Name a Science fiction film or tv series which has surpassed ST or SW impact.
Again, it’s not about numbers, it’s about cultural impact. I agree, there haven’t been as many SW or ST films knocking about in recent years, but their cultural legacy hangs over Sci Fi like an albatross.
I must respectfully disagree.
You do make some good and valid points. And yet, by the early to mid nineteen seventies… WHERE WERE THEY?
2001 was a good movie… but it was seldom shown on TV.
Moon Zero Two had its merits… but I didn’t know it existed until the 1980s.
Forbidden Planet was quite good… but unless it surfaced on the Late Show, you were hosed.
I could keep going, but I won’t. Good things appeared and were appreciated, and were mostly forgotten. The crap followed two of those stages, skipping the middle one. I saw and liked Rollerball, starring James Caan, for example, but it hit the theatres and was seen and appreciated… and vanished. It did not become a phenomenon. It did not cause a cult.
Because I WAS there, I remember the pop culture phenomena quite well. In the age before home video, back when you were at the mercy of the local theatre or your local TV affiliate to feed the SF monkey atop one’s back… there were a variety of games in town, sure. But most of them were *Star Trek *or Star Wars, unless you were an early adopter of Beta or Laserdisc or Selectavision, or any number of clunky expensive things that finally lost out to VHS.
Trek got showed half to death in reruns.
Planet Of The Apes got showed half to death on televisions, and I well remember all night “ape-a-thons” at certain drive-ins and theatres, YEARS after the first movie came out.
Star Wars sat at the Playhouse 3 in Victoria, Texas, for YEARS after it came out. A dollar a ticket. I must have seen it fifty times in the summer of '78, alone.
Lost In Space got showed half to death in reruns, I suspect largely because another affiliate was showing Star Trek.
Sure, there were other items. But none with the power, the pop culture impact. 2001 was made in 1968, but I notice that James Bond movies didn’t decide to include rocketships and zap guns, per se, until 1979… after Star Wars came out.
Hell, for that matter, I recall the tidal wave of insane space crap that came out in 1978, crested in 1978, receded by 1981, and arguably gave birth to ET by 1982.
Disagree if you like. Argue if you think it worthwhile. But don’t tell me I wasn’t there.
I don’t think the existence of more ST or SW are keeping new movies from having the same impact. Star Wars particularly, wasn’t really impactful on Sci-fi (as Cal notes above, it was basically a pastiche of earlier ideas), but on the film industry on a whole. It (along with Jaws) created the modern big budget blockbuster. That isn’t really something you can do twice, so the fact that another film hasn’t done the same thing doesn’t really mean anything.
They certainly have a strong cultural legacy, but I disagree that that legacy is hurting anything. I don’t think a world without new ST or SW movies/shows would really look any different than the actual world. People are still making new movies and films, some of which will live on in sequels and repeats and such, some won’t.
There are sort of fannish small-budget Star Trek movies, using crowdfunding, with some of the cast from the DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise series. I haven’t seen any of them, though.
I managed to see 2001 about a dozen times before it came out on VHS - theaters during the original showing, revivals, at Cons. But more than that its influence was all over the place. You played Also Sprach Zarathustra and everyone knew what you were talking about.
As for not being on TV, 2001 was a terrible movie for TV. Way too long for movie of the week shows. It lost something not being shown in Cinerama, shown on the TVs of the day it really sucked. And too cerebral.
As an example of a closed universe movie, it wasn’t going to inspire any conventions. No one was going to a Con dressed as Heywood Floyd. If fanfic is your definition of influence, then it does indeed suffer.
Ah right, another great one. You and I are the rare Sheckley fans, it seems!
It seems that the average person these days, when you mention scifi as you say, thinks movies and TV. Books, what are they? That is SW at work. Big influence on scifi, on science fiction, not so much.
I know I’m showing my age by even mentioning bookstores, but go to one and look at how much space is devoted cookie cutter ST and SW books. That is shelf space that could have been devoted to original work. That’s a bad influence, right there.
and* we love to watch it. * They put out what sells- for the most part.
I’m not saying that fanfic proves or disproves anything. Lord, I remember when everyone and their dog in the advertising business started using “Zarathustra” in their radio and TV commercials, due to the association and the fact that it was public domain music.
It impacted the culture, sure. Any good movie does that. It did not inspire a wave of imitations, merchandise, spinoffs, or even, really, continuation. It got a sequel. Whoopee. So did “The Godfather.”
The distinction I am drawing here is that it did not generate a cult following. And even some cult objects fall into disinterest; I don’t see a whole lot of Planet Of The Apes cosplay. Or merch. Even though the modern remakes were pretty good.
As opposed to a certain Fox TV series, a “sci fi western,” that was mishandled, cancelled, brought back for a movie, and then left and forgotten… which has begun to spawn a cult.
Or a TV show that is approaching its fiftieth anniversary, and still remains fresh in the public’s mind’s eye.
Well, after the insanely disappointing NEMESIS killed off the TNG franchise, years and years and years went by before the STAR TREK reboot hit the big screen…
…and, y’know what? It did okay. It wasn’t, like, in the top five for the year or anything; that’s just crazy talk, it obviously wasn’t going to have that kind of impact; but it made a respectable showing, I guess. And it came out the year after IRON MAN (which was a much bigger hit), and the year before IRON MAN 2 (which was also a much bigger hit).
After that, THE AVENGERS was, of course, the biggest movie of the year. And the year after that, Trek hit back with INTO DARKNESS which – well, it didn’t crack the top ten, because (a) c’mon, be serious; especially since (b) IRON MAN 3 came out that year, obliterating it.
And the year after that – well, TREK took a year off, but WINTER SOLDIER was a colossal hit; and so was X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, though I’m not sure whether that counts; and so was GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, which I’m quite sure counts; and the year after that is now, when AGE OF ULTRON is upcoming and everybody is very excited, and TREK – is taking another year off.
But, man, come 2016 we’ll all be real excited about a new TREK movie, right? I mean, probably not as excited as we’ll be for CIVIL WAR – because those TREK flicks can’t even really compete with the THOR flicks – but, hey, that’s still pretty good.
Not true about the merch. I had a Moon bus model kit. Howard Johnson’s had 2001 themed kids menus when it was out. I believe Marvel even did a comic based on it, with Bowman as the Star Child fighting bad guys, though I’ve only seen one page of one and am pretty fuzzy on it.
Pounding a franchise into the ground is a recent development. Gone with the Wind did not have a sequel. Neither did the Wizard of Oz movie for decades. (The book did, of course.) ST-TOS didn’t have a lot more merch than 2001, despite Roddenberry’s best efforts. I think I still have the catalog created during the show somewhere.
SW create the doll ^h^h^h^H action figures from characters boom.
I bought everything 2001 related I could find, and also lots of early ST stuff. I was one of the letter writers during its run.
I think Cal’s point though is not that they had no influence, which would, be silly to say, but that they have a bad influence, and other things you ignored, like 2001, had major influences also. And not as negative.
ST was an Astounding style space opera - EE Smith or Edmund Hamilton or Campbell. SW was a Planet Stories space opera. 2001 was more golden age “thought variant” kind of a story.
The same to you doubled! 
The quote you referred too is in reference to CULTURAL IMPACT, not box office sales. ST and SW have been around significantly in popular culture for over 30 years.
I figure the box-office returns suggest something about cultural impact: little kids dress up as Marvel characters for Halloween, and grown-up cosplayers do their thing year-round; folks are watching the primetime TV series sure as SNL riffs on them as an easy pop-culture reference; and I understand some people even read the comic books.
Prior to Star Wars, Science Fiction movies were an embarrassing ghetto in Hollywood. Low budgets, has-been actors, and guys in rubber monster suits were the norm. Charlton Heston went from “Leading Man” to “that guy in The Omega Man and Soylent Green.” 2001 was brilliant, of course, and kind of an anomaly. It also lost a metric crapton of money in its initial release (as, in those days, did most movies of course) and did not inspire the major studios to sink real money and talent into SF movies. Prior to Star Wars, the model of a successful SF movie was the anemic Logan’s Run.
Star Wars did for Science Fiction movies what Iron Man did for superheroes–made it something that non-nerds would go watch unironically. And the unending line of SW and Trek sequels doesn’t crowd out the kind of new, innovative SF movies you’d rather watch. On the contrary, it makes it likelier they will get produced. And if you genuinely don’t want to watch the new sequels, you’d be surprised how easy it is not to go see them.
Lol, NICE! I’m glad you’re keeping your Options open.
I’m sympathetic to the OP, but one big reason is this:
I’m not a fan of the latest ST movies. I saw one, didn’t like it, and the second one looked like ass.
The SW prequels were an abortion, and I am very, very leery of the upcoming Ep. VII. I think it’s gonna suck.
So yeah, one reason not to like the latest goods is that they ain’t good (or seem about to be not good).
If they were superior entertainment, then, well, there would be little room to complain. But when they are crap, yeah, they are taking $ away from other movies that could do better.
Stands up and cheers
Please.
Charlton Heston was STILL a leading man in quite a number of high-profile movies from Planet of the Apes to The Omega Man and welllllll after.
Plenty of non-nerds saw: Logan’s Run, Omega Man, Soylent Green, all five of the Planet of the Apes, Silent Running, The Forbin Project, Westworld, Futureworld, The Andromeda Strain, Rollerball, Capricorn One…etc…etc…
They didn’t keep making Sci-Fi movies because they love losing money.
There’s Flash Gordon, Gundam and Futurama. All these other things are filler.
I have mixed feelings the current state of Star Trek and Star Wars.
I want more Trek and Wars. However, I’ve done the unthinkable and stopped watching.
I made it through Voyager, Enterprise and Nemesis without bailing. But when Trek gave us a new Kirk and original crew that went where man has gone before and that was a deal breaker for me. Back when TNG came out I might have accepted a reboot with continuing adventures but going into the future with a new crew seems like a better plan.
I can find a lot to complain about the Wars prequels but I did enjoy them as spacey action movies. Where they lost me is by doing a second, and inferior, Clone Wars cartoon. It makes so much less sense to do one after Revenge of the Sith came out. It started with a horrible movie and maybe I always picked the worst time to check back in with the series but it kept being a disappointment and I had to consider it unwatchable.
I really hope the new series of Star Wars films are going to be good. There is more then I care to think of against it.
Frankly, I expect I’ll like the next Guardians of the Galaxy more.
That’s exactly what I want. But everyone else seems to think if it isn’t dark and the Federation isn’t being torn apart by internal conflict then it’s boring.
(I almost wrote “borging”)
I don’t know. He seems like a second rate Finn O’Donnevan.