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When will our generation start making good scifi movies?

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I just love the dark, gritty space trucker ones. I like to think that my space ships have industrial yellows or oil dripping from the ceiling. Alien, Delicatessen, Children of Men, District 9, Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars Ep. IV...probably why I love distopian future movies as well.





Also, I loved Avatar, just not nearly as much as Jett is talking it up.
 
jett said:
Avatar haters, step off. It has the best thought out, most fully-realized alien world ever seen in a movie. It's also fucking awesome.


The 'most fully-realized alien world', that's debatable (since it's mostly a big looking jungle), but I wouldn't fault you for thinking so.


It is not, however, 'awesome'. In fact, the complete opposite is true. It's a family friendly Disney film with some sci-fi sprinkled over it. And it has the most horrible soundtrack I could ever imagine for a science fiction film.
 
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Fallout-NL said:
The 'most fully-realized alien world', that's debatable (since it's mostly a big looking jungle), but I wouldn't fault you for thinking so.


It is not, however, 'awesome'. In fact, the complete opposite is true. It's a family friendly Disney film with some sci-fi sprinkled over it. And it has the most horrible soundtrack I could ever imagine for a science fiction film.

Disney's family friendly animated movies are wonderful, so what's the problem there? It has one of the most complex and impressive action sequences put on film, so yeah I'm gonna call it awesome. And there's hardly anything horrible about the soundtrack. People make up the stupidest shit to try to hate on this movie.

Nevermind that there are some truly horrific movies listed in this thread, but it's Avatar that gets singled out for no real reason. Some dumbass up there couldn't stand the fact that there were floating mountains in the movie, but the idiocy contained in Star Trek was A-OK to him apparently.
 
jett said:
Disney's family friendly animated movies are wonderful, so what's the problem there? It has one of the most complex and impressive action sequences put on film, so yeah I'm gonna call it awesome. And there's hardly anything horrible about the soundtrack. People make up the stupidest shit to try to hate on this movie.


If I wanted to see a Disney film, I would have gone to see a Disney film.


I guess you're right about the soundtrack though, the utterly generic tribal music is a perfect fit for the space Pocahontas/Dances with Wolves vibe they were going for.


/edit: All kidding aside. I can't say it's a bad film, of course not. It's perfectly executed and pretty much universally loved. But I do hate it for being so very bland.
 
Avatar is the first and only film to make me feel like I was on a different world.
All of these other films, Moon, even Star Trek, they never really make you forget that you're still on Earth. Heck, Moon just felt like you were stuck in a futuristic basement.
 
jett said:
Some dumbass up there couldn't stand the fact that there were floating mountains in the movie, but the idiocy contained in Star Trek was A-OK to him apparently.
Dude, Earth has no weapons at all, that's why they need to rely on the Enterprise alone to shut down a massive fucking drill. I'm not sure why they used the drill instead of just dropping the red matter on the earth and letting it's greater density sink thru the ground and oscillate in the center before it slowly destroys the planet though.
 
Haven't seen The Road mentioned yet, which was decent.

Children of Men is probably my favorite movie made during "our" generation, even though it wasn't made by it.

But then again, not much has been yet.
 
Jarmel said:
Budget part. And I want another series with the ambition that Galactica started with on the air.

I think they did great considering it wasn't an HBO show, and that it was made years ago.
 
jett said:
I think they did great considering it wasn't an HBO show, and that it was made years ago.

Oh they did a fantastic job initially and even in later seasons as well. Just when that went off the air, so did any good sci-fi series and now I'm not even seeing any particular (space!!) ones in the pipeline.
 
jett said:
Avatar haters, step off. It has the best thought out, most fully-realized alien world ever seen in a movie. It's also fucking awesome.


Sorry, but you don't get to dismiss people's views by calling them "haters".
 
jett said:
This was a really interesting movie.
I wish they did more with it. Things got kind of dumb and obvious later on but the premise is really cool/interesting.
DieH@rd said:
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Its a fucking shame Luc Besson started filming all those kids movies, he needs to start filming SF again.
I absolutely hate the colors/designs in this movie. The constant orange, the weird character designs. Everything just screams 'trying too hard to be unique/sci fi'. Other than that it's a great movie though and Luc Besson is one of my favorite filmmakers. I wish he'd go back to raw crime stuff though like La Femme Nikita and Leon.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Sorry, but you don't get to dismiss people's views by calling them "haters".

What views? Previous to that post it was just some brianless monkeys posting gifs. If anything they were dismissing my opinion and that of others by being complete assholes. But no, it's me that's dismissing their shit animated gifs, isn't it.
 
when the halo movie gets made.

serious answer: moon and district 9 already fit your bill. every bit as good as the classics.

edit: forgot sunshine. the slasher part sucked, the rest was AAA quality.
 
There have been quite a few great sci-fi films from "our generation", but it is true that there hasn't been anything Blade Runner, T2 or Alien level. At least in my opinion anyway. I enjoyed Gattaca, Moon, The Prestige (if that counts) and Inception quite a lot though.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Most old SciFi was like that. The modern fascination with crapsack worlds is a reaction to and a rejection of the "cult of the machine" we saw in early works where technology was the solution to all problems and things always got better. Relentlessly upbeat futures are pretty dull.

I dunno man. The thing I like best about Asimov is his optimism about technology and the future. I find his short stories far more compelling than yet another film about aliens trying to destroy Earth. Then again, I'm firmly in the camp of people that thinks if we ever saw aliens they'd be friendly... And also technology has made peoples lives better - in disproportion to hardships it has created too. Fear about the future, which most recent films tend to depict, come across as paranoid and reactionary - well to me anyway. I also think you can have optimistic contemporary sci-fi and have it still have it be interesting. For example, Vernor Vinge's novels are all optimistic about the future, but they tell great stories too.

Never heard of Star Trek?

Star Trek is good, but it's not quite serious enough for me.
 
Norante said:
Obviously you have not watched Primer yet.

Hated Primer (or rather, I was bored silly by it). Such a dull, overrated movie. Please watch the Spanish movie Time Crimes instead. Clever _and_ entertaining.

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I know it only opened in an abandoned 7-11 in some random San Diego suburb, but did anyone see Love? It had an interesting enough trailer that I'm keeping an eye out for when they finally put it out on DVD/BR.
 
Someone disliked the art direction in Fifth Element? D:

Timecrimes was fantastic. For some reason I keep forgetting it exists. Inception was a good film too, but weak on the sci-fi. I feel like watching so many of these movies now, but barely any of them are on Netflix.
 
jett said:
Avatar haters, step off. It has the best thought out, most fully-realized alien world ever seen in a movie. It's also fucking awesome.
its a cheesy love story and very predictable. i mean nothing surprising happens in that movie, pretty by the numbers...its breathtaking and all that, and fine if you enjoy it, but its not....good.
 
jett said:
Avatar haters, step off. It has the best thought out, most fully-realized alien world ever seen in a movie.
And somehow still manages to be boring. Which is an achievement in and of itself.
 
Avatar is a great roller coaster ride. But, it doesn't really leave a lasting impression on you months after you have seen it (like most great sci-fi). That's why I will never watch it on disc. It will ruin my memory of my experience at the theater.
 
Saw this last week.

Not bad at all. A better director could have made more with it though. Emily Blunt is so perfectly cast.

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ITT 6 pages of movies being repeated over and over again.
Oh, and do Jurassic Park and Men in Black count?

edit: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy too! Never read the book, but I thought the movie was pretty thought provoking.

Images just for the sake of images.
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teruterubozu said:
This generation doesn't like full-blown sci-fi.

Stuff like Moon, D9, Fountain, Pandorum, etc. feel more like theatric plays wrapped up in sci-fi/fantasy clothing. OK, maybe except for D9.

The trend is to do stories and characters that haven't been done before. As great as Alien, Terminator 2, and Blade Runner were, they're 20-30 years old now, and the audience is not interested in seeing these rehashed over and over again. We already had that in the late 80s/early 90s, and it was not that pleasant. This is likely why a film like Avatar was never all that well received by sci-fi aficionados: As neat as the universe was, the characters, plot and themes were completely pedestrian and uninteresting.

Galaxy Quest is, oddly enough, a good sci-fi movie.
 
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