When is too much of a good thing a bad thing?
by morgan on May.29, 2009, under Kim Harrison
David W. commented that Terminator struggled partly because of “Sci-Fi overload” after Wolverine and Star Trek. That’s crazy talk! (I say with a smile). It’s hard to get burnt out on great movies, no matter the genre.
Is there a breaking point? If so, how many sci-fi movies is too many? My thought is that we still don’t have enough.
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May 29th, 2009 on 7:14 pm
I think Terminator struggled (and Wolverine too perhaps) because it was a bad movie. In this economy, people can’t afford to see garbage. Hopefully, Hollywood will get the message and up their standards a bit.
May 30th, 2009 on 1:10 pm
I’m with Dane on this. WOLVERINE and TERMINATOR were weak and our news channels are too connected these days for audiences to be caught blindsided by big properties that are flawed. Facebooking, texting, tweeting are all removing the time it takes for someone to offer their viewpoint on these films.
It’s all about intentions with handling the material, and there are certain writing/directing teams out there that never waver from their grounded approach to their productions. It’s widely believed in some fan circles that if Bryan Singer had not left XMEN for SUPERMAN, for example, we would have had two more Xmen films, one which introduced Jean Grey’s Phoenix persona, and the other that pitted the Xmen against Dark Phoenix. Singer’s approach to the scripting and presentation of the individuals in the first two mutant films resonated with audiences. Instead of a cosmic fire bird, we got a .. a water fowl.
Wolverine was full of moments that made me think, oh, oh yeah, someone thought this “inclusion” would be cooool but really it’s just lame. Like a faceoff with Blob in a.. wrestling ring? Seriously? He’s a behemoth that should have been interacting in a less contained space. Deadpool? An amalgamation of elements that exceeded the bounds of the origin material just to envision a new villain that didn’t fit within the mutant universe (e.g. Rogue’s mutant ability was to steal the powers of those she touched, but Deadpool was injected with powers - a process they never really explain, probably expecting us to accept it’s a process done with stem cells and - ugh, whatever, I’m done with WOLVERINE. Disappointing.
TERMINATOR: SALVATION got some elements right - the robots, the look of the production, the casting - but put them together in a weak script that is still enslaved to the original premise. It’s an uphill battle to excite fans with the unexpected, and the movie couldn’t surmount audiences familiarity with the material - thus, nothing new, nothing exciting to discover.
At least with STAR TREK they proved within 15mins that nothing the fans had accepted as canonical was safe. I think audiences took a certain joy in that feeling of insecurity, which still came out all right in the end. And the package looked fantastic.
May 31st, 2009 on 6:10 pm
Let’s get something straight from the start: comic book stories DO NOT constitute science fiction. They *might* fall under the category of fantasy, but there is a clear distinction between scifi and fantasy — one that bookstores, book blogs and fantasy fans irritatingly seem not to notice. Isaac Asimov neatly defined science fiction stories as those that have some element of real science involved in the heart of the plot, even if that scientific element is thusfar theoretical. Fantasy, however, makes no pretense of begin even vaguely related to any real scientific ideas, concepts or theories. Star Trek and Terminator qualify as sci-fi, Wolverine and the X-Men franchise do not.
Having said that, we don’t really have an overload of sci-fi films this summer. We may have a glut of fantasy films, but that’s a different matter.
Wolverine failed because it had a lousy script. Almost as bad as that idiocy called I, Robot, which made a complete hash of Asimov’s wonderful robot tales and completely subverted the storyline of that particular one. AND it had a lousy script. So: Jackman got caught on that one and should perhaps insist on better scripts if he’s to remain connected to the X-Men franchise films. But that wasn’t really any competition for Star Trek anyway.
Terminator had a HORRIBLE script and a badly miscast Christian Bale as John Connor. Particularly after being spoiled by the terrific Sarah Connor Chronicles, Terminator fans had much higher expectations of the latest installment. I don’t buy the notion that there had to be something that departed drastically from the previous storyline: wuite the opposite, this film HAD to be something that suitably fulfilled the previous storyline and made a logical, believable sequel to the first three films *and* the TV series. The scriptwriters and director who thought otherwise simply weren’t plugged into reality.
Beyond that, Bale was still channeling his grim, cyinical Batman alter-ego instead of getting a clue from Thomas Dekker’s take on Connor. We’re supposed to believe that Dekker’s layered, complex Connor who doesn’t pretend to have all the answers somehow grows into the dour misanthrope that is Bale. NOT!
So Star Trek, which succeeded on most counts though not on going where Star Trek has never gone before (as Roger Ebert observed; c’mon, how many more time-travel stories can they wring out of that franchise? Nuts!), reall hasn’t had any competition so far for good summer sci-fi flick. And so far, it doesn’t look like it *will* have any this year.
Meanwhile, rumor has it that the same guys who made such an abortion out of I, Robot have the rights to develop Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy into film. [sigh] Heaven help us, yet another fiasco in the making … it’s a good thing Isaac isn’t around to witness it.
May 31st, 2009 on 8:37 pm
PS — to answer your question: no, we *don’t* have enough good science fiction films, but then, we don’t have enough good films, period. Part of the problem is Hollywood’s unending underestimation of what makes for good sci-fi, and part is attributable to the fact that they’re still aiming most films to a male audience between 11-24, no matter WHAT they say — and science fiction has plenty of female fans, yours truly included. Witness the great popularity of the reinvented Battlestar Galactica among women (didn’t hurt that they had a bunch of credible, kick-ass women in it, either).
Third, even when a sci-fi film or series is well written, it takes a great leap of faith from Hollywood in order to get them to consider ‘name’ actors for a sci-fi film. Trust me, if the script’s any good, the great actors will line up for it. Again, Battlestar Galactica is the prime example — but it was possible only because a cable network was behind it, not a Hollywood film studio.
Fourth, sometimes it’s the fans of a particular actor who don’t want to see that actor in anything other than what they’ve seen him or her in before — they prefer casting based on what they’ve already seen, and so do the promoters, studios and distributors, the sissies. Which is why so few people went to see Solaris with Clooney in it (he was excellent, too) despite great reviews from critics like Roger Ebert: the distributors failed to promote it adequately (either they just didn’t care or didn’t get it).
Finally, it helps when directors and screenwriters are themselves well read in the sci-fi genre, instead of just having seen some sci-fi films. Ultimately, science fiction is about ideas and possibilities, rather than action or particular characters. Fail to grasp that, and you don’t understand the purpose of the genre. And all too many in the film business aren’t well read in *any* genre of literature. Unfortunately, just being visually oriented isn’t enough for making a great sci-fi film. That’s just a fact.
June 1st, 2009 on 4:37 pm
I agree with Morgan, the key thing is that you could come out with a great sci-fi story all the time. The key word is that it’s got to be great, not just another “bandwagon” movie.
June 2nd, 2009 on 9:55 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcaNZ4iHSMw
June 4th, 2009 on 2:34 pm
From my understanding (since I have yet to see the film), TERMINATOR suffered from continuity and logic issues. A lot of people enjoyed it anyway (just like they did STAR TREK despite the science issues) because they didn’t expect a lot from the film to begin with and were willing to overlook those issues for a “fun” film. Others couldn’t overlook those things and threw in other problems that they saw that made it less enjoyable for them, like lack of character development. Unlike STAR TREK, TERMINATOR ended up not being good enough to help the audience overlook its problems.
June 5th, 2009 on 3:26 am
I don’t think too many scifi movies in itself is a bad thing. But please, please, lets have an original thought. Terminator Salvation, Star Trek, Wolverine… even Night at the Museum 2… Not one of these movies bares an original thought, and most of these movies are so generic that they need not have had their Terminator/Star Trek title since the real themes of the movie were very glossed over.
http://www.igp-scifi.com/terminator-salvation.html
June 5th, 2009 on 3:50 am
Sci-Fi never seemed mainstream prior to Star Wars - perhaps it is still an expanding universe. Folks always use general labels until they get sufficiently interested.
Take what worked recently and change the formula a bit; that’s to creativity what comic books are to Sci-fi.
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