I don’t normally spend a lot of time deeply analyzing 30+ year old movies, but I was sitting some place the other day where the Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall (1) was playing and a few things struck me. Been a while since I’d seen it, so I was looking with newer eyes.
Fact: it was the most expensive movie ever made, up to that time. Yet, there’re several scenes where the direction is quite poor.
Fact: There’s a special effects scene which was included for no other reason (so rumor at the time went, and I was connected then to some of the folks who’d worked on the movie) than to prove it could be done(2), but really it didn’t work that well, and looking at it now it sort of says, “yeah you were right, it doesn’t work, but we’re going to pretend it did.” I’ll leave you to guess which scene that is — just look for the most obvious piece of bad special effects (along with some equally bad directing just then, too).
Fact: Mars has a Blue Sky, not a red one. Even “back then,” it was well known that Mars has a blue sky. (First photos from Mars go back to July 1976.) Not a red one.
Fact: the biggest flaw in the whole thing is the ending, where a Magic Machine pulls a Miracle and saves out Intrepid Heroes. That’s called “deus ex machina” and is VERBOTEN in science fiction, due to bad memories of evil times (“pulp magazines” of the 40’s and 50’s, that is to say). The point of Science Fiction is the Science. Otherwise it’s Fantasy and Fantasy has other rules for successful story telling. That flaw at the end of this movie follows the rules of neither one.
Some of you are probably going, “no, it’s the fiction that is the point.” And I say, no, not really. “Science Fiction” is fiction — a story — based on known science, known facts and engineering, and on what can be derived or deduced from known facts and engineering. Further, it’s an exploration, both technologically and sociologically around these things. This is why the original Star Trek series is actually Science Fiction and nearly all the rest of Star Trek is better termed Science Fantasy(3).
Too much of what Hollywood labels Science Fiction is in fact Science Fantasy(4) — at best. But even their comedies, dramas, and action/thrillers suffer from inattention to detail. Sometimes gross inattention.
Hollywood is supposed to the be the professionals at telling a story(5), but they too often operate at a very low bar.
Ok, not one of my pithier postings, I know, but that Red Sky on Mars, in the world’s then most expensive movie ever (up to that time), when anyone who had paid any attention to the Mars missions would know it was blue, just really bothered me.
Thanks for listening
Okay, okay… the punchline here is that I believe there is no excuse for spending millions upon millions of dollars for a major project and still messing up so big-big. I mean, was it a government project? No. Couldn’t the script writers have hired one professional science fiction author to consult with and/or review the script? Or even one high school science teacher? Or even a high school student? Current movies are no more accurate on the details, by the way, though The Arrival and Interstellar both did quite well. Ad Astra had pretty good science but had so many story/script flaws and pointless diversions in it that the main story was almost lost. The Martian was pretty good excepting that the first 15 minutes and definitely the last 30 minutes were ridiculous. Independence Day the Sequel totally ignored even high school physics. Then there was the movie Monsters, with a budget of only 1/2 a million — petty cash, as movies go! — and was still a phenomenal movie, well made, internally consistent, great story. Excellent, without spending bucks-up(6). What’s my point? You can do better! And for that kind of money you really *should*!!
You can do better — that could be an alternate title for this whole website.
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(1) In deference to aesthetics and Good Story Telling, we’ll pretend the 2012 movie of the same name never happened. What a dreadful story and hideous premise. Just call it a bad movie by a coincidentally identical name.
(2) Since then I find myself watching movies for the sort of scenes that might be “one special effects guy thumbing his nose at another one.” There are scenes that catch my eyes from asking that question and the common feature in all of them is that they have no obvious place in the story. The story did not require that scene nor even set it up. It’s just there. Flashy, showy. Probably just one SPFX guy giving a raspberry to another one.
(3) Especially the transporter, which the original series never attempted to explain, thereby preserving their Science Fiction base, but unfortunately TNG did attempt to explain, turning it into something that could never possibly work [I have another posting some place around here on that, if you want some details], and actually ruining the transporter as possible technology. By the way, instant transportation *is* possible, just not as a “matter stream.” Ridiculous concept, though not for the time — we know a lot more now, unless “we” work in Hollywood, of course.
(4) There are rules even for Fantasy, by the way, as any one who has read the Lord of the Rings will know, if you read JRR’s own introduction.
(5) The number of movies of all genres I have watched where the scripts needed one more pass is just overwhelming to me. Even on a first viewing I can usually spot several script flaws. Though, to be fair, sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between a script flaw and bad editing of the film. That is, it might not be the script’s fault at all, but rather poor decisions made in the editing room at 3:30 am the morning the film was scheduled to ship out. Movie production is complex, after all, and, again, to be fair, it is sometimes amazing that a movie can be made at all.
(6) It’s been argued that the first Star Wars movie (the original, now known as episode 4) remains the best, and further argued it is because George Lucas had such a slim budget for that movie, it forced him to concentrate on what was important, and be more creative and less flamboyant. It’s a reasonable argument, and likely, but it’s also probably unprovable.