6 Sci-Fi Movie Conventions (That Need to Die)
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With the rebirth of the Star Trek franchise, sci-fi is a cash cow again. And while studios all over Hollywood are busy building model space ships and robots, we'd like them to pause for a moment and, you know, give the scripts a look. After all, there's a few arbitrary sci-fi rules that seem to turn up in all of these movies and, quite frankly, it's time to move on.#6.
The Ship is an OSHA Nightmare
Two starships meet for battle and open fire. A photon plasma space torpedo slams into the hull. Inside, on the bridge, we watch as the whole room shakes, throwing the cast around like rag dolls. A second impact causes sparks to fly from the control panels, possibly even killing an extra. The battered crew can only wonder why, on a ship that has technology in place to keep them from getting splattered against the rear wall when it jumps to light speed (or stops suddenly), every impact shakes their world like a kid rattling a Christmas present. Why They Need To Stop: We know why they do it. It's a way to add an element of danger for the main characters. That tends to get diluted if they're sitting comfortably on the bridge while the battle goes on in their view screen. But no matter how far into the future you set your film, if the cable guy can keep our TV from exploding when lightning strikes the house, why does this futuristic spaceship have a panel blow every time anything remotely interesting happens on the ship?
And more to the point, why is the crew in an exposed spot at all? Sure, there are those ships (like most in Star Wars) that have windows, but, why do they need them? That's what view screens are for. Nobody is trying to navigate that bastard by squinting at the next planet through a dirty windshield. Look at the protruding command towers on the Star Wars Star Destroyers--at least once we see a fighter smash into their window, causing the whole damned ship to crash. And if the bridge doesn't have windows (as it doesn't in Star Trek), then why in the hell does it need to be in some exposed spot where any random object can destroy it? Why not bury it in the middle of the ship, with layers of metal between the guys at the wheel and all of the exploding warp phaser missiles outside? Don't tell us we're over-thinking this, damnit! That's what sci-fi is for, to make us feel smarter than people watching other movies. #5.
The Futuristic Conversation Rule of Three
Two characters will be carrying on a normal conversation. One character will try to make a point by listing historical references. First, the character lists two references from the real world to set up a pattern, then tacks on a completely fictional reference that's either alien or hasn't happened yet. Like this exchange from The Wrath of Khan: "You'll be remembered among the great scientists: Newton, Einstein, Sulak."
See, the first two establish the caliber of scientists we're talking about. Sure, you've never heard of the third one (Trekkies notwithstanding), but if he's on the same list as Newton and Einstein, he has to have cured cancer or something, right? It helps keep the story rooted in the real world as we know it.
Why They Should Stop: There's something corny about the way they always start the list off with something that happened close to the time when the show was made, rather than starting close to when the characters are supposed to live. It would be like starting off your genocidal references with the Jerusalem massacre of 1099 rather than the Holocaust. Also, how often is it that you list more than one past reference in a single sentence? "This kid is great, he'll be the next Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James!" We do have to give credit to Firefly, which largely avoided this. The series takes place in the wake of a massive (failed) war for independence, of which two main characters are veterans, so most historical references are from that war, with the exception being a (very) educated doctor referencing Ancient Egypt. #4.
The All-in-One Instant Plot Fixing Tool
The heroes are running out of time and they must do something NOW in order to save the day. All of a sudden, a space version of a Swiss Army Knife appears (e.g. Tricorder, main deflector dish, R2D2) that happens to be able to do just what is needed to save the day... quite tidily, in fact. Even if it can't do exactly what the heroes need, it can usually be easily modified to do that exact thing, even if the thing it needs to do is completely made up. A common variation on this is the sensor that senses everything and then senses the side effects of everything else, even things the designers didn't know existed. The writers of Dr. Who flaunt this idea with the "sonic screwdriver," creating a running joke that it can do anything the plot needs it to do. Why They Should Stop: Whether it's epic poetry or sci-fi, the whole fun of a dramatic adventure is watching how the characters use their courage, wits and creativity to get out of these jams. That all gets farted out the window when you realize that the little droid they've had with them the whole time has the magical power to make any machine in the galaxy do exactly what they wanted.
It also creates logical holes all over the place. For instance, once you've shown a character using his phaser to tunnel through a mountain, you immediately think back to every time a character has ever been trapped in a room, and wonder why he didn't do the same. And why would even the most secure doors in the Star Wars universe have locks that can be "picked" by random repair droids? It's the kind of lazy "get out of plot trouble free" card that we wouldn't tolerate for a second in a story set in the here and now (MagGuyver explained how he hotwired a car with bubble gum, damnit!). As for the sonic screwdriver on Dr. Who, in the original run on BBC, the producers forced the writers to break the sonic screwdriver to make the show more interesting. The writers had become so accustomed to using it as a crutch that they only agreed to do so because they thought they were going to be able to write another one back in (by the way, it wasn't until the new relaunch of the series that it was actually used to drive screws).
For a corollary to this, also see the "Tim Taylor" rule: if a part of the ship isn't getting the job done, just divert more power to it! More electricity makes every device work better than it was designed to! Just try it with your TV! Of course, if it doesn't work, you could always just reverse the polarity. |
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disorder, u probably dont like sick ass movies like pulp fiction or anything like that either. when u grow up a little more, ull start to appreciate dialouge and what not, and wont need imediate action all the time.
star wars is a great movie, i probably couldnt even explain it in a small post. ur probably the kinda person that thinks call of duty is the best game ever when compared to a masterpiece like fallout 3.
I am not too keen on #1. Yeah, there are plenty of extremely effective ways of dealing with enemies (bombs!) but they'll never replace infantry. Why? Because in comparison to state of the art aircraft and space ships and what not, it's dirt cheap (and will always be so) to hand some poor sap a gun and send him on his way. Yeah, he'll probably die, but that really just means you no longer have to pay him. He might actually accomplish something in the process too.
Why do so many people love Star Wars, that s**t is boring. Now don't get me wrong, I love older movies (my favorite of all time is Equinox) so I understood the slow pacing when they made us watch in school but 15 minutes in, I just knocked out for the remainder of the period. Can someone please explain how this movie has millions of fans? The chicks weren't even hot and the aliens and robots were hate-able.
Awesome stuff, but here's the deal with the last one: you're missing what is part of the fundamentals of warfare. It's long been a fact that a war cannot be won, that conquest cannot be achieved, without infantry. Sure, you could bomb a country into capitulation, but without infantry, who's left to GUARD your new little client-state, eh? I totally agree with regards to the strange lack of tactical finesse that one sees in Sci-Fi, but then again, that could be contributed to bad officers, or something. My point is, infantry are always useful in warfare.
I mean, just look at the Mobile Infantry from the original book- they kick ass.
For BTMadness: THE 6TH DAY addressed the whole clones-retain-the-original's-memories thing with something called "synaptic recording" in which they somehow map the original's brain to get the memories and flash-rewrite the clone's brain with it.
For Delphinus100: the workstation seats slide into the wall, and a shift is eight hours--which is kinda excessive since a watch on a US Navy ship is four to six hours.
non universal up and down words ventral (below) Dorsal (above)
Hee, hee, very funny, thank you. I think we can cut Lucas some slack (even though it was the godawful prequel). Obi Wan was in a freakin' asteroid field. I don't know about you, but I find myself having to fly in rather awkward patterns when I'm around those. But yeah, there have been many times I've smacked my forehead and said "You can move vertically, you idiots!" All very good points that need to be addressed in sci-fi.
"and give us something that will blow our minds." Don't get me started on these guys. Entertainers get so caught up in exploiting ideas they believe you love that they forget that every generation needs it's new brilliant idea.
I want to meet the Latexx Foreheadian's hot, sexy and loose sister species, the Latexxx Foreheadians
My pet peeve (applies specifically to the Star Wars stories): apparent ability of h**o sapiens (as a species) to have evolved in more than one galaxy independently. This is, of course, impossible. a humanoid species that evolved on a planet in another galaxy (or anywhere but on earth) could be similar to h**o sapiens but could not and would not be the same species, by definition. So ... exactly what species is Luke Skywalker? The slogan "Long long ago in a galaxy far far away" makes it hard to argue that he was h**o sapiens.
Ender's Game... That is all.
Your comment about space blockades reminded me of a great scene in Futurama, where a bunch of protesters form a ring around a planet they want to protect, only to have the ship nearly and harmless go over them to land.
The article's spot on, even if it does take some of the fun out of sci-fi (sci-fi fans overanalyzing instead of kicking back and enjoying? WHO WOULD HAVE DREAMED OF SUCH A CONCEPT?!). Also really makes me want to challenge myself by going into the sci-fi movie biz and trying to combat every one of these tired old conventions.
Another sci-fi convention that once again, I've only ever seen good ol' Firefly manage to combat: the "Space is Noisy" belief, where in space you can hear the roar of engines and the screeching of laser weapons firing. Only Firefly managed to remember that space is a vacuum and thus devoid of sound.
To call the charges Obi-Wan evades in that clip you embed in the article isn't fair to support your "Space is 2D" argument. You clearly see them moving every which direction through the asteroid field; the bombs are called Seismic Charges. As in, they emit a shockwave. A wave of energy traveling on a plane. They obviously just wanted the effect of a shockwave cutting s**t in half.
You took that point too far there I think, but the rest was spot on.
How about this one: "Clones Retain Memories From The Person Their DNA is Based On". It WOULDN'T happen! Now, I could buy technology that would "download" memories from the original source of the clone and then uploading them into a new body, but a clone on it's own would NOT suddenly acquire any memories from it's host. We've seen this BS so many times (Alien Resurrection, The Island, Godson, etc, etc.)
Kudos, John - I'm a sci fi fan and I've been bitching about this kind of s**t for years. The older I get, the more I appreciate movies like 2001 because even though it REEKS of the '60s, it's still more impressively realistic, believable and yet beyond our experiences than practically any other sci fi movie out there.
You could have added another critique (except you could likely apply it to any genre) that in these movies, everyone is related to everyone else and the entire universe (for example in Star Wars) is a 2 dimensional pastiche upon which 40 characters are based. The rest are just red shirts and background animation.
You could also chunkify "The All-in-One Instant Plot Fixing Tool" to add that the most insanely difficult, time-consuming and fascinating aspect of space travel - that is, "travel in space" - takes less time, trouble and effort than a trip to the local 7-11. Lame.
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My first thought at the beginning of Star Trek: TNG was...where the hell did the seats at the workstations go? How long is a shift? Are you expected to stand the entire time? (Especially on ships in a universe where it's *understood* that you'll get slammed all over the bridge from time to time. Remember the seat restraints briefly seen on the captain's chair in Star Trek the Motion Picture? *Somebody* was thinking...)
Ships can hyperspace, so why not give a 10000 megaton fusion bomb a hyper drive? Destroy anything within a 1000 mile radius, shields be damned.
It takes forever to blow up a planet, why not just crash an asteroid into it? Cheaper, and easier.
I always hated how in Star Wars, the weapons only had a 5 km range, and with the exception of the Death Star, no ship had any heavy weapons. Play some of the Star Wars games, all lasers do the same damage; bigger just means more lasers.
Well, if they ever come up with a credible movie adaptation of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card, that should avoid some of these conventions:
#6: Nothing much is shown of the actual ships in the novel, but what ships are mentioned do have shoulder harnesses and other safety equipment on them. Someone's obviously been paying attention to safety regulations.
#5: All famous figures mentioned by name are from our history, with none from after our time being mentioned by name except the big hero Mazer Rackham from the last war because he's still around and plays a significant role in the story.
#4: Actually, the prodigy children in these stories are the all-in-one solution to everyone's problems, playing on the old pulp convention of little boy geniuses saving the universe. However, the novels are all about how such a seemingly ridiculous plot device could actually be made real, such that we're given a plausible portrayal of how such children could even exist, and how being trained to save the world and then actually saving it seriously screws up their little psyches. You don't get a big miraculous save for nothing in the Enderverse.
#3: Well, the Buggers in Card's novel are kind of a monoculture, but that's because out of all their billions of bodies, there are actually only a dozen or so autonomous individuals, their queens, and all the other drones are just their appendages; the Buggers are more like a family than a nation. The humans, on the other hand, are still quite culturally diverse, although having an interstellar war has broken down a number of their cultural barriers. They go right back to squabbling and infighting, too, as soon as the war is over.
#2: The heroes of Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow, Ender and Bean, are each very successful in their training because they learn how to discard 2-dimensional thinking in favor of a shifting 3-D perspective in which up is away from the military target and down is toward it. Bean also applies this perspective brilliantly to his study of tactics, concluding that defensive war in space makes no sense whatsoever because humans don't have the resources to build enough ships to make a 3-D wall around Earth, so they have to go on the offense against the Buggers instead.
#1: In the Enderverse, there hasn't been any infantry involvement in the interstellar wars since the brutal hand-to-hand boarding party raids of the first Formic War when ships were slow and poorly equipped. All wars after that are fought entirely on a simulator screen using speedy ships armed with weapons powerful enough to vaporize each other instantly.
Whether all these departures from convention will adapt well to a movie remains to be seen. The reason a lot of this stuff persists in movies, such as the ship getting jostled and the panels exploding on the Enterprise on Star Trek, is because it's visual and easier to explain to the audience than the more complicated way things are in real life. Real high-ranking officers are rarely very close to the action in a war, so most of the damage they suffer from war is psychological. It's a lot less exciting to watch a guy in his bunker feel kind of sorry for all the casualties suffered in the war he's commanding than it is to watch that bunker get jostled and a "red guy" near him get fried when a panel blows.
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dude, of course u need infantry in sci fi movies man! what if some terrorist fuckers are tryin to fly a plane into the death star? or take over on the inside? there r 1000 scenerios i could think of, let alone the fact that u need to protect all the cool s**t u got.