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Showing posts from February, 2014

Her

Science fiction films, it often seems, are the idiot cousin of the genre.  Not that there aren't some excellent SF films out there, but even if you ignore the vast majority, which are actually action or horror films in an SFnal setting, what you'll be left with will be mostly small, simple stories in thinly drawn worlds, often with a thuddingly obvious political subtext.  Again, that's not to say that these films can't be good-- Moon , to take one example whose story and world are practically miniscule, is one of the finest SF films of the last decade.  But it's rare, verging on unheard-of, for SF films to achieve the depth and complexity of SFnal ideas and worldbuilding that written SF is capable of, and I think that part of the reason for this is fear.  Most SF filmmakers (or their financial backers) are afraid to imagine a world too different from out own, a future too alien--the most celebrated SF film of the last year, after all, was one that used space explora