This is very true. I guess I'm willing to suspend my disbelief for most of the sci-fi stuff *as long as* the movie is enjoyable enough. If not, I usually rip on the elements that disappointed me, which tend to be writing, acting, directing, cheap effects that don't work. I'd have to work through a lot of that on a general level before getting to specifics of the science, and by that time I would have already bowed out. I guess I'm saying the things that get on my nerves would come well before the science part. Also, as long as a movie has something I really enjoy and doesn't piss me off too much in a general way, I'm willing to suspend a lot of disbelief.
Same. One of the best Sci-Fi films I've seen in the past decade was Her (2013) with Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. I do very much love this film. It's a nod to an old-school kind of story that I love - simple, clean, with a very clear purpose in its deployment. The fact that all of the setup for introducing Samantha as an A.I. is utterly preposterous barely gets a notice from me. No country with even the mildest sense of national security would ever allow something like Samantha to be bought in a mall and then just live on the internet, even making new A.I.s without any sort of oversight. That bit is complete and utter fantasy, but I don't care because the film is actually about human relationships, and in that purpose the film is sublime.
Since they pop up next to each other on Netflix, I'll confess that one of my guilty pleasures is Luc Besson's Lucy. I know that there's not a single scientific fact in the whole movie. Telephones, computers, and Asia do not, in fact, exist. But damn if it isn't a lot of fun.
I don't know if it's about what I see vs what I don't see. I really crave unique ideas, scientific concepts explored, simple ideas taken to comical extremes....to me those are the foundations of science fiction. Filmmakers these days seem to think action movies set in space are sci fi, and that's questionable. I have a novel where interdimensional flowers are trying to take over the planet. Now that's the kind of stuff I want to read -- that old 60s and 70s pulp weirdness.
Non standard forms of warfare in alien invasions. you know something? It's so incredibly boring to have aliens just come over and just blow up a few monuments and burn a few cities. So incredibly cliche. A more interesting way would be one using economic warfare, using the alien's vastly greater resources and technology to outbid and outmake any company or firm on the ground, basically swamping the market with the equivalent of chinese knockoffs. Boeing, Lockheed, Ford, and all other manufacturing giants crash and burn. Fusion and battery tech are introduced, leading to the Middle East and Russia imploding. Alien firms and companies buy properties and hold positions within the governments of the world. And in a hundred years time, the life of independence for the human race would be a distant memory. All without a shot fired.
So basically a non-military takeover by the Tau? "We offer nicer high tech coffee makers, and big blue tiddy pron. All we ask is that you join us in the greater good. "
If you haven't read it yet, you should look at the book, "The Day of the Triffids." That was an interesting book. Harry Turtledove has a short story titled, "The Road Not Taken" which has an alien race that developed in direction Z come to earth and try to take it over only to encounter a humanity that has developed in direction A and....... (spoiler)the human race is the more advanced race, takes the alien technology and runs rampant with it in the wider universe.(spoiler) Mack Reynolds has a short story called "Sold Down the River" which I really liked for its take on racism. Look it up, it's about 8 pages or so. Sorry the spoiler wrapper didn't work for me....
Is that Harry Turtledove story the one with the "stitching gun?" The High Crusade springs to mind too.
It could be. I vaguely remember something like a flintlock or a musket while the humans had submachine guns. It was a very, very nasty surprise for the aliens to encounter an "inferior" species that had developed advanced (compared to them) technology.
That's the one! A starship armed with muzzle loading four-pounders or whatever. Might have been in Analog.
In David Gerrold's War Against the Chtorr series, the aliens don't even bother sending in their analogue of "dominant species". They slowly start exoterraforming Earth in waves, starting at the microbial level, up into larger, more complex creatures, entire ecosystems.
On the other hand, I loved Battle: Los Angeles for the fact that its aliens a) used small-unit tactics, b) had, at one point, a crew-served weapon (the walking cannon), and c) showed concern for their fallen. Sure, they might have been on a mission of resource extraction with a side of xenocide, but they were relatable. Spoiler On a side note, Michelle Rodriguez's zoomie character left alone that long with a platoon of Marines? Heteropaternal superfecundation, here we come!
I'm remembering now the way the exoterraforming is executed. One of the alien species they encounter is a thing called a Shambler Tree. Early on they know of them because they serve as a host for a bunch of different predatory animals and if you're unlucky enough to trip one of the tree's nerve-roots, you'z dead and with a quickness. Later, those same trees morph into a bigger thing, grows a kind of uterus and vajayjay. There beginneth the invasion. The cast theorize that these trees must have been the very first wave of invaders in remote areas where they went unnoticed.
I'm a little leery of science fiction which is clearly a parallel of real life settings. District 9 is just a pastiche of apartheid, with aliens replacing black people. And the number of science fiction stories that just replace Nazis with space nazis, well...
If you give me an infinite amount of porn and story generator A.I.s and the world's most perfect VR I will sell you earth on a silver platter. And probably 5 billion other people would join me The story is called 'The Road not Taken'. Long story short, gravity control and faster than light travel is easy. So easy in fact that you can discover it during the bronze age. The problem is that it's so utterly unintuitive and so easy that it basically cripples the races that discover it. The alien race that tried to invade earth basically used muskets and chamber pots and really terrible glass to navigate their way across the universe. The human race, not having access to the gravitic drives, derives the scientific method and proceeds to advance quickly, just on that one planet. And then they get the gravitic drive, and god have mercy on anyone standing in their way.
Bad acting. Bad writing. Bad directing. and something magical happens so that we don't have to have any science involved
Tired of..... Everything being so big and larger than life. Think Terminator and killer robots, killer artificial intelligence. Really, if A.I. wants to wipe out the human race, all it has to do is "accidentally" cause a virus to be released into the population/atmosphere and then....poof! No more human race as everyone drops dead. Imagine the human race having to deal with cover-19, yellow fever, polio, measles, small pox, HIV/AIDS infecting the entire population at the same time. I'd throw in the towel and scream for mercy.... Isn't it interesting how all the science fiction movies go really big? Star Wars - Death Star. Transformers - giant robots. Star Trek/Star Wars/Aliens - droids that are human-like - Data, C3Po, Bishop, etc. But real life, we're going in the opposite direction, that is smaller and smaller like robot vacuums that automatically clean our pools and homes. A.I. like Alexa or Siri. Where are the big things?
If Data had been like C3PO, Picard would have spaced him at the first opportunity. Because giant robots iz kewl. (it's a Scopedog!)
Instant, out of nowhere battle helmets. That only works in CGI land. “Yeah, but it looks cool.” “Yeah, the very first time. Now it’s just lazy.”
But they're so cool! (I may or may not have them in my story. There they may or may not be layered around the neck, folding up around the head. Only some guys may or may not have them, though. The standard army have good old solid helmets.)
Sterile, clean lines on everything- ships, clothing, landscapes. Lots of misty greys and off whites. Like everything was designed by Apple, like the future is allergic to color and intricacy. I noticed this most recently in the new Dune trailer. I missed the baroque costumes and architecture of the Lynch film.
