Astronauts report it feels good

[prog]

There is a Star Trek movie teaser trailer coming out. I'm too lazy to link to it because it's basically nothing, just enough to confirm that the film's in production, and to signal the fanboys to commence the freakout. (Its audio is samples of Apollo mission radio chatter that you can hear in any dime-store trance mix, for pete's sake. OK, and Nimoy. All right, fine: http://www.paramount.com/startrek. Sheesh.)

If JJ Abrams can tell an entire SF story that has a satisfying ending in the length of a single feature film, all shall be forgiven. Until then, I'm skeptical.

Meanwhile I find myself really out of touch regarding movies. I saw a friend complaining in an IM status message that someone named Cloverfield made her feel sick, figuring it was a co-worker who should have stayed home.

Comments

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I agree that imperialism is good (not a the kind of thought I'm used to having!) Didn't much like Eternal Sunshine, but the other Carrey film with him as the guy living in the "reality" show was quite good, and certainly SF. But I don't think those films were doing "world building" in quite the way I mean it.

By "world building" I mean a substantially altered reality, either by virtue of being in the far future, or some rapid and pervasive technological change, alien contact or what-have-you. A world that is obviously other compared to ours.

This is one of the things that impressed me about The Fifth Element: it had a good new universe.

SF is frequently just a marketing term, and it doesn't always get applied to the stuff that meets a more objective definition. So we can certainly claim a lot of these other show and films, and books as well. Read any of David Mitchell's early work ("Cloud Atlas" and "Ghostwritten", for example) and you'll find pure SF packaged as "nominated for the Booker" genre literature. Likewise Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" and "The Handmaid's Tale", although apparently she hates the SF label.

[misuba.livejournal.com]

There are two problems with world building-heavy new IPs, one on the fan/creator side and one on the corporate side. On the fan side, once a universe hits critical mass, it tends to suck in a lot of energy and activity. On the corporate (and therefore more active in this discussion) side, more people will go to see a movie that doesn't ask them to learn a lot - which means either a movie that doesn't do any world building, or a movie that leverages a world with which the mass audience is already passingly familiar.

Another powerful argument that mixing up nerdiness with corporate ownership will always lead to heartbreak.