Do you reach an age where you go off of sci fi?
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Maybe it’s because the Nostromo was a mining ship (explaining the blue-collar crew), or the naturalness of the actors, but Alien has one of the most convincing crews I’ve ever seen. I did not rebel against it for one second.
This question tangentially speaks to my recent thread about scifi films that try to convey the unfathomable enormity of space and time.
I feel that I have outgrown the alien-of-the-week mentality. I am much more interested in the mysteries of outer space and the universe than I am seeing cowboy and Indian fights between space ships.
We are currently watching Gattaca, which was mentioned earlier in the thread, and totally digging it.
I think, ALIEN learned a lot from DARK STAR. Ok. I saw the movie at a very young age. But I found the DARK STAR Crew very convincing.
I wondered, when I heard, people were watching DARK STAR as a comedy. For me the first time this was dead serious. And I really felt the lonelines and claustrophobia in space.
I’m looking through my old MUBI lists, to see if I can find any under-the-radar, new-ish sci fis that I’ve seen from 2014 onwards, and that have 3 stars or more (they use 1-5 stars). Here’s one I encountered from 2012 that I gave 3 stars, so it must be pretty decent. With Lance Henriksen, among others. Alas, I have no memory of it.
Did anyone see the a bit older French series MISSIONS from 2017? My public library stream service has all three rather short seasons of it.
Haven’t seen that, thanks for the tip! Sounds like something up my alley. Hopefully I can find it somewhere.
I feel that I have outgrown the alien-of-the-week mentality. I am much more interested in the mysteries of outer space and the universe than I am seeing cowboy and Indian fights between space ships.
I say “thank you” to both. Well, not the cowboys and Indians in space thing. But alien-of-the-week, done well, can have its merits. STAR TREK – probably the epitome of alien-of-the-week-ness – did it often to say something meaningful about a cultural or philosophical subject, and as a parable for current-day issues. Not that they were always successful, though.
But the mysteries of outer space and the universe? Yes, please – that, too. 🙂
Did anyone see the a bit older French series MISSIONS from 2017? My public library stream service has all three rather short seasons of it.
I remember watching it and enjoying it. Don’t remember much about it but I did watch all three seasons. An endorsement of sorts?
BTW, glad to see the new season of SILO start on Apple TV.
I remember watching it and enjoying it. Don’t remember much about it but I did watch all three seasons. An endorsement of sorts?
Not sure if you not remembering much anymore is a full endorsement but yes 😉
Coming back to the original question of the thread. I believe, no matter how good the movies are, I never experienced science fiction movies again like in my formative years. I was watching a lot of trash there. Still it had an impact. So, I must admit, something got lost over the years. But it also was enriched by a certain intellectual interest in the allegories, metaphores and other meta layers in science fiction. I might no longer be able to take it just as it is, but still find it interesting and entertaining, like, as I mentioned before, now I can watch DARK STAR more as kind of comedy.
But … Dark Star has always been a satire.
I know. But I said earlier, when I watched it as a kid I took it dead serious. And I found the ending terribly frightening. I had horrible nightmares from this.
I remember the first time I watched it. We all laughed when the giant beach ball alien appeared. However, the laughter didn’t last long, because somehow Carpenter can even make a beach ball menacing. Hats off!
I can’t stand DARK STAR, sorry to say. I saw it for the first time way into my 20s, and couldn’t even get a camp laugh out of it. Yes, it’s probably satire and playing around with sci fi tropes, but that’s not the sci fi I’m looking for. Whenever I see someone say “I like [Film X], because it doesn’t take itself too seriously”, I cringe. I want my sci fi to take itself as seriously as humanly possible. I’ve tried to rewatch it a couple of times since, and it’s always failed.
Maybe if I’d seen it as a kid, there would be some kind of guilty pleasure in it, I don’t know.
The only good thing I can say about DARK STAR is that, when you strip away all the nonsense, there was enough of a core story there to adapt it into what turned out to be the greatest science fiction film ever made.
Been a while I saw DARK STAR but I liked it. Don’t remember when I saw it first but the dialogue with the bomb is classic.
Thor has made me wonder … is there a sci-fi movie that I really didn’t like? And yes, there is!
To be honest, there’s plenty of sci-fi that I don’t care for, but this one was a bit worse.
Not a big fan of that either, and again it comes down to that comedy/sci fi combo. But I like it more than DARK STAR, and it has a fine David Newman score.
Dark Star is more satire than outright comedy.
Anyway, I have the same kind of problem with Zombie movies. I want them to be deadly serious, even though I did like Dawn Of The Dead (2004), which isn’t all that serious.
And I confess, I didn’t feel like watching …
… because I felt this wasn’t going to be for me.
I had that on DVD once. It was okay, but I ended up giving it away. I did read the source novel once upon a time.
Anyway, I have the same kind of problem with Zombie movies. I want them to be deadly serious, even though I did like Dawn Of The Dead (2004), which isn’t all that serious.
Just had to think of THE DEAD DON’T DIE which for some reason I saw last year the first time. THE WALKING DEAD treated Zombies serious but the series wasn’t really about them.
GALAXY QUEST was a bit to silly at times maybe. And HITCHHIKER been a while but it felt too Hollywood instead of weird British if I recall right…
Just had to think of THE DEAD DON’T DIE which for some reason I saw last year the first time. THE WALKING DEAD treated Zombies serious but the series wasn’t really about them.
Zombies are mainly about the good in people and the bad in people.
I was a fan of Black Summer, a TV series on Netflix (canceled after two seasons) which is more like 28 Days Later (Infected instead of slow zombies). No soap, no characters telling stories to each other from the before times, no morality tales, but pure situation horror and survival.
Hard to believe it comes from the same people who did the goofball Z NATION.
When somebody told me that, I really thought he didn’t know what he was talking about, because these two shows couldn’t be more different. But yeah, it seems to be true. Crazy!
I never heard of BLACK SUMMER and just looked it up on Netflix. It’s even advertised as a kind of prequel zu Z NATION. I put it on my watch list so probably in a few years I will manage to see it 😉
Speaking of Zombies I still have on my watch list: ARMY OF THE DEAD, 28 YEARS LATER, 28 YEARS LATER: THE BONE TEMPLE and CARGO (which I think is basically about Zombies, too.)
I found two ZOMBIELAND movies also not taking itself too serious quite entertaining, too.
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