necessarily *more* great movies coming out when we were kids. I can understand where the nostalgia comes in – my first memories in life are of being in the theater seeing Star Wars (the FIRST run, right before they tacked EPISODE IV onto the beginning) – this has undoubtedly, in some way, affected every facet of my life (meaning of course that I should probably sue George Lucas at some point).
There was an innovation going on at the time that made those movies that were great stand out and called peoples’ attention to it. Individual films began incorporating more ideas from different genres into them. Jaws isn’t a straight horror movie, for example; it’s got elements of horror but also drama, action/adventure and comedy. Star Wars has elements science fiction, action/adventure, drama, political thrillers, etc (and fantasy as well).
The novelty of mixing bits from several different genres like that has worn off, I think, EXCEPT in one area: comic book movies. Superhero and other comic book movies have been taking a LONG while to mature into what we’re seeing today. Sure, there were a few that stood out in the past (e.g. Superman – Donner was one of those who managed to pick up on what was happening in cinema at the time and apply it), but it’s really only now that enough attention is being paid to them (and enough effort put into them) that they’re consistently becoming able to stand out in the same way as movies like E.T. and Blade Runner did. This is why you have that whole Iron Man/X-Men/Spiderman pattern you mentioned. They’re being taken seriously enough now that you can have many different comic book movies that include drama, science fiction, mystery, comedy, etc — enough attention is being paid to them that they’re able to get the elements to blend properly (in some movies more successfully than in others, obviously).
But what about the rest of the movie biz? ARE we entering a new golden age or is it stagnating? I hate to say this, but I don’t think we’ll really know until about twenty years or so when we have the same advantages of perspective and knowledge of what’s going to withstand long-term analysis and the overall test of time as we do with those classics of the 80’s. So, er… meet you back here in another quarter century?
I think we’re enteringa golden age of sci-fi TV at the expense of sci-fi cinema. Opening weekend gross is SO important to a movie’s success that bankable stars, eyegrabbing (expensive) visuals and memorable quips — all things that make a great trailer rather than a great film — are prized. Michael Bay started filming Transformers 2 without a script based on scnes he wanted to see and backfitted a story based on his visual desires. This is the new blockbuster ethos. TV shows must sustain over 22 episodes to survive. Writers are cheaper than effects and stars so story has chance on the small screen’s extended timeline. Moreover effects are now cheap enough that sci-fi TV can even be credibly attempted by an offbrand cable network. Until Hollywood is unshackled from the blockbuster model I expect story-driven sci-fi will be ghettoized to TV land.
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