I swear by the Dark Side of the Borg Queen, I’m giving up my sci-fi geek badge and turning to westerns or some other shit. Both Star Wars, with almost 30 years behind it, and Star Trek, with 40 years behind it, have ended (apparantly) their super runs on modern pop culture.
And did it in such a way as to make this ultra geek of a sci-fi fan feel diminished. Trek actively insults its fans with its closing (thanks, Berman and Bragga), and Wars ends in an insipid whimper. At least Wars had some good CGI and explained internal canon, though in a very ham fisted way. Trek couldn’t even give us that, but instead chose to vomit on us.
Oh well, I still have Doctor Who…
I doubt we’ll ever see another franchise of any genre accomplish what these sci-fi/fant giants did, especially in the area of fan loyalty and franchise longevity. So… they could’ve given us something to treasure, instead of these two half hearted attempts at closure. Damn, just hiring a writer or two would have done wonders.
That’s my rant for the month. Pit or Cafe? Well, it’s about entertainment (or the lack thereof), so by default I place it in Cafe. Do with it as you see fit, I’m out of here.
Oh, Who. I dunno if it’s “major” enough to be the “other of 3,” but as a once-Whoie, I won’t argue too much. Well, Who was dead before. It just regenerated, now looking completely different.
We all know that George says the movie franchise ends with Ep. 3. I think he’ll do (preferably have someone else do) three more after he makes one thru 6 completely CGI.
> And did it in such a way as to make this ultra geek of a sci-fi fan feel diminished.
If you’re an ultra-geek of a science fiction fan, why are you wasting your time watching movies instead of reading books? Written science fiction is the real thing. Of course you’re going to be disappointed by science fiction on film or in a TV series. It’s a pale shadow of real science fiction, which is written science fiction.
Star Trek will probably last as long as cockroaches. The hard-wired fanbase is too large for the people running it to give up; they know there’s guaranteed money. On the other hand, I wouldn’t argue that its influence and reach are way down. It has petered out and I don’t anticipate some big revival, even if it sticks around for a long time yet.
None of the Star Wars prequels lived up to the first ones, but it ended on a compromised high note. Revenge of the Sith had bits that actually measured up, whereas the first two just sucked. Also the movie broke the one-day opening record with something like $50 million dollars, and is likely to have the biggest opening weekend in movie history. So it may live on in other ways, even though the movies are done.
Thank you, Wendell, I do.:rolleyes: But, in these two franchises, the books were a second class format. The franchises existed thru TV and movies, so much so that most of the hard core fans (and even the owners) view canon as only occuring in TV or movies, not the books.
And to everyone else saying “you don’t know how it works, they’ll be back,” TPTB for both these franchises have said that this is it. This time, I actually believe Lucas. As far as SW movies, anyways. If the proposed TV series actually comes to pass, I would wager that it would be as far removed from Eps I - VI as TNG was from TOS. And concerning the Trek franchise swan song, Bergama intended it to be a wrap of the past 18 years. There are no current plans for more. The owners said so!
So, are they really over? In a way, the answer is obviously both Yes and No. The story of the Republic, Empire, and Vader is finished. The stories of Federation flagships named Enterprise appears to be over. That’s not what I’m lamenting. The complaint I have is that the “completion” or “end” of these wonderful stories was handled in such a piss poor way.
Sith had a good hour mixed into it (in a 2 1/2 hour movie), Trek’s TATV sucked rancid donkey ass.
And, as I said earlier, when dealing in matters of taste or opinion,
I was talking about reading science fiction that doesn’t come from TV or movies. I wasn’t referring to the books adapted from the Star Trek or Star Wars or Dr. Who series. Written science fiction is the real thing. Science fiction in movies or TV is a pale reflection. Books adapted from TV or movies are worse. They’re a pale reflection of a pale reflection.
If you ever visit Unaboard, check the book reviews in Fierra’s Files. You’ll find a truck load of my own reviews of Sc-Fi novels there, both classic and current.
I’m just trying to wallow in my bad mood here. As far as viewable sci-fi goes, I’m enjoying ABC’s LOST and am eagerly awaiting the Firefly movie, Serenity. Anyone know of when the new Doctor Who might make it over here?
(in defense of NoClueBoy) Your point, however valid, was off-topic for this thread, which is about, not science fiction in general, but the “major Sci-Fi franchises.”
This is debatable, but to do so in this thread would constitute a hijack. I’ll just say that (1) SF in movies and TV has often been “pale” in the past because of limitations in special effects and because of the need to appeal to a mass audience many of whom were unfamiliar with SF’s conventions, and (2) SF in movies and TV when judged by the standards of written SF is, of course, going to suffer. But I don’t think movies/TV have to be an inherently inferior medium for SF.
No argument there; although if you include books set in the worlds and using the characters from TV and movies, you at least open up the possibility for some original creative work. In fact, now that I think of it, some of the world’s greatest literature (plays, operas, epic poems, et al) has been written borrowing plots, characters, or settings from other media.
You guys can continue the hijack, I think it’s interesting.
I read a lot of Sci-Fi, both penned by the masters and from unknowns. Not all written Sci-Fi is good. And some viewable Sci-Fi is marvelous.
As a rule of thumb, I find novels based on the universe of a a major franchise of TV and Movies to usually be lacking. With a few notable exceptions. But, to judge all franchise fiction out of hand as being less worthy comes across to me as being elitist. There can be good and rubbish in any genre. For every bad Trek or Wars novel someone may point out, I can come up with sub par works from the “masters” to bring balance to the Force.
Still, it all really comes down to mere taste. I know of one guy who has probably read close to 500 Trek books. He enjoys them. Who am I to say he is wrong to do so? I can, however, say I don’t enjoy them myself. While not putting down his taste, I assert my own opinion.
I think there’s a good chance that Firefly will become the next big SF franchise. It’s apparently already a huge presence at SF conventions, the DVDs have sold 5 million copies, the movie’s looking like it will be a big hit, there’s a comic book series based on it coming out next month… Universal has already said that if Serenity has a decent opening weekend they will green-light two more movies, and a decent opening weekend seems assured given the size of the fanbase and the fact that previews in 30 different cities have all sold out almost instantly.
What we really need is a return to classic science fiction, with emphasis on believable societies, logical consequences of technological trends, and other trappings of real science fiction. Star Wars and Star Trek were NEVER that good. They’re just space opera. Shows like Firefly make a serious attempt at answering “what if?” questions. What if the last two big powers were the west and China, and they merged? How would that change people in 500 years? What would happen if you colonized dozens of planet and moons, and a large government formed and tried to control them? What would happen to people on the losing side of that war? What would they be like? What would their values be? How would people behave if they were taken from a technologically advanced culture and dumped on backwater, terraformed planets and moons? How would they cope and adapt? What parts of their old culture would they keep?
Star Wars never reached for that level. It was populated with cardboard characters dropped into a plot, uttering lines written only to move the plot along. The only character that does any developing is Anakin, and even that is in a predictabe, plot-driven direction.
Frankly, if we can move fan’s attention off of these ‘major franchises’ and focus them more on SF in general, that would be a great thing. I’d like to see a trend towards bringing some classic SF to the big screen, in a form true to the original books. There are half a dozen Heinlein novels that would make great movies. Haldeman’s “The Forever War” would be fantastic. Keep clowns like Jerry Bruckheimer far away from them, and stay true to the material.
What exactly is the appeal of science fiction (or frankly, other) entertainment franchises? The franchises exist for one reason: to take a successful concept and milk it down to the last drop, then slice the udder up for jerky. They don’t exist to expand a story line, or explore social implications of new discoveries/technologies, or even to entertain for entertainment’s sake, any more than McDonald’s makes healthy, delicious, nutritious food. Franchises quickly come to a point of self-parody, whether intentional or not, because the characters can only experience so many challenges or so much development before they become cartoons.
A good non-science fiction example of this is the Bond franchise. The first few films were, if not great art, classic cinema, Bond becoming an iconic anti-hero who killed in cold blood. But by the fifth film he ventured into a complete parody; there was nothing that he could do that was sufficiently shocking or surprising within the realm of plausibilty so the writers and producers had such silliness as a capsule-eating rocket, a giant underground lair disguised as a volcano lake, and a quirky bald villian, all of which have become elements of parody. The films since (with a couple of notable exceptions) have merely been riffs on what has come before, and are largely uninteresting attempts to market the Bond image rather than dare to do something interesting and unique.
Ditto for the Law & Order television franchise; the original L&O was, at least for the first few seasons, a sort of groundbreaking show. It’s pseudo-cinema-vérité style, the realistic-looking non-pretty main cast, the focus on the stories, et cetera made it interesting and refreshing. The follow-on series took the name but attempted to infuse conventional process (soap opera elements, more attractive cast, more linear storytelling), and failed to reproduce but the style and appeal of the original.
Star Trek way outlasted its welcome, starting with the third film. The Next Generation show had some promise–it had occasional moments of outright brilliance–and finished off with an excellent story, but followups have been clearly just milking the name for all of its worth. Look at what happened when various people tried to take the inimitable Blade Runner with its bizarre mishmash of high-tech and retrograde, noirish elements (since become known as cyberpunk) and spin it off into a series of novels (The Edge of Human and followers) or films (Soldier) which totally failed to replicate the unique dynamic and philosophical questions about the nature of man. The results were flat and derivative, unworthy of and diminishing their origins
Imagine someone trying to franchise Donnie Darko, or Brazil, or Casablanca (which was done, most unsatisfactorily). The thing that made these stories uniquely interesting would be lost in the attempt to keep repeating the things that made them unique in the first place. Franchises like Star Trek or Star Wars end up trying to explain everything and tie together all characters and stories into one überstory that becomes clastrophobic and implausibly incestuous (witness the Star Wars prequels).
What would be interesting to see is a series of stories, set in a common universe and perhaps losely interconnected but having a limited timeframe (whatever is apporpriate to the story arc), written and produced by different creators, and leaving elements explained or hanging. One of the major appeals of good science fiction, and indeed all fiction, is that there exists a world out beyond the stage that is seen only in bits and asides. A weekly “let’s see what kind of peril we can put our cast of three main characters plus some guys in red shirts that everyone knows are going to die” series is inevitably going to fall into the same trap of soap opera and technobabble solutions, or else fall into the trap (a la Babylon 5) of padding out the story to match distribution timeframes. One of the things that worked about Dr. Who, despite its often cheesy dialog, terrible special effects, campy repeat villians, et cetera, was the fact that each storyline need only fill as many episodes as it took to tell the story (4, 6, 12) and was allowed to exist seperate and complete; this especially worked with the early “historical” episodes which could be viewed virtually independent of the rest of the canon, and therefore could introduce new elements, motivations, technologies, et cetera without having to constantly reference back to, and be constrained by or emulate previous stories.
The problem with adapting novels is that they are often far too long, too expository, and too “deep” without being sufficiently graphic to make for good cinema. Most of Heinlein’s “mature” work falls in this category; as great of a novel as it is (and I think it’s a better book than Stranger In A Strange Land) The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is unfilmable (even in miniseries format) owing to the fact that much of that novel’s value is in its depiction of this quasi-libertarian society that sprung from penal roots. Told, as it is, in first person with Manny’s quite blantantly colored and narrow view of the world (his misperceptions of life and history on Earth are particularly interesting) it would be a flat adaptation to film. I don’t think The Forever War would film much better. OTOH, Heinlein’s juveniles appear, in retrospect (although I doubt he intended this) as novelizations of screen treatments, and might adapt quite well literally. I think the Tripods trilogy could be quite adequately adapted without undue alteration, but more nuanced works don’t travel well to screen–I shudder at the thought of any attempt to translate A Canticle For Leibowicz into film.
Actually, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is currently in development, and the script has been written by Tim Minear, who is one of the lead writers/producers/directors on Firefly. There is also a movie version of Have Space Suit - Will Travel in the works.
I agree fully that the most movie-friendly Heinlein works would be the juveniles. I would love to see a film adaptation of Citizen of the Galaxy, or an animated version of The Star Beast. In fact, I would think a number of the juveniles would make great animated films. Movies based on The Rolling Stones or Starman Jones would be great family films. And Tunnel in the Sky would make a great Anime film.
Then there are all of Heinlein’s short stories - You could expand a number of them to novel length. If Total Recall can be made from a Philip K. Dick short story, why can’t someone make a good movie from All You Zombies? The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag would make a good futuristic horror film.
I’d love to see movie directors move away from more formulaic serial space opera movies and start doing serious renderings of more classic science fiction.
Or how about an HBO miniseries based on Heinlein’s ‘Future History’? That’d be cool.
