Here Comes The Sun

[viktor_haag]

James Wallis says that Boyle's new Sunshine is "the best science-fiction movie since The Matrix".

Hm.

Using The Matrix as some sort of benchmark point of comparison with regard to SF movies bothers me considerably.

Here are movies that have been released since The Matrix which I consider better movies, and also better exemplars of science-fiction than The Matrix:

• Solaris (Soderbergh's remake, admittedly)
• Code 46
• Minority Report
• 2046 (admittedly, this is a bit of a stretch as SF, but better movie certainly)
• Primer (not necessarily a flashier movie, but certainly a better example of SF)
• A Scanner Darkly
• The Fountain
• The Prestige (the science doesn't have to be up-front to be SF)

And those are just the ones that fairly leapt to mind like keener kids in the front row.

I suppose you could also want to include Vanilla Sky on the list, but it's a pale remake of Abre los ojos, which came out two years before Keanu's resuscitation vehicle. And by including that, let's chalk up three writer credits for Philip K. Dick on that list (five, if you are brave enough to include Impostor and Paycheck, which are neither better films than The Matrix, and arguably not quite as good SF either, but that last point is certainly arguable -- it's really hard to completely obscure and butcher Dick's ideas, but Georgaris' woeful adaptation of "Paycheck" certainly comes close).

Comparing Sunshine to The Matrix, and not, say, Solaris leads me to have serious doubts about whether I want to see Sunshine. And that's not good. Frankly, I want more films like Solaris or Code 46 or Scanner Darkly as exemplars of the SF genre: a genre that, primarily, seeks to invoke wonder and thoughtfulness in the audience.

What I don't want is more films like The Matrix and Serenity which, frankly, are to SF as the entire modern James Bond movie franchise is to the espionage genre.

I really hope that Sunshine isn't just another big-guns, big-explosions, big-nothing movie. I had hopes for so much more.

Comments

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

You can stick to the novels after Man in High Castle. His SF novels before that were more quasi-parodic feeling 50s SF, with interesting ideas and slapdash cardboard people. He was looser and more interesting in the short stories, but some of them are a little boring to read. Apparently he wrote a lot of them in just a few days. It shows.

(some of them would be excellent sources of RPG plots though, or occasionally fucked up NPCs).

Starting with Man in High Castle, he combined his 'mainstream' characterisations with the crazy short story ideas. Many of his novels are expanded version of short stories, revisiting ideas he thought cool. He gets better as he goes on, gaining confidence and abandoned genreness or conventionality (at least in plotting) that he doesn't find useful.

What do you own?

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I don't own any of it. All that I read was either borrowed from the library, or from friends. I did at one time own DADOES, but it didn't make the cut one year and got sent in a box to the used book store. Which I don't mind. I read it, I'm not sure I'd really want to re-read it, and if I do, then library or friend is cool. Funny that my bookcases are more cluttered with stuff I haven't yet read than stuff I have read and really desperately want to keep.

Mostly, when I have read stuff, if I think I'll really want to re-read it, it stays. Otherwise, it gets taken to the used bookstore to subsidize future book purchases. It's a silly way to operate, I know... 8/

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

That actually sounds like the way I work. I am a terrible book-buyer -- I'll pick up anything that looks remotely interesting and then have it sit for two years while I get caught up on all the stuff I bought two years ago or more.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

The earlier stuff is still very interesting in its own right -- more obviously a product of its time, but with enough flourishes that are distinctly "his". The biggest flaw is that a lot of them were written in extreme haste and it shows.