The Long Road

Hollywood loves to overdo things. Thats why every year in the last decade we've had several fantasy film SERIES. There's the Harry Potters, the Narnias, the Eragons, the His Dark Materials, the The Dark is Risings AND SO ON. There're more big-budget fantasy movies being made now than ever before (hyperbolic, unresearched statement. Many more to follow). And all it took to get this particular ball rolling was the mega success of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies.

In comparison, there've only been two sci-fi trilogies "recently", the Star Wars prequels and The Matrix films. Star Wars is sort of its own beast and the later Matrices are considered to be not too sucessfull. And Star Trek..well..the less said, the better. There were a couple of recent attempts at new space-based, futuristic, sci-fi epics: Serenity and Chronicles of Riddick. Both pretty much flopped. There's just something about huge Capital Ships blasting one another that doesn't seem to appeal to the maintream moviegoer. But goddamn, if it doesn't appeal to me!

You know what sci-fi lacks that all those previously mentioned fantasy series have? A point of view character that is a young, white child of a very normal world that gets swept up and into strange and unknown lands of adventure. That's the role played by Dorothy, Alice, Luke, Anakin, Harry, Frodo, and the Pevencie siblings. You need to have a character have things explained to them so that things get explained to you. You need a character who's normal enough to say "whoa" every once in while. It's retarded, but it works.

Somewhere along the way, Hollywood or its consumers decided that things needed to be explained and that people just couldn't accept the fantastic (or science fictional) at face value and run with it. Along the same lines, movies need to be personal. People just can't seem relate to borg, elves, or ethiopians. They have an understanding of the personal danger Theoden faces when he charges into Pellenor fields. Things are a bit harder to grasp when photon torpedoes hit the Enterprise and all you see is the camera shake.

As much as I hate the old cliche, sci-fi needs a new Point of View character to show that its a financially feasible genre. It needs a young white boy to be this generation's Luke Skywalker. It needs Ender Wiggin.

...

Well, at least I'm not a fan of Westerns. Those guys have it rough.

Replies: 2 comments

you big whiner.

do you think source material has anything to do with the success of said fantasy movie series? because, really - make a movie out of harry potter and you're making millions ...

Posted by melpie @ 08/20/2007 10:13 PM EST

sci-fi isn't for kids!

Posted by Long @ 09/01/2007 12:39 PM EST