Whatever happened to the good ole days when the humans were the good guys and the bad guys were aliens, other humans, or robots? Now it seems like every movie coming out has the humans as the bad guys.
Battle for Terra and Avatar are both about the evil industrialized humans trying to steal the planet out from under, while wiping out, the poor eco-friendly, tolerant, enlightened natives.
At least District 9 wasn't like that, still evil weapon-envying humans though.
What's with recent sci-fi movies?
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Aaron
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What's with recent sci-fi movies?
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom,...Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you...; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
-Samuel Adams
Irate Islander
-Samuel Adams
Irate Islander
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dfwmtx
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Re: What's with recent sci-fi movies?
Hollywood still hasn't gotten that the "capitalism/military is bad, m'kay?" meme is old.
"Arms are honor; slaves have neither."
"I am Chaos, I am alive...and I tell you that you are free!" -Eris Discordia
"I am Chaos, I am alive...and I tell you that you are free!" -Eris Discordia
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moose42
- Posts: 2004
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Re: What's with recent sci-fi movies?
I am still waiting for a conservative "Hollywood" to pop up elsewhere in America and start making movies that aren't thinly veiled Liberal worldviews.
Years from now our children and grandchildren living in a 3rd world America will ask "What were you doing on March 21st 2010 and why didn't you stop it?"
--Me
Come check out my blog where I share my crazy sci-fi and fantasy fiction.
Alone: King of One
--Me
Come check out my blog where I share my crazy sci-fi and fantasy fiction.
Alone: King of One
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Jericho941
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Re: What's with recent sci-fi movies?
I think part of it was that people were getting tired of the campy "humans are special and will always win against the evil aliens" prevalent sci-fi. Especially when you stop and realize that most aliens-as-bad-guys scenarios typically involve us projecting human evils onto space aliens, e.g. "they want to take our land and enslave/kill us all."
Finding a middle ground proved less than satisfying with many people. Take the Matrix trilogy, where
[spoiler]Neo, instead of laying the smack down on the race of Machines, saves them from the Smith virus and achieves peace between Man and Machine.[/spoiler]
People hated that. Peace is boring.
Sci-fi also typically reflects what people are most worried about at the time. For a long time (the Cold War), sci-fi dealt with apocalyptic scenarios and mankind pulling together in the face of external annihilation, succeeding, and averting an internal one from nuclear war.
Now that humanity isn't worried about blowing itself to kingdom come anymore, the big issues on everyone's mind are economic ones. Terrorism has fallen rather by the wayside in the US; although a withdrawal from the post-9/11 hysteria can be considered healthy, by now Joe Blow is more worried about not getting laid off, or finding a job that pays the bills, while not getting sick... rather than Johnny Jihad coming to blow his family up. Third, there's also the issue of environmental disaster, but that too has fallen by the wayside in the face of superstitious scenarios like 2012, and media-induced hysteria over things like the H1N1 pandemic.
Basically, sci-fi now reflect's Joe Blow's primary fear that overwhelming greed and incompetence will lead to his personal ruin. So humans are a blind, stumbling, petty-minded and fearful race rather than the tough, determined, if xenophobic (justified in the case of aliens) heroes of the old stories.
Finding a middle ground proved less than satisfying with many people. Take the Matrix trilogy, where
[spoiler]Neo, instead of laying the smack down on the race of Machines, saves them from the Smith virus and achieves peace between Man and Machine.[/spoiler]
People hated that. Peace is boring.
Sci-fi also typically reflects what people are most worried about at the time. For a long time (the Cold War), sci-fi dealt with apocalyptic scenarios and mankind pulling together in the face of external annihilation, succeeding, and averting an internal one from nuclear war.
Now that humanity isn't worried about blowing itself to kingdom come anymore, the big issues on everyone's mind are economic ones. Terrorism has fallen rather by the wayside in the US; although a withdrawal from the post-9/11 hysteria can be considered healthy, by now Joe Blow is more worried about not getting laid off, or finding a job that pays the bills, while not getting sick... rather than Johnny Jihad coming to blow his family up. Third, there's also the issue of environmental disaster, but that too has fallen by the wayside in the face of superstitious scenarios like 2012, and media-induced hysteria over things like the H1N1 pandemic.
Basically, sci-fi now reflect's Joe Blow's primary fear that overwhelming greed and incompetence will lead to his personal ruin. So humans are a blind, stumbling, petty-minded and fearful race rather than the tough, determined, if xenophobic (justified in the case of aliens) heroes of the old stories.