Stewball wrote:But to the point, I can't remember the last good big budget sci-fi story, except for Inception, which I think narrowly qualifies for the category anyway. The only other examples in my tier 8 and up are The Matrix, The Truman Show, Vanilla Sky, Watchmen and 2001. (Holy Mackerel, I didn't realize it was that bad, and there's only a couple more if you loosen the definition, Limitless and In Time) With all the money they throw at it, you'd think there'd be more, a lot more. I thought for a while they're just having a hard time living up to 2001, but no, overall it's been getting worse, and I think it started with Alien.
Having just seen
Star Trek Into Darkness, I see where you're coming from. But I don't think that the issue is that it's intentionally dumbed down, or that all the money was wasted on VFX. I think the real issue is that right now, Hollywood is very cautious and risk-averse, which manifests itself in two ways. One, there can be risk with the story; safe, bullshit things like [spoiler]Kirk coming back to life before the credits roll[/spoiler] are practically mandated, and if all possible, movies should be made for a pre-existing fan base. Hello, prequels, sequels, adaptations, and remakes. Two, it also means that only people who have already shown that they can be successful and please audiences are allowed to helm big-budget sci-fi projects. Unfortunately, that group of people includes (and almost seems limited to) Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Damon Lindelof, and J. J. Abrams.
Now, I don't want to shit on those 4 too badly, because I do in general enjoy their movies. But I would put a lot of blame on them for churning out mediocre stuff, instead of trying to reach new heights of sci-fi. They are jointly responsible for (in part or in whole) for making
Star Trek,
Star Trek Into Darkness,
Cowboys & Aliens,
Prometheus,
Super 8,
Cloverfield,
Armageddon,
Transformers,
Transformers 2, and
The Island. Which is a rather large percentage of the big-budget sci-fi that's been made in the past 15 years. And while those range from pretty bad to pretty good, I don't think any of them come close to a new sci-fi masterpiece.
On the plus side, I disagree with your assessment of science fiction's past and its future. (For what it's worth, I've seen 51 sci-fi movies from before 1968, if that somehow validates my opinions.)
2001 may represent a peak for sci-fi, but it's not because the genre has gone down hill from there. Something like
2001 is just exceedingly rare; I personally consider it one of the peaks of cinema at large. So
Alien may seem un-intellectual and un-artistic, relatively, but that's because they're not comparable. If you look at
It! The Terror from Beyond Space, and
Planet of the Vampires, which directly influenced Ridley Scott, you realize that they suck compared to a taut, dark, psychologically-thrilling movie like
Alien. It wasn't the beginning of the end for smart sci-fi, it was the climax of decades of shitty "monsters picking people off one by one" movies, probably along with the 1986 remake of
The Thing. It proved that some people could do justice to that concept, and that it didn't have to belong in the realm of B-movies.
Actually, it may be because most of science fiction cinema's history is so degraded that I am actually excited for the genre's chances right now. Getting something like 2001 isn't a result of the movie industry getting their shit together and deciding to produce some serious fare. It's a dice roll; something that accidentally happens whenever Hollywood is willing to spend money on sci-fi projects. Usually after the genre starts succeeding.
Metropolis comes out in 1927, and then the world goes in to The Great Depression. Two decades of monster movies and film serials. In the 1950s, people start watching sci-fi en masse. 90% of them are shit, but we still get
The Day The Earth Stood Still,
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and
Forbidden Planet. Movies start flopping in the 1960s, and Hollywood takes a bunch of risks and green-lights a bunch of movies by new directors, to appeal to the young generation. We get
2001.
Star Wars is huge. We get
Blade Runner.
Jurassic Park is huge. We get
Gattaca.
And right now, I think we're posed for another great time for sci-fi. Hollywood is churning out a ton of genre movies, because Avatar made $2 billion, and comic book movies keep breaking the $1 billion mark. And sure, a lot of them are remakes or superhero movies, or they're being handed to Michael Bay, J. J. Abrams, etc. But people like Neill Blomkamp and Duncan Jones and Alfonso Cuaron and Christopher Nolan are getting funding too. Independent filmmakers can create special effects on their laptop that are better than what the biggest movies had a decade ago.
One of these days, Hollywood's accidentally going to approve a movie made by some truly talented people, and with a little luck, we'll have our new masterpiece. We just have to wait for our number to come up on the dice.
