AuthorTopic: Official Off-Topic Thread  (Read 318591 times)

Offline JJ Naas

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #730 on: September 18, 2008, 08:58:56 am
Many of the so called science fiction movies tend to have no science in them at all and even the fiction tends to be sacrificed to visuals and coolness elements. Same thing in games really. Any writer who wants to postulate an end of the universe doesn't have a slightest clue of how BIG the universe is. No one does, you'd need a Total Perspective Vortex in order to grasp it anyway. The destruction of the entire universe is something I allow only for Daleks, because they're camp enough to do it. I do enjoy fantasy and the occasional suspension of disbelief, but nitpicking is also fun. A hobby of mine, really.

One nasty thing big movie studios do is they buy loads of rights to books and stories and then just store them in their vault, never intending to do anything with them. They buy the rights just for the sake of owning them before any other studio gets them. The percentage of best seller book rights that have been bought and stored in a vault for eternity is something like 70-80 percent or higher. There are a lot of good stories around, but few of them ever get to the big screen and even when they do, well.. I haven't seen I Robot but this thread makes me want to see it. Especially in a company of a couple of extremely cynical geek friends. ;) 

Offline Lazycow

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #731 on: September 18, 2008, 10:30:51 am
Dusty I dislike the movie because it is indicative of an awful trend of books getting sodomised by Hollywood
Well, the story of the I Robot movie was a collection of scenes from a couple of Asimov-stories put into a generic story or so. The 0th-law, Susan Calvin, the Robot which hides between rows of other robots, etc. And I think it was not that bad for a Will Smith movie. And what would be a "real" Asimov movie? Maybe something close to "columbo"? As most of Asimov's book are build like a crime story...  ;) Just my 2 cents...
« Last Edit: September 18, 2008, 10:33:06 am by Lazycow »
A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. Yes we can!

Offline tocky

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #732 on: September 18, 2008, 11:06:27 am
I was wondering that as well, sorta - what counts as a good 'real' science movie? I'm having trouble thinking of anything that really focusses on the ramifications of technology on people's lives - which is what I would consider pure scifi - rather than using it basically as an aesthetic or analogy. Nothing really springs to mind that's not fantasy-in-disguise or cookie cutter action.

Has me thinking of:

Back to the Future, which has fantasy mainly as a story device.
probably also The Time Machine, same reasoning. The novel has science content, but it's still a story device, rather than a technology that shapes culture or people's lives.
Planet of the Apes, which is a fantasy adventure.
Alien, which isn't terribly sciencey
Star Wars, all fantasy


Possible examples of more pure science fiction stories, that is, explorations of the ramifications of technology:
Bicentennial Man
A.I.
The Truman Show
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Next
The Matrix
1984

Value judgements aside, I'm talking basically in terms of story content.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2008, 11:52:51 am by tocky »

Offline .TakaM

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #733 on: September 18, 2008, 11:21:46 am
Anyone ever seen existenz?
Life without knowledge is death in disguise

Offline JJ Naas

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #734 on: September 18, 2008, 11:34:08 am
Contact is mostly pretty accurate because the astronomer Carl Sagan who wrote the original novel was on the set making sure the science is accurate as possible. It's one of my all time fave movies, not just in its own genre.

Offline Ben2theEdge

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #735 on: September 18, 2008, 01:51:19 pm
According to the director, Back to the Future was never intended to be sci-fi - in fact the actual science is very cleverly dodged throughout the series. The second one was an attempt at "real" science fiction which was a fun experiment but as with all "serious" time travelling stories it creates plot holes that eat itself from the inside out.

Tocky, your list seems pretty accurate to me though I am no sci-fi scholar. I might add:

12 Monkeys (the psychological effects of time travel)
Dark City (similar themes to the Matrix but Dark City did it first)
Frankenstein (this one should be at the top of the list!)
Wall-E (only Pixar could make a "hard" science fiction film for children)
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Offline ptoing

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #736 on: September 18, 2008, 01:54:34 pm
Contact is good stuff, yes. Also Existenz is good fun too, but I found it quite confusing the first time I watched it.

Two other faves of mine are Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Abyss, which are both not overly sciency, but good "sci-fi" movies none the less.

Alien is more of a Horror-Thriller than sci-fi I think, but of course classic as well.
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Offline .TakaM

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #737 on: September 18, 2008, 02:00:55 pm
I'm glad to finally see some love for Contact, I've only ever met people that hated it.
Mainly because of the ending, they all wanted to see big cg aliens/whatever
Life without knowledge is death in disguise

Offline tocky

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #738 on: September 18, 2008, 02:26:10 pm
Frankenstein (this one should be at the top of the list!)
Absolutely, yeah.

I don't mean to be down on movies don't fit in that bracket - I like fantasy, I even like mindless blockbuster action movies. I just got this thing about taxonomy.
« Last Edit: September 18, 2008, 02:38:49 pm by tocky »

Offline leroy

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Re: Official Off-Topic Thread

Reply #739 on: September 18, 2008, 04:02:04 pm
...Except for Wild Wild West, everyone hates that movie

WHAT