Why Aren't There Any Good Science Fiction Films These Days?

So what do I mean?

I'll being with what the term "science fiction" means to me, what I look for in a film with that as the labelled genre.

Let's go through the last year or so: To me, for a film/book/tv show to be labelled a "sci-fi" it must feature two key things. First, a level of technology that is different to our own. Notice I chose to use the word "different" and not "better" or "more advanced." That was deliberate, because a film set in a universe where the internal combustion engine was never invented, and clockwork is used as the primary form of locomotion/energy generation is still science fiction. Break the phrase down; fictional science. 

Nope. Back to Bond with you.

Second, it's not enough to just have a setting that features a different level or form of technology, the film itself must be more than just "Twilight with Space Lasers" or "Die Hard 5: Death Star Revenge," and this is the absolute biggest pet peeve of this critic, seeing a film listed under "sci-fi/action" or "sci-fi/thriller" when it's just the same boring action tropes covered in shiny CG and lens flare (no guesses for who I'm referring to there). The film needs to utilise the environment, the universe, and weave it together into the integral parts of the plot. You can't just have a cowboy film with aliens and call it sci-fi, it's not. It's just a cowboy shooting at an alien.

Some examples of recent films that have utterly failed to hit the sci-fi butter zone:

Prometheus

Ridley Scott, you wonderful man, what were you playing at? Taking one of the most successful sci-fi franchises of all time and ruining it with this. I'd rather watch AVP Requiem again. It's not enough that you decided to forgo writing an actual story, create any decent characters or set pieces in favour of side-stepping canon, you had to go and ruin the Xenomorph as well. It looks ridiculous. Not to mention the main antagonist closely resembling the offspring of Chunk and The Michelin Man, what were you thinking?

This is a Space Jockey?!

But why does it fail as a science fiction film? It's set in the future, sure. There's space ships and aliens, sure. But it's nothing spectacular, it's a hash together of so many things we've seen before, in previous Alien franchise films as well as further afield. What was missing, the vital spark of pure sci-fi, is the unknown. You don't throw out a film, cobbled together from the ideas you had 30-odd years ago but just couldn't fit into the original franchise. If you do you end up with Jurassic Park 3, and nobody wants that. Sadly, that's what we got. New money for old rope. Instead of sci-fi, I'm relabelling it "action/horror in space."

Total Recall

If you haven't seen it, go watch the original Paul Verhoeven version. And then Robocop. And then Starship Troopers, the man is a genius.

However, the remake starring (for some reason) Colin Farrell was also not a science fiction film. And no, I'm not going to harp on about it being nothing new, it's a remake. And even then, the original was based on a spectacular book by Philip K. Dick (one of the fathers of sci-fi) titled "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale." Originality, less important with this one then. 

A Total Recall without Kuato isn't a Total Recall

So where did it go wrong? In the execution, that's where. Truly, the film misses the point of the original (disregarding the source material, assuming we're working with a direct remake of the Verhoeven film) the idea that a man can have his memory copied over, muddled up, until he's unsure of what's real and what is just the "mental holiday" he paid for. Instead of utilising this as a way to keep the audience guessing as to what is real and what is implanted memory, or even if the implanted memories were originally his that he'd had wiped, the film quickly breaks down into a by-the-numbers action film. This might as well just be an amnesia-driven Statham film. Don't get me wrong, I love a good JS film, but this is supposed to be sci-fi. And yes, Len Wiseman, we know you have a pretty wife, there's no need to keep showing us.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Yes, I'm a trekkie/trekker or whatever the parlance is these days. I somewhat enjoyed the first J.J. Abrams Star Trek, but not because it was Star Trek. Abrams made damn sure that we all knew he wasn't going canon with this one from the start. The whole "it's an alternate timeline" rubbish belongs in 80s TV, not multi-million dollar grossing blockbusters.

Did he think we wouldn't see this coming?

Remove the established universe, as Abrams did, and what you're left with is a very mundane film riding on the wave of praise the first film generated. By-the-numbers action film, very little in the way of character arcs, a surprise twist that wasn't a surprise twist and dear god, so much CG. More CG than absolutely anyone ever needed. So far as fitting my rules of sci-fi goes, yes it's full to the brim with phasers, teleporters, warp drives etc. but none of it can really be called sc-fi any more - we've had over 50 years of it now, it's like calling a film about modern fighter pilots a sci-fi; it's just not new and exiting to the audience any more. Regarding the integration of the universe into the plot, to qualify as a sci-fi by my second rule; still pretty poor. You could take the exact same plot, same characters, same twists etc. and set it on a galleon in the 16th century and not a lot would change.

Oblivion

This is so obviously intended
to be Apple tech.

Wow. This film really knows how to take brilliant ideas from anywhere, cobble them together and slap a Tom Cruise in it. Trope after trope after trope. None really gelling together to make a cohesive story. You can't really put "last man on earth" with "the guys in white are actually bad and the guys in black are actually good" with "giant red glowing eye computer wants to kill us all" with "let's hijack a ship and fly into their mothership" with "everyone is a clone" and really expect anything good to come out of it. It's a sausage film. Made of the best bits of other films. Sprinkled liberally with Tom Cruise. So this neither satisfies the first, nor the second of my requirements. How can it? When it's a chimera of other, better films. It deserves absolutely no credit for any success it has

.

As a point of balance and fairness I feel I should mention those films that have hit that sci-fi sweet spot in recent months:
- Looper

Yep. Just one.

So how do I think the problem can be solved?

New IP.

The major, major problem with the science fiction film industry is that films are being made, either of books written during the height of the sci-fi era (early 60s to late 70s) which have been feeding our pop culture for nearly 40 years now, and there's not a lot left we haven't seen/someone has been brave enough to make. If not "adapted from...." then "ripped off from..." seems to be the name of the game. Time and time again I see films being released in the same formulaic manner, playing it safe to make back all the millions of dollars spent on the shiny CG. We need risk takers, we need established directors who have the influence, the industry confidence and the finances to make passion projects, ideas that no one else would even risk giving the go ahead to without a S. Spielberg, R. Johnson or a M. Bay stamped all over it. (This is not a plea for Michael Bay to do any passion projects, for the love of god please, the world can't take that many helicopters, explosions, underwear models and Linkin Park soundtracks)

If not an established, proven director, then some bright spark coming from the bottom up. Like Josh Trank and Max Landis.

Landis made his name with a short film detailing the events unfolding in a comic book arc titles The Death and Return of Superman (linked -->) but moved onto the big screen with his first feature, Chronicle. It was by no means perfect, but what it did achieve was an injection of fresh IP. I very much enjoyed Chronicle, the idea of every comic book origin story but instead of kids destined for greatness getting bitten by radioactive spiders or what have you, it deals with ordinary teenagers and how they deal with super powers. Directed by Josh Trank, it did pretty well. It even earned Trank the tiller on the new Fantastic Four movie, and most probably the upcoming Venom origin. Both of which will help us to forget the two awful examples we have from the last 10 years.

Whilst not technically a science fiction film, by my definition at least, Chronicle is certainly something I want to see more of. We need more universes. More unique and interesting backdrops to more unique stories. Not just the same old tropes re-hashed with a younger actor taking the lead.