Pacific Rim

[Ratman_tf]

I don't think PR had any problem with sympathetic or believable, YMMV.

I think so too.

Meh, third string character at best. Honestly can anyone name the characters in aliens beyond ripley,newt and the dude that say "game over man"? Aliens has a lot of rose colored glasses with it when it comes to anything beyond "shooting aliens with guns"

For the record, I brought up Alien versus Prometheus.  But both are good examples. Names aren't characters.

[jgsugden]

What is 'good' Sci-fi based upon my criteria (character development, 'science' that doesn't take you out of the movie, good story) across a few genres/formats?

* Iron Man (I)
* Empire Strikes Back
* Firefly/Serenity
* Journeyman (short lived series from a few years ago that did as well as I've ever seen with Time Travel)
* First season of BSG
* Alien from LA

Note that none of these are flawless, but they're examples of Sci-fi that doesn't just toss the towel on believability and story.  They don’t put the spectacle ahead of characters, and they give effort into making the science work.  Or they have Kathy Ireland, which of course, trumps all other concerns.

[eldaec]

Empire is the best example of a film that gets science all wrong, but it doesn't matter because you get distracted by a decent script, decent characters, and not forcing bad science right in your face with an unnecessary line about the millennium falcon being made of jelly.

[Ragnoros]

I wonder if del Toro (or a writer) put some of these quotes in just to fuck with nerds.

[Ingmar]

Star Wars is not sci-fi. I should put that in my signature.

[Lakov_Sanite]

But it had robots and robots always mean scifi......oh, wait a minute....

[Simond]

I wonder if del Toro (or a writer) put some of these quotes in just to fuck with nerds.

What's even funnier is that the analogue thing is slightly plausible, given that the Soviets shoved a valves-n-tubes analogue radar set into one of their jetfighters IRL because a) POWER!!! and b) it was hardened against EMPs compared to solid-state electronics, so all the bitching about "Analogue is meaningless" just shows ignorance on the part of the complainer.

[Margalis]

Star Wars is classic space opera. Maybe it's not only sci-fi, but it definitely is sci-fi.

Is Lensman not sci-fi? At the time of release it was considered solidly sci-fi, it's only retroactively that people want to claim that things like it somehow don't count as sci-fi.

In case you can't tell I hate attempts to try to legitimize sci-fi by calling it something else or by trying to pretend that classic staples of the genre aren't part of it. Science fiction has never been about scientific plausibility or realistic speculation.

[eldaec]

Not realistic speculation, but definitely it has to include speculation.

But I agree with you. Arguing which single bucket a film goes in is unhelpful most of time. Don't care what genre it is. Stupid lazy scripting is stupid and lazy in any genre or combination of genres.

[Ingmar]

It's fantasy. Magic, swords, dragons, wizards, yadda yadda.

[jgsugden]

Whatever label you want to apply to it, Empire and those other movies aim for, and do a good job of, telling compelling stories using substantial characters without the science flarbs being too obvious and taking you out of the story ( at the time of release... as they age the tiny cracks widen). You could take the same approach in a Voltron vs. Cthulhu movie.

[tazelbain]

There is no science farble because there is no science. If you think a light sabre is anything but a magic sword you are delusional.

[Merusk]

It's science fiction because there's lasers and robots and space ships and planets and cyborgs.

It's probably more correctly labeled Sciantasy or Fantasy Science but when labeling things the opinion of the general public is what sets the categories, and to them it's SciFi.  Just as most technology is 'magic boxes' to people.

But really only pedantic geeks get all antsy about it.

[tazelbain]

I give 0 shits what the average person thinks about anything outside of politics.  Its clear half of them think 2 + 2 = squirrel.

Let me go a different route: in the limited format of a movie you to choose what you can show. They could have shown 30 mins of tanks and nukes and planes failing to kill Kaiju and they could have shown another 30mins of trying seal the rift and they could spent hours going all the different designs and tech of the GFRs and they could shown hours and hours of flashbacks of how all the characters got to final battle.  If they did, they could of handled most of the farbles in this thread. But I am glad they didn't because I wanted to see a movie about GFR fighting giant monsters in high resolution not the hero's journey #2.45x10^123325432 and a giant pile expository fig-leafs to cover it all.

[jgsugden]

Hey, if they started the movie with rolling text that explained that a rag tag band of robot jockeys were invading an alien dimension as Earth's last hope and then proceeded to show 2 hours of kicking ass... great. Sell it as that and leave out pathetic and insulting storytelling. That would be fine entertainment,.

However, it would be a spectacle, not a movie. It would be to movies what the WWE is to sports.

We can tell a real story that is compelling and draws you in  in a monster versus robots setting... and it could be awesome. If anyone bothered to try.

[Simond]

It's science fiction because there's lasers and robots and space ships and planets and cyborgs.

It's probably more correctly labeled Sciantasy or Fantasy Science but when labeling things the opinion of the general public is what sets the categories, and to them it's SciFi.  Just as most technology is 'magic boxes' to people.

But really only pedantic geeks get all antsy about it.

It's Space Opera. Why are people discussing this?

[lamaros]

Star Wars is SF, are some of you nuts? To quote Wikipeddia, which is pretty accurate here:

'Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds. [...] Its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature.'

Yeah, 'the force' is more fantasy than SF (though drawing more strongly on existing human psudo-science ideas of 'magic' than fantastic ones). But space ships, hover racers, etc - the universe is coherent with an imagined human future of what space civilization might be like. That it takes place in the past makes it no less connected in this sense.

Hard SF is just a SF sub-genre, it's not the genre itself.

Next you'll be saying I Am Legend isn't SF...

[Lakov_Sanite]

Star Wars is SF, are some of you nuts? To quote Wikipeddia, which is pretty accurate here:

'Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds. [...] Its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature.'

Yeah, 'the force' is more fantasy than SF (though drawing more strongly on existing human psudo-science ideas of 'magic' than fantastic ones). But space ships, hover racers, etc - the universe is coherent with an imagined human future of what space civilization might be like. That it takes place in the past makes it no less connected in this sense.

Hard SF is just a SF sub-genre, it's not the genre itself.

Next you'll be saying I Am Legend isn't SF...

Thor is SciFi

[Sjofn]

It's fantasy. Magic, swords, dragons, wizards, yadda yadda.

You forgot "bizarrely stagnant." No matter when a thing is set in the Star Wars universe, it's exactly the same tech-wise as any other time.

[lamaros]

Star Wars is SF, are some of you nuts? To quote Wikipeddia, which is pretty accurate here:

'Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds. [...] Its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature.'

Yeah, 'the force' is more fantasy than SF (though drawing more strongly on existing human psudo-science ideas of 'magic' than fantastic ones). But space ships, hover racers, etc - the universe is coherent with an imagined human future of what space civilization might be like. That it takes place in the past makes it no less connected in this sense.

Hard SF is just a SF sub-genre, it's not the genre itself.

Next you'll be saying I Am Legend isn't SF...

Thor is SciFi

I know nothing about Thor so I'm afraid someone else will have to respond to your idiocy today.

[Ingmar]

Star Wars is SF, are some of you nuts? To quote Wikipeddia, which is pretty accurate here:

'Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds. [...] Its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature.'

Yeah, 'the force' is more fantasy than SF (though drawing more strongly on existing human psudo-science ideas of 'magic' than fantastic ones). But space ships, hover racers, etc - the universe is coherent with an imagined human future of what space civilization might be like. That it takes place in the past makes it no less connected in this sense.

Hard SF is just a SF sub-genre, it's not the genre itself.

Next you'll be saying I Am Legend isn't SF...

Never seen I Am Legend, so I can't really say, but I think for something to be sci-fi it has to make a good faith attempt at extrapolating from things we know about how the world actually works. You said it yourself; alternative possible worlds. Star Wars does none of those things, none of the 'science' in it even tries. Not the space flight, not the weapons, and certainly not the magic. It's a fairy tale - the young knight takes up his sword and goes to rescue the princess from the evil wizard.

There's wiggle room in that people always give psi type stuff a pass, and sometimes some religious elements (I don't think I could construct a legitimate argument that Bablyon 5 for example isn't sci-fi, despite the reincarnation stuff and the Psi Corps), but Star Wars is way, way, way past that.

[Margalis]

Never seen I Am Legend, so I can't really say, but I think for something to be sci-fi it has to make a good faith attempt at extrapolating from things we know about how the world actually works.

"Speculative fiction" is just a play for legitimacy that someone come up with because it had the same initials as Science Fiction and sounded ok. That is the serious reason the term exists - because people were looking for new nomenclature and it had the same initials. Science fiction in the 50s was largely concerned with planet-sized spiders and other crazy shit, without any veneer of plausible speculation. Lensman is about "Q-type helixes" and giant brains from an alien planet.

PKD, widely considered one of the best science fiction authors of all time (and in my opinion THE best), did not make a good faith attempt at extrapolation in much of his work. Some science fiction novels, like The Space Merchants, are pure satire. There are also science fiction works that are comedic.

Historically science fiction was not about plausible extrapolation or speculation. I mean, Frankenstein is often considered an early science fiction novel. Is that really plausible or an extrapolation? Is The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy speculative?

Science fiction is imaginative fiction about the future and futuristic stuff. The idea that it has to be a good faith attempt at extrapolation or speculation rules out a lot of things that have always been considered science fiction, including many science fiction staples.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Star Wars is SF, are some of you nuts? To quote Wikipeddia, which is pretty accurate here:

'Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds. [...] Its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature.'

Yeah, 'the force' is more fantasy than SF (though drawing more strongly on existing human psudo-science ideas of 'magic' than fantastic ones). But space ships, hover racers, etc - the universe is coherent with an imagined human future of what space civilization might be like. That it takes place in the past makes it no less connected in this sense.

Hard SF is just a SF sub-genre, it's not the genre itself.

Next you'll be saying I Am Legend isn't SF...

Thor is SciFi

I know nothing about Thor so I'm afraid someone else will have to respond to your idiocy today.

By your definition, the movie Thor, is scifi. That is to say it's supposed to be super advanced technology that just LOOKS like magic and explains why a man can fly around on a hammer.

[Margalis]

Thor certainly had science-fiction elements.

I believe Thor's Hammer is supposed to be magic - it's not "super advanced technology" as far as I can remember. (They may say something like "in our world magic is like your science" but from human perspective it's still basically magic) And Thor is loosely based on classic mythology that had no scientific trappings. But stuff like the space bridge was presented as being scientific in nature. I mean, a scientific discovery is what sets the story in motion.

There's no reason why something can't be both fantasy and science fiction in parts.

[eldaec]

It's fantasy. Magic, swords, dragons, wizards, yadda yadda.

You forgot "bizarrely stagnant." No matter when a thing is set in the Star Wars universe, it's exactly the same tech-wise as any other time.

No more stagnant than Human earth development from the fall of the roman empire to the renaissance.

Warhammer 40k probably counts as SciFi and has a world where development is in reverse.

Also planet of the apes.

[lamaros]

Never seen I Am Legend, so I can't really say, but I think for something to be sci-fi it has to make a good faith attempt at extrapolating from things we know about how the world actually works.

"Speculative fiction" is just a play for legitimacy that someone come up with because it had the same initials as Science Fiction and sounded ok. That is the serious reason the term exists - because people were looking for new nomenclature and it had the same initials. Science fiction in the 50s was largely concerned with planet-sized spiders and other crazy shit, without any veneer of plausible speculation. Lensman is about "Q-type helixes" and giant brains from an alien planet.

PKD, widely considered one of the best science fiction authors of all time (and in my opinion THE best), did not make a good faith attempt at extrapolation in much of his work. Some science fiction novels, like The Space Merchants, are pure satire. There are also science fiction works that are comedic.

Historically science fiction was not about plausible extrapolation or speculation. I mean, Frankenstein is often considered an early science fiction novel. Is that really plausible or an extrapolation? Is The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy speculative?

Science fiction is imaginative fiction about the future and futuristic stuff. The idea that it has to be a good faith attempt at extrapolation or speculation rules out a lot of things that have always been considered science fiction, including many science fiction staples.

Eh, I think plausibility has a fair role. Though of course there are always exceptions. It can be plausible in a very broad sense. Certainly the notion that there needs to be a coherent and explicitly examined scientific underpinning to such stories is not true.

Anyhow this is falling the way of philosophical 'define a chair' pointlessness.

Edit: I Am Legend is zombie-virus-post-apocalyptic.

[Rendakor]

Next you'll be saying I Am Legend isn't SF...

I assume you're trolling, but I Am Legend is a horror story, not Sci Fi.

[Merusk]

It's fantasy. Magic, swords, dragons, wizards, yadda yadda.

You forgot "bizarrely stagnant." No matter when a thing is set in the Star Wars universe, it's exactly the same tech-wise as any other time.

No more stagnant than Human earth development from the fall of the roman empire to the renaissance.

Warhammer 40k probably counts as SciFi and has a world where development is in reverse.

Also planet of the apes.

LOTR. 3,000 years after Isildur, still using armor, livestock power, swords and bows. 3,000 years before that? Oh yeah, the same.

It's orders of magnitude easier to create an IP and moment in time and make it feel 'real' than a full world and detailed progress of technology.

Oh: Also, Star Trek. Excellent example as there were earth-shattering discoveries made in episodes that were later abandoned or wholesale forgotten for the sake of the IP or because they were simply throw-out ideas for a social message.

[Ingmar]

There's no reason why something can't be both fantasy and science fiction in parts.

I agree with this, I just don't agree that Star Wars specifically has much if any of the science fiction parts. On your earlier post, I'm not sure there's any reason to think that Frankenstein wasn't at least semi-plausible given the level of scientific understanding that existed when it was written; same with stuff like Wells and Verne. I'm not going to hold people writing in the 19th century to modern standards of science. And as far as HHG goes, I think once you're into satire all bets are off.

I guess Lucas tried to walk it back to sci-fi with the midichlorian stuff, that's much better. 

[RhyssaFireheart]

I think the problem with labeling Star Wars as science fiction is that you could completely change the setting (wagons for starsips, guns for blasters, and such) and still tell the same story.  It's set in the future and has a SciFi basis, but nothing of the story itself relies on that science fiction-y stuff.  With some minor adjustments (e.g. turning the Death Star into the hidden enclave city) the story wouldn't change much, if at all.  Which is probably why SW is usually called a space opera rather than just SciFi, IMO.

Personally, I think while something can have a SciFi setting, if you could change the setting any still pretty much tell the same story, then it's more speculative than science.  If you can't tell the story without the science, then it's closer to being "real" science fiction.  Again, IMO.

[Simond]

Thor certainly had science-fiction elements.

I believe Thor's Hammer is supposed to be magic - it's not "super advanced technology" as far as I can remember. (They may say something like "in our world magic is like your science" but from human perspective it's still basically magic) And Thor is loosely based on classic mythology that had no scientific trappings. But stuff like the space bridge was presented as being scientific in nature. I mean, a scientific discovery is what sets the story in motion.

There's no reason why something can't be both fantasy and science fiction in parts.

Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.

[jgsugden]

Labels are unimportant here, folks.  Whether you consider it sci-fi, fantasy, or furry porn: The reason why it was mentioned is still applicable.

It is a story with fictional elements that we can't replicate with our modern science and it was treated seriously and dramatically, leaving audiences with a feeling of immersion that was not ruined with poor storytelling, paper thin characters, and science that took the audience out of the movies.  Regardless of the label, if you took those same efforts with a monster versus robots movie, it could be a very good movie.

I'd argue that the reasons that some of you argue that the movie containing space battles and cyborg psionicists battling with laser swords is not sci-fi are some of the things that can turn a story that would otherwise be bad sci-fi into good sci-fi:  They didn't hang the story on explaining the science but just universally accepted it as real and part of that universe.  The best sci-fi/fantasy/whatever is the stuff where the sci-fi/fantasy augments the satory, but is not essential to it, IMHO.  

[lamaros]

The best thing is when you don't make rules.

Star Wars is a clear SF space opera, whatever else it might also be. Mostly because it is heavily concerned with imagined future human events and technologies such as space travel, space battles, planetary discovery, weapons technology, robots, etc. All these elements are suggestive of a futuristic human story. Even though the plot doesn't revolve around them or explore the science of them doesn't matter, it's implicit.

Embassytown is just an excuse to crap on about language. I would argue it makes no coherent scientific sense either, but it's still SF too. The idea that SF has to have some hard science in it ignores the breadth of the genre for a very specific sub-genre.

[MediumHigh]

I liked starwars because its was fucking grande. A movie of a grand scope and laser swords. I loved it for that. Not for the characters. I mean luke is kinda upstaged by his sister and a lot of starwars is downright cartoonie.

Speaking of some "questionable" examples of good scifi from a critical point of view.

Iron Man? The suit should have killed tony like 8 times. The inside literally has no padding. I have to hope tony thought of pressurizing...
And yeah I watched ironman like 200 times and loved it. But the science? dear god. Its funny that while the dialogue and characters in the first ironman felt fresh and sharp, the last two movies? Same skit, same execution, yet I find myself terrible bored with the whole thing and not liking anyone save tony and that's on a "well at least he isn't completely worthless" level

Terminator? Look I love this movie but the glaring plothole is presented in the first 10 minutes. So robots build a time machine that can only be used if you made of flesh and bone. So in their in-genius they decide to wrap their robots in human skin and send their robo-assassin back to murder one human female. Why? Because her son will kill all the robo toys. Ok whatever, cool right. But heres the thing. If you can invent a time machine..... why not you know...invent one only u can use? I didn't know robots could feel desperation. But another thing, so the human resistance sends one person to the past to stop the robo-assassin. Sure, that's cool. Wonder how the logistics of that looks like. But here is the money shot, so if I remember correctly the human body can't go mach one without turning into goo....but wait your telling me that a human can time travel naked and not come out looking like a fried strip of beef jerky?

But yeah for me "good to great" scifi gives me a world to immerse myself in and get excited about. Sometimes the film needs to be epic. And other times it can just blow shit up real good. It depends on the concept, if its bashing me over the head with something, and whether it gave me something to want more of that gets me going.

[Stormwaltz]

No more stagnant than Human earth development from the fall of the roman empire to the renaissance.

Educate yourself.