The Dumbing Down of the SF Movie

[ubiquirk]

Don Kaye at MSN actually offers up an insightful piece on the dumbing down of the science fiction movie in going from text to film.  Kaye even goes so far as to recognize the New Wave movement, which heralded the interesting shift in sf from the rocket ships of the so-called Golden Age to issues of interior space:  psychology, culture, etc.

I also

Comments

[firefly124]

I think part of the question is how well anything translates when it was created for one medium and then converted to another. Part of it may be dumbing down, but I think another part is just what format best suits the work, because going from film to text isn't guaranteed to work well, either. 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example, works much, much better on screen than in its novelized form, and probably should have been left as a more visual and less verbal experience.

Were Catch-22 and/or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest books first?

[ubiquirk]

Were Catch-22 and/or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest books first?

Yes, and I pulled them off the top of my mind - there are numerous examples.

I think the issue wasn't just books to film but also that sf movies are now purposefully made 'dumber' than they used to be as a marketing strategy. I didn't make that clear, but his article does.

[wsandrs]

I'm not much of a sf fan per se, but I did see Minority Report and Paycheck and I definitely noticed that they could have been more complex and interesting. It's been awhile since I've seen Gattaca, but I think that was one of the better ones produced "recently".

[ubiquirk]

But did you see no difference in the quality of theme comparing Minority Report and Paycheck?

You're right, Gattaca was good. So was the first Matrix movie, and Children of Men, which starts off Kaye's article.

I'm almost beginning to think it's a numbers game. These days, if only 10% of sf movies made are quality, then Kayes argument would be that pre-Star Wars this number was higher - let's say 30%. [I'm guesstimating on all of these numbers.]

But what I'm arguing is that Hollywood overall only puts out quality movies 10% of the time these days - that this isn't something isolated to only the sf genre (or fantasy either).

[wsandrs]

You're right on both counts. There was definitely a difference between Minority Report and Paycheck, at least MR tried to be more than an action movie. Also, the 10% quality movies sounds about right too. The problem may be more glaring in the sf genre because Hollywood produces it less often.

[ubiquirk]

The problem may be more glaring in the sf genre because Hollywood produces it less often.

Sounds right!

He also hit on something else - how some authors and directors try to say their book/film isn't sf (even though it uses multiple sf tropes) because they don't want people to expect it to be 'dumb.' The irony being that sf is never going to have a better reputation if the best of its works refuse to proudly declaim their genre.