Why are most all of the biggest, prettiest, most compelling SF movies of the past decade polemics written by dipping the other end of Ayn Rand's moral compass needle in the inkwell?
First, Pocahontas Does Polyphemus; now, #OCCUPY_L5:
Still going to see it, though. Can't not. It's filmed on a ginormous Stanford torus*, for heaven's sake!
*Not really, but the CGI looks bumpin'.
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How could you not go see it after seeing what Neil Blomkamp did with $30 million in District 9. I can only imagine the nerdvana 3 times that will buy.
If economic liberalism is all the rage these days, then I want to know why we haven't gotten a single Stainless Steel Rat movie yet?
Matt Damon has turned into just another Tom Cruise for me--that is, I avoid his movies on principle, no matter how much the special effects make me want to see it...
There are thousands of good to great SF stories in existence and none of them get put on film.
It really annoys me.
MATT DAYYYYYYMON!
Even though the plot falls apart really quickly if you stop to think, District 9 was the best sci fi I've seen in years. I'll be in line for this one.
If I only watched movies I agreed with politically... I'd get to watch like one movie a year, tops. And it would probably suck.
I look at this and see natural end result of the wide application of San Francisco's “Plan Bay Area”, writ large.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/354734/regionalism-obamas-quiet-anti-suburban-revolution-stanley-kurtz
Eh, I'll see it in the theater. In addition to Blomkamp, I haven't seen anything that said HOW they got this way. I could easily see a conservative writer writing an anti-liberal version that ends up in this...
His short films are well made as well. the first is some kind of pre District 9.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1hI8c8HzxU&feature=share&list=PLKBWIwLrj1SB8AUrL2WAgnI_5RaMfYUVI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTnxP7e7-YA&feature=share&list=PLKBWIwLrj1SB8AUrL2WAgnI_5RaMfYUVI
//Jonas Sweden
My jaded mind interpreted the trailer as:
- The people running Detroit have taken over the world.
- Some of us willing to work hard left to get away from them.
- Now Matt Damon is trying to chase us down and make us share in the poverty and stupidity.
I might be rooting for the wrong side when I do see this (on HBO).
These movies make me realize there's really no place for me in this world. The only movie I've seen recently that I agree with politically was Atlas Shrugged: it was in a practically empty theater, and the production was embarrassingly poor.
Still haven't seen Avatar, probably won't. District 9 was just stupid. Lots of splodies and eye candy in this one, but, well, "Occupy Outer Space"? I just can't.
Yes, I'm a curmudgeon.
jf
I'm with Angus
I'm afraid if I every saw the man on the street I would make just have to go yell MATT DAYYYYYYMON!
Gerry
I'm with Bram.
Might be pretty, but I don't think I could endure the plot. Just wouldn't be fun. :/
Maybe if Matt Damon proved his sincerity by taking down the fence around his home. :)
Beam,
If we agree that the plot is collectivist twaddle, might I suggest that watching it on a screen smaller than a Greyhound bus is a waste of time?
I'm never going to stand on a Stanford torus in real life. I'll take my vicarious thrills where I can get them.
My son explained the movie succinctly as an attempt to recreate the failed HALO movie that Blomkamp worked on before District 9.
From IMDB: When Guillermo del Toro left the running, Peter Jackson settled on the novice Neill Blomkamp for director. Blomkamp worked to exhaustion for five months preparing the project, which went as far as constructing props and costumes and producing short Halo-themed films as test footage. The project then collapsed. Jackson allowed Blomkamp a free reign in choosing a new project, which led to District 9. Although Blomkamp is still "creatively interested" in Halo, he does not wish to return to the project after working on it for so long and watching it collapse.
Tim Minear has a screenplay based on the novel 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,' that is currently in development hell... Minear is a longtime collaborator with Joss Whedon, working with him on 'Angel,' 'Firefly,' and 'Dollhouse.' Minear is something of a classic libertarian, so I have high hopes for 'Moon' not sucking if it ever gets made.
1. Does anyone even know what the plot (and backstory) actually is, or is there a -- ahem -- collective rush to judgement based on the trailers?
2. Most productive-class folks are not gonna be on the Space Wheel. There are at least three groups with economic gaps between 'em and up there at the very top are the ones who have so much they can't possibly spend it as fast as it piles up. They'll be at L5 (or wherever), just as soon as it gets built, tested and becomes a tax haven. And they'll have 'em a large body of nice, upwardly-ambitious morlocks, too. --But it is not, in fact, inherently evil to be able to buy Kiribati as a vacation home. Nor is it inherently saintly to be unable to do so. Please try to not confuse the 0.001% with the 1%; doing that and ascribing evil to wealth is the error the other side makes.
Space Wheel is just Stanford/Palo Alto: the Smart-Set Left Elitists with iPhones and iPads and Star-Trek Collectivism stuff. I left there when I could and we're moving even farther away.
It is a movie made for a generic sheeple entertainment market. I would rather read a good book for free. I'll pass.
ISH: I have a copy of that Tim Minear "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" screenplay dated 10/20/2005.
I sincerely hope he can get a green light for it. That one I'd stand in line to see.
Oh, and yes, I'll go see "Elysium" just because I'm a SciFi junkie.
Why are most all of the biggest, prettiest, most compelling SF movies of the past decade polemics written by dipping the other end of Ayn Rand's moral compass needle in the inkwell?
Because that's what the rich-but-of-course-not-the-bad-kind-of-rich folks who run Hollywood are willing to fund.
Hollywood - where it's always fun to see the Marxist-Elitist expresses their Dialectical Materialism as the obvious superiority of iPhone & Tesla-S vs. the trés bourgeoisie Android/Prius.
Roberta, thank you for your rational discourse...
But this is the intertubes; we cannot go to bed until we've had our insane ravings and expressed our unhinged rantings.
Give us a HBO production of Pournelles "The Prince".
I do not get the Dubois reference (I do know from where he comes); do I have to see the movie to understand it?
Anon 0627:
Reflect for a moment about the class LTC Dubois taught, then consider Tam's remark:
" dipping the other end of Ayn Rand's moral compass needle in the inkwell?"
Anon 0627,
An acknowledgment that many of my favorite SF works are heavily polemical as well, just in a direction with which I happen to agree.
Give us a HBO production of Pournelles "The Prince".
And what would it look like when it finally hit the screen*? I know the Total Recall movies were based mostly/loosely on the PK Dick story, but IIRC the 1990 version of Total Recall had an attribution to Pournelle's novella Birth of Fire buried in the credits. How they went from a coming-of-age/political responsibility and colonial revolution story (sorry if that's a spoiler) to a mutant underground and all that is beyond me.
*Not that I could see the Lysander Collins saga ever getting greenlighted. A populist revolution led by a black woman wit' a charming Caribbean acCENT being put down by mercenaries and a white dude apparently descended from Stanford University faculty, where the white dude is the hero? Nah.
I've always thought Pournelle's "A Spaceship for the King" would be a fantastic movie. It's got a appealing underdog aspect, space travel, sword and shield battles, a great mix of main characters, and the scale of the story is well suited for film. It wouldn't be one of those situations where the movie only represents a fraction of the book.
Matt Damon. Hypocritical collectivist non-storyline. Will pass.
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