I have been reading a lot of reviews of science fiction films recently, which tend to be more about the lack of reality in what happens in the film rather than what effect the film has on an audience as a whole. This annoys me a lot as I can’t believe people are talking about reality in a SCIENCE-FICTION FILM! science-FICTION! Not everything has to be all that realistic to be honest.
When I watch or read or play any sci-fi I want to be amazed by a spectacle, great characters and story! I can give or take a few minor plot points if, in the end, the story is good. I can’t describe how much it annoys me when people give a bad review of any film based on a few plot points.occasionally the points they make can easily be explained if they actually listened and watched the film.
I’m gonna bring up two films and two points now. One is the film Super 8 – I’ve heard people complain about the fact that a truck could not derail a train. Why was this even a problem when watching the film? The train was derailed by a truck! Yeah, so… they mention how ridiculous that fact is in the film and it moves the plot on very nicely. (Plus makes for a brilliantly long special effects sequence – I know I’ve mentioned how effects should only be background and they are in this because we see Joe on his own fearing for his life and there is a good few moments, so shut up!) What I’m saying is that it happened to move the plot along, why do people complain about this. Would you rather see a version of Super 8 where the truck does no damage to the train and the kids go on making their movie and nothing really exciting happens? No!
My Second point is people complaining about the ending of the first Star Trek movie (I’m talking JJ Abrams kind of reboot here, I’ve seen the Star Trek: The Motion Picture – kinda wish I hadn’t to be honest…) where Scotty… (Ooops, spoiler alert – come on, if you haven’t seen it and you’re reading “Tom’s Sci-fi Blog” then you may need to ask yourself a few serious questions, seriously though, great movie, you need to watch it… where was I? Oh yeah Scotty…) Scotty ejects the core of the Enterprise and detonates it so that the explosion pushes them away from the black hole and they escape. – People complain about this because a black hole would just suck up the light and suck the Enterprise in with it…. Okay, this is true but the jeopardy they’re in in that last scene brings tension and the way they resolve it and work out what’s going on and what do to brings the ensemble together and rounds the film off nicely. Would you have liked to have seen all the crew die by beingsucked into a black hole at the end of the film? No because it would have made a hilariously bad anti-climax…
This (really funny) “How it should have ended” animation points out the flaw in that final scene…
So anyway, another one of my pet peeves when reading and watching reviews (found it’s more video reviews that do this, just realised) I’ll probably write another post like this in the near future as there’s a whole argument going on in my head whether I feel like I’m being truly honest with myself. I can think of films which I have hated because of this very point.
I’ll write a counter argument to this soon featuring the film Prometheus…
Apologies for the spelling and grammar…
Toms Sci-fi Blog 