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    The future of Scifi movies?

    Consider first these two films currently out now; Transformers 2, G.I. Joe.

    Then consider that we will have shortly the following films:

    Remakes: Barbarella, Dune, They Live, Romancing The Stone, Fantastic Voyage, The Dirty Dozen

    Sequals: Mission: Impossible 4, Transformers 3, G.I. Joe 2, Tron, Iron Man 2, Star Trek 2

    Reboots: Scream, Fantastic Four (yes, they are already rebooting this)

    This is above is just a sampling of what we have coming, below are lists even more on the way:
    55 movie remakes currently in the works
    38 Planned Movie Remakes You Didn't Know About

    Now the idea of remaking classics such as John Carpenter's The Thing and Dirty Dozen is to be an abomination. You can not improve perfection, nor can you improve the good without better quality work right? Look at the remake of Carpenter's The Fog, look at how dismal that film was compared to the original.

    Last night we had movie night where friends gather, and we watch a variety of films. Last night we watched Downfall and Let the Right One In. One of the girls actually suggested we watch Twilight, to which a few smiled and said we would not have time . Last week we watch The Orphanage and Sunshine.

    So I have to wonder, with all these movies coming out of Hollywood continuously being nothing more than big budget special effects toy commercials, generic remakes and reboots, etc.. has Hollywood lost their creativity and ability to produce original movies? Or have audiences changed, and simply more interested in the eye candy over substance? These movies like Transformers were universally panned by just about every critic save for fanboy sites, yet it is a box office extravaganza. Problem of course is that movies out today like The Hurt Locker simply do not make it into most theaters, where as G.I. Joe will be in every damn screen they can put it on. Does this say anything about our society?

    So, I have to wonder now if we will ever see movies like Blade Runner or Dark City again? Genre films seem to be the movies that get fluffed up the most, as well as presented as something they are not. I see the posts here with the news of all the upcoming movies, and it is rather depressing to see.

    FYI, Roger Ebert has an excellent essay on this here:
    The gathering Dark Age

    #2
    Originally posted by SBN View Post
    Consider first these two films currently out now; Transformers 2, G.I. Joe.

    Then consider that we will have shortly the following films:

    Remakes: Barbarella, Dune, They Live, Romancing The Stone, Fantastic Voyage, The Dirty Dozen

    Sequals: Mission: Impossible 4, Transformers 3, G.I. Joe 2, Tron, Iron Man 2, Star Trek 2

    Reboots: Scream, Fantastic Four (yes, they are already rebooting this)

    This is above is just a sampling of what we have coming, below are lists even more on the way:
    55 movie remakes currently in the works
    38 Planned Movie Remakes You Didn't Know About

    Now the idea of remaking classics such as John Carpenter's The Thing and Dirty Dozen is to be an abomination. You can not improve perfection, nor can you improve the good without better quality work right? Look at the remake of Carpenter's The Fog, look at how dismal that film was compared to the original.

    Last night we had movie night where friends gather, and we watch a variety of films. Last night we watched Downfall and Let the Right One In. One of the girls actually suggested we watch Twilight, to which a few smiled and said we would not have time . Last week we watch The Orphanage and Sunshine.

    So I have to wonder, with all these movies coming out of Hollywood continuously being nothing more than big budget special effects toy commercials, generic remakes and reboots, etc.. has Hollywood lost their creativity and ability to produce original movies? Or have audiences changed, and simply more interested in the eye candy over substance? These movies like Transformers were universally panned by just about every critic save for fanboy sites, yet it is a box office extravaganza. Problem of course is that movies out today like The Hurt Locker simply do not make it into most theaters, where as G.I. Joe will be in every damn screen they can put it on. Does this say anything about our society?

    So, I have to wonder now if we will ever see movies like Blade Runner or Dark City again? Genre films seem to be the movies that get fluffed up the most, as well as presented as something they are not. I see the posts here with the news of all the upcoming movies, and it is rather depressing to see.

    FYI, Roger Ebert has an excellent essay on this here:
    The gathering Dark Age

    The era of original scifi films ended in the 80s. For the record Blade Runner was not also extremely boring to watch but it was based on a book so not so original and Dark City sucked as well.

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by Krichton View Post
      The era of original scifi films ended in the 80s. For the record Blade Runner was not also extremely boring to watch but it was based on a book so not so original and Dark City sucked as well.
      Whaaaaaaat! Not only were Blade Runner and Dark City awesome, there's been tons of great sci-fi films in the 90s and beyond.

      Good to great post-1989 original sequels:
      Terminator 2 (1991)
      Star Trek 6 (1991)
      Serenity (2005)

      Good to great post-1989 original films:
      Stargate (1994)
      Event Horizon (1997)
      The Fifth Element (1997)
      Gattaca (1997)
      The Matrix (1999)
      Titan AE (2000)
      A.I. (2001 -- minus the last 15-25 mins)
      Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
      Children of Men (2006)
      Idiocracy (2006....seriously)
      Timecrimes (2007)
      Wall-E (2008)
      Moon (2009)




      Sidenote: why is it that nobody (it seems) on this board knows how to spell "prequel" or "sequel"?
      "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

      Comment


        #4
        I completly agree with Digifluid,
        There been some great scifi films over the years, they just have not been all that big.

        What got me about Moon how much crictisms that it got from the critics, and yet Star Trek, which had far more wrong with than Moon had got bairly any. I think some critics and may be the majority have stop critiising films that they deem going to be big or mega hits so that can be seen as more relevant.

        Why I think we are going through a period where the big budget get all the money for CGI an zero to very little writing talent or zero orginality why the smaller production films, Sunshine and Moon on top of my head get the writing talen but little to no money on the special effects, I believe the CGI in Moon were mostly done by students.
        But then again movie studios can only fund projects and scripts that are bought to them, some of the remakes are suggested by writers and or directors first.

        I think this year is actually turning out to be a bumper year for good quality scifi, Moon, District 9 an possible Avatar and SLEEP DEALER which both sounds good, plus I also thought PLANET TERRA was good , and few half descent ones in there to, like ST.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by DigiFluid View Post
          Whaaaaaaat! Not only were Blade Runner and Dark City awesome, there's been tons of great sci-fi films in the 90s and beyond.

          Good to great post-1989 original sequels:
          Terminator 2 (1991)
          Star Trek 6 (1991)
          Serenity (2005) - Awful!

          Good to great post-1989 original films:
          Stargate (1994)
          Event Horizon (1997)
          The Fifth Element (1997)
          Gattaca (1997)
          The Matrix (1999)
          I did not like Event Horizon at all but even so 5 original scifi films for the course of one decade pretty much says it all

          Titan AE (2000)
          A.I. (2001 -- minus the last 15-25 mins)
          Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
          Children of Men (2006)
          Idiocracy (2006....seriously)
          Timecrimes (2007)
          Wall-E (2008)
          Moon (2009)
          I rest my case.

          Sidenote: why is it that nobody (it seems) on this board knows how to spell "prequel" or "sequel"?
          Everyone is so busy watching movies they forgot how to read and write. Duh!

          Comment


            #6
            Yeah but you're talking about a genre that's become increasingly marginalized over the last 20+ years. Scifi had its heydey in the late 70s and early 80s, largely due to Star Wars. With the mainstream increasingly buying into crap that only barely passes for entertainment, and scifi being increasingly marginalized, the number of films with us in mind has been shrinking.

            Frankly though, I'm proud that our genre has produced 13 great films in the last 19 years, rather than yet another direct-to-DVD American Pie movie, Scary/Date/Epic/10000th-in-this-franchise Movie, etc etc.
            "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

            Comment


              #7
              Yeah but you're talking about a genre that's become increasingly marginalized over the last 20+ years. Scifi had its heydey in the late 70s and early 80s, largely due to Star Wars. With the mainstream increasingly buying into crap that only barely passes for entertainment, and scifi being increasingly marginalized, the number of films with us in mind has been shrinking.

              Frankly though, I'm proud that our genre has produced 13 great films in the last 19 years, rather than yet another direct-to-DVD American Pie movie, Scary/Date/Epic/10000th-in-this-franchise Movie, etc etc.
              "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by SBN View Post
                So I have to wonder, with all these movies coming out of Hollywood continuously being nothing more than big budget special effects toy commercials, generic remakes and reboots, etc.. has Hollywood lost their creativity and ability to produce original movies?
                Without a doubt, yes.

                Back in the day--'40s and '50s, that is--there were many movies based on books or stage plays. Of course, plays are being brought to the screen now--Doubt is one of them--but what happened to the books? I especially am a fan of fantasy/sci-fi books, many of which out there are wonderful. Aside from Harry Potter and Twilight, both of which would have probably remained in obscurity were it not for their tremendous popularity, as well as The Lord of the Rings, which was thankfully a spectacular trilogy of movies, I can honestly think of no decent (I say decent because Twilight was not particularly great) fantasy/sci-fi book-based movies off the top of my head. I've read many a fantasy/sci-fi book that is not filled with too much dialogue, not lacking in action, and definitely not boring--and I've thought, "Why hasn't a movie been made?"

                And when a movie is made from a fantasy/sci-fi book, it ends up usually being bad. The last movie made from a fantasy book (aside from HP and Twilight, that is) was The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. I absolutely adored the book, but the movie was panned, did terribly, and looked to me like another one of those things where--given the fact that the book is geared more toward young adults even though it can definitely appeal to all ages--the makers are afraid that if they reproduce the mythological, dark elements of the book, they'll lose their entire audience. Well, by ruining the book's storyline with a bad adaptation, they already lost it! And in the meantime, they make their thousandth remake of Journey to the Center of the Earth, and throw in some sort of CG/3D movie with animal heroes and a flat storyline for good measure!

                Ugh, I turned all this into a rant. Sorry about that (I'm a serious writer--whether I write stories or screenplays--and to see the horrible unoriginality in many movies nowadays is honestly painful.)
                sigpic
                ~the guitarists~

                Comment


                  #9
                  Sad isn't it? So much good sci-fi books out there and yet so many remakes on the horizon.

                  And chickie poo who thought Twilight was a good thing to mention to watch doesn't know that she should watch Angel DVDs instead because NO ONE is better than Angel

                  And yes I did watch Twilight. It was a free rental. I did read all 4 books (though the 4th one I felt like burning but being a library book....). The vampires sparkling just did NOT go well at all. I laughed so hard. It's one thing to read that the vampires sparkle in the sunlight, it's another to actually see it. Much funnier. And why my hubby sat through the WHOLE movie with me boggles my mind. I only watched the whole thing because I'm a sucker for a train wreck.
                  Orphan Black: Join the Clone Club Dance Party!

                  Comment

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