Star Wars, Star Trek and other Sci-Fi

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shin_getter said:
You need "precursor civilizations" to die to maintain space opera type setting. I think the vision of space being a source of "frontier" stories is pretty fringe within its own context given the nature evolution of the environment. What is likely to happen short time span of colonialization followed by populations and processing power that is orders of magnitude beyond anything in history. An alternative would be the first civ systematically killing potential life bearing areas to prevent future rivals.

Someone really need to think about that world....(and find an angle that is appealing to read) Quadrillions living in a system for (b)million years. What would "people" even do? What is the culture, what is the kind of thing that is thought about and what are the stories within that context.
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That future has already begun with the new religion "save the planet" from those who are destroying it: Do not consume much water, energy is scarce, do not eat meat, it would be better if you were not born because you are killing the planet. You are parasites and to save the planet there is only one solution... a virus. They are the new Nazis.
 
Orionblamblam said:
edwest2 said:
The glorious future of AI, whatever that may be, cannot replace humans - not too many humans. Otherwise, who would buy books, especially at a discount, from Amazon? No income = no sales. That will never change.
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Indeed. Who would buy books in a world where an infinite supply of books - and music, and video entertainment - can be dreamed up by an app on your phone, tailor-made to exactly fit your needs and desires?

Who would need Hollywood when an AI program can be told "give me a book-accurate 30-hour presentation of 'The Silmarillion' starring a cast of overweight bald midgets" and after a seconds computation the opening scene begins to play? Who would need publishing houses when that app, after studying your reading habit and/or directly scanning your brain, can throw together novels that are so precisely perfect for you that the serotonin levels become dangerously addictive?

Forget about "yeah, but how can that possibly be profitable" because it won't need to be. Modern publishing needs to be, because there are people involved. AI-based writing doesn't have any humans in the loop. Someone could well create that AI as a *lark.* Someone could create it as a university project. Someone could create it as a way to torpedo the publishing business that constantly rejected his own garbage novels. Someone could create it as a pay-per-book service that spends a few years making the creator bank, but which then finally gets cracked by hackers and modified into a freeware system.

There's nothing special or sacred about fiction writing or writers. If they can be replaced with automation, they will be. And unlike plumbers who need to physically show up and turn a wrench, this could in principle all be done on your phone. *Any* job that today can be done remotely will be doable by AI soon enough. Writing, acting, accounting, teaching, therapy, preaching... no reason why these can't be done by machines on a screen.
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Pffft. They can't get to Mars and some stupid app knows what I want? I work at a highly creative business with genius level people. As a contributing writer and concept person, I'm shown a drawing of a creature and told to give it a name in under 10 minutes. Not just any name but something appropriate and compelling. You can live in a future where stories are created like paving bricks. Humans will want stories created by humans. The inhuman will be rejected.

People relate to people, not cold, dead things. Living, breathing actors, for example, will never be replaced by electronic bits because real people relate to real people ONLY. Not electronic nothings.
 
edwest2 said:
Pffft. They can't get to Mars and some stupid app knows what I want?
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Yes. That's the world you live in *now,* to a crude first approximation. if you surf online, look up videos and music, shop online... your activities are tracked, logged and to a surprising degree understood.

I work at a highly creative business with genius level people.
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For now.

You can live in a future where stories are created like paving bricks.
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I not only can, I will. So will you.

Humans will want stories created by humans. The inhuman will be rejected.
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That's *funny.* Modern popular music hardly has a hint of the human in it; even the humans who actually sing are tweaked with autotune. The songs have been reduced to algorithms. And people throw many billions of dollars at it.

People relate to people, not cold, dead things. Living, breathing actors, for example, will never be replaced by electronic bits because real people relate to real people ONLY. Not electronic nothings.
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Uh-huh...

scale
 
An Ed Emishwiller image who's context is unknown to me, but who's point is very clear...
 

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"on social" ???

Tight-lipped about viewership because the *competition* might learn something.

Nothing's changed. This is the past with the words "on social" tacked on.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Flyaway said:
Kathleen Kennedy has reportedly had her contracted extended by Lucasfilm for a further three years.

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That's a relief. With my current financial situation, I thought I might have to worry about the added expense of going to the theater to see Star Wars movies. But that's a three-year extension on a lack of Star Wars movies worth seeing.
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Even as a diehard fan of eighties actions films that can hardly be described as progressive I recognise entertainment has to evolve. Plus this whole culture war crap that both right and left engage in is pretty tiring.
 
Flyaway said:
Orionblamblam said:
Flyaway said:
Kathleen Kennedy has reportedly had her contracted extended by Lucasfilm for a further three years.

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That's a relief. With my current financial situation, I thought I might have to worry about the added expense of going to the theater to see Star Wars movies. But that's a three-year extension on a lack of Star Wars movies worth seeing.
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Even as a diehard fan of eighties actions films that can hardly be described as progressive I recognise entertainment has to evolve. Plus this whole culture war crap that both right and left engage in is pretty tiring.
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"entertainment has to evolve" ? To what? According to who?
 
edwest2 said:

"entertainment has to evolve" ? To what? According to who?
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The market, for good or ill. The more money that is invested in a project, the more it becomes overwhelmingly an investment, and the more nervous the investors get. Take the scene to two women kissing at the end of... one of the recent Star Wars films, I forget which. It goes through the barest motions of inclusiveness but if you blink you'll miss it, so it can be cut out to sell the film in China. The studio executives must have thought that was a win-win.

That's one of the reasons why I like small sf movies like Under the Skin. It's far from everyone's cup of dried leaves in boiling water, but that's the point.
 
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Rhinocrates said:
edwest2 said:

"entertainment has to evolve" ? To what? According to who?
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The market, for good or ill. The more money that is invested in a project, the more it becomes overwhelmingly an investment, and the more nervous the investors get. That's one of the reasons why I like small sf movies like Under the Skin. It's far from everyone's cup of dried leaves in boiling water, but that's the point.
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I prefer my entertainment to be entertaining. I don't want to be part of a social engineering attempt or indoctrination.

Every movie since the beginning has been about money. Walt Disney was going over budget while making Snow White. His accounting people warned of dire consequences if the movie was not a hit.
 
edwest2 said:

I prefer my entertainment to be entertaining. I don't want to be part of a social engineering attempt or indoctrination.
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They're just chasing the money like a cat chases a laser pointer. I wouldn't attribute so much of a coherent plan or forethought. Getting too far ahead of where you think the audience is represents a financial risk.

edwest2 said:
Every movie since the beginning has been about money. Walt Disney was going over budget while making Snow White. His accounting people warned of dire consequences if the movie was not a hit.
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True, but even adjusted for inflation, budgets were smaller then, markets weren't thought of globally (e.g., China) and movies weren't 'franchises'.

I certainly take your point though. I watched the Season 4 premier of Discovery. They tried to make it 'grittier' by naming it 'Kobayashi Maru' and presenting a dilemma, but the dilemma was comparatively trivial and much of the script was people giving affirmative speeches to each other. Even the supposedly critical speech by the President to Burnham was a backhanded compliment ('You have a saviour complex') and the director was obsessed with showing everyone exchanging glances to acknowledge the praise they were receiving.

Would someone please dig up Harlan Ellison?
 
Harlan? I met him once. Anyway, Hollywood is going through an obsessive/compulsive social consciousness experiment right now. Read the trades like Deadline and Variety. Storytelling takes a back seat at least three cars down over making sure that the right gender is directing, writing or something. The same with the mix of actors and the required messages.

So, no thanks. I'm not watching a movie that is primarily about some agenda-message. Hollywood is watched by outside groups to make sure that Hollywood meets their goals.
 
The biggest divide remains the generational one.
I tend to like the stuff I grew up with more strongly than things that were made when I was older.
Accordingly I don't like CGI and prefer model work.
I hate over long padded films.
I want a decent story with a beginning and an end.
I prefer action to words. Dialogue is hard to do. Humour and one liners help.
I can live with a political/cultural agenda as long as it does not bore me rigid.
 
Tony Robert's front cover to the 'Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'. I have the book and if I can get a good scan of the back I'll post that as well.
 

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shin_getter said:
github.com

GitHub - microsoft/NUWA: A unified 3D Transformer Pipeline for visual synthesis

A unified 3D Transformer Pipeline for visual synthesis - microsoft/NUWA
github.com github.com

The future is coming so fast that sci-fi is practically reto.....

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A lot of the results look like garbage.

Give it ten years and it'll look like trash, which means it'll be up there with Star Trek Discovery and Batwoman.Not long after that, a regualr schmoe will be able to download the latest episode of Generic Brainless Action Show and tell the program to look for the policial messaging programmed into the episode... and flip it around. Or to replace the inappropriately cast actors with whoever the viewer wants.
 
edwest2 said:
Rhinocrates said:
edwest2 said:

"entertainment has to evolve" ? To what? According to who?
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The market, for good or ill. The more money that is invested in a project, the more it becomes overwhelmingly an investment, and the more nervous the investors get. That's one of the reasons why I like small sf movies like Under the Skin. It's far from everyone's cup of dried leaves in boiling water, but that's the point.
Click to expand...

I prefer my entertainment to be entertaining. I don't want to be part of a social engineering attempt or indoctrination.

Every movie since the beginning has been about money. Walt Disney was going over budget while making Snow White. His accounting people warned of dire consequences if the movie was not a hit.
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I can think of literally thousands of films even today that the only thing they want to do is get the cash out of your pocket. I personally think people see things that really aren’t there. They Live is the perfect example of this, one of my favourite action films of the eighties, but there are literally people online who think it tells the literal truth of the world in spite of how many times John Carpenter has told them not to be silly.
 
uk 75 said:
The biggest divide remains the generational one.
I tend to like the stuff I grew up with more strongly than things that were made when I was older.
Accordingly I don't like CGI and prefer model work.
I hate over long padded films.
I want a decent story with a beginning and an end.
I prefer action to words. Dialogue is hard to do. Humour and one liners help.
I can live with a political/cultural agenda as long as it does not bore me rigid.
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I agree films are often too long these days. As for social comment that’s hardly new in cinema. Also a lot of CGI ages really badly with one of the few exceptions being the original Jurassic Park. The original Total Recall is a much better film than the remake that’s down to its incredible practical effects and that it may take massive liberties with the book but that’s actually to make it more entertaining the remake is more slavish to the book but as a result worse because you can’t always get a book to work unless you take liberties with it. Plus the remake is a bore fest.
 
I can point to various attempts to inject "who else cares about this?" nonsense into films and TV. There are very real examples of "you must add this to your movie/TV show or we will complain - loudly - to the world."

They Live ??? A mediocre movie. And a poor example of anything I've mentioned.
 
edwest2 said:
I can point to various attempts to inject "who else cares about this?" nonsense into films and TV. There are very real examples of "you must add this to your movie/TV show or we will complain - loudly - to the world."

They Live ??? A mediocre movie. And a poor example of anything I've mentioned.
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Charlie Chaplin would like a word if you think social comment is new, They Live a mediocre film not in my book it isn’t. George A Romero, John Carpenter were doing social commentary in genre film to name just two literally decades ago. As to your first paragraph that often turns out to be all internet hot air with people winding themselves up about films they often haven’t even seen because the internet tells them to. I tell you I am darn glad the internet didn’t exist when I was growing up.
 
"social commentary" ???

Let's go back to the late 1960s. Various "artists" wanted to make trashy movies. They said they were restricted in 'making art.' They needed freedom. At the time, I briefly fell for this thought. But, as time passed, I - and everyone else - should not have given them the benefit of the doubt. The end result was trashy movies.

Today, various Issue Advocacy groups are out to penalize Hollywood if they do not add more and more of what they advocate to movies and TV shows. Hollywood is "graded" every year by those who have self-entitled themselves as Keepers of All That is True and Right. The appropriate ban on politics here prevents me from identifying them.
 
Bob Eggleton covering the right to arm bears...
 

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They Live is a great movie and a lot of fun! People who don't like it probably have a defective overthruster.
 
When art is known only to the artist, everyone else has no idea. I know that story. Like a spiral of duct tape I saw on the floor of an art museum. There was a small card near it: "Please do not remove. This is art."
 
I guess some of you will know the story of the woman who cleaned a museum in Sweden by throwing a "work of art" by confusing it with garbage, art for the people?
 

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edwest2 said:
They Live ??? A mediocre movie.
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Mediocre? A totally awesome subversive masterpiece you mean.
They Live is definitely one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood Left. … The sunglasses function like a critique of ideology. They allow you to see the real message beneath all the propaganda, glitz, posters and so on. … When you put the sunglasses on, you see the dictatorship in democracy, the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.

...the film follows an unnamed drifter who discovers through special sunglasses that the ruling class are "aliens" concealing their appearance and manipulating people to consume, breed, and conform to the status quo via subliminal messages in mass media.
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<Chef's kiss>
 
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