The "sweet spot" for Sci-Fantasy?

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The SWEETEST spot for Sci-Fantasy?

  • Star Wars

    Votes: 22 48.9%
  • Gamma World

    Votes: 4 8.9%
  • Flash Gordon

    Votes: 5 11.1%
  • Talislanta

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Tekumel

    Votes: 4 8.9%
  • Rifts

    Votes: 4 8.9%
  • Jorune

    Votes: 5 11.1%
  • Blackmoor

    Votes: 1 2.2%

  • Total voters
    45
  • Poll closed .
It looks terrible but why does it have a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.

I enjoyed the Dark Tower series but didn't bother with the film. Reading the reactions of many, many disappointed Dark Tower fans was enough for me to know it would be terrible.

I remember watching Liquid Sky on late night cable TV in the late 80s or early 90s. It is slow as molasses and doesn’t try to make any sense but had a trippy charm I liked. The good parts were few and far between but I can’t say I regretted watching it. At the same time I wouldn’t recommend it either. It was put on blu in the last couple of years, I may revisit sometime.

Mission to Mars I thought was just mediocre not terrible. It lacks any energy, which is odd coming from De Palma.

The Dark Tower is scattered and lifeless. It feels more like a TV pilot from the 90s than a feature film.

But I’m an easy lay when it comes to sf. I’ll watch any sf film no matter how crappy. I’m the same with horror.
 
The Dark Tower is scattered and lifeless. It feels more like a TV pilot from the 90s than a feature film.

Nail on the head... like an action pack pilot that never took off. (You know the guys who brought us Hercules and Bandit...) Only campy without realizing it is campy like Sinbad.
 
I'm curious when people think that more experimental lower budget sci-fi movies took a dive, cause the first more recent move I think of when someone mentions that type of movie is Moon, which was 5 million (which would be less than Zardoz was made on when you consider inflation).

And Moon is an amazing movie.

(Granted Moon isn't as recent as I remembered it being, and it is my brain doing the "that was only a couple of years ago FUCK IT WAS 10 YEARS AGO thing).
 
But I’m an easy lay when it comes to sf. I’ll watch any sf film no matter how crappy. I’m the same with horror.


I was that way most of my life, maybe it's my limited free time these days but I'm much more prone to turning off films after a few minutes now, especially on streaming services. That said, the bar isn't very high to entertain me. 3 of my favourite Sci Fi flicks of the last few years are Manborg, TurboKid, and FAQ About Time Travel.
 
I'm curious when people think that more experimental lower budget sci-fi movies took a dive, cause the first more recent move I think of when someone mentions that type of movie is Moon, which was 5 million (which would be less than Zardoz was made on when you consider inflation).

And Moon is an amazing movie.

(Granted Moon isn't as recent as I remembered it being, and it is my brain doing the "that was only a couple of years ago FUCK IT WAS 10 YEARS AGO thing).


Moon was awesome, as was Primer, which I think was around the same time.


Time sure goes faster each year though, eh?
 
The guy who did Primer also made the excellent Upstream Colour. Some find it very confusing as it doesn’t explain what is going on but I think if one is familiar with sf literary tropes you can figure it out.

I suspect Ex Machina, which I thought was excellent, was far from a big budget film.

The Sound of My Voice is also a very good modern sf time travel film.
 
Ex Machina was like 15 mill, very low budget by modern standards. The special effects are fantastic for what they were working with.
 
Ex Machina was the girl AI the dickish millionaire built and then got in one of his employees to do the Turing test on her? If so, yeah, enjoyed that one a lot.
 
Did you ever notice that sci-fI movies made back in the 90s always showed future cars as if they were all refrigerators on wheels? As if humanity lost all their curves in the future.
 
I'm not particularly a fan of any of the poll options.
But liking has nothing to do with what question is. What level of fantasy and science fiction would you consider the best balance. And those are just examples of levels.
 
Liquid Sky? It was popular with subsets of Journalism and Philosophy majors I knew in college. My advice, if you're not into pontificating on existentialism and the sex and drugs side of the punk scene in the 80s avoid the movie at all costs.

Guilty as charged. I remember liking it in college. Wasn't my favorite or anything, but I tucked it into my love for cyberpunk-fiction and cheeseballs movies trying to be more than what they were.

Worst Sci-Fi movie? If I remove schmaltz-factor? I'm gonna say it.. Since 1996... I've never walked out on a movie. And I ALMOST did it - "The Last Jedi". My son got up and walked out 45-seconds into the movie... I, alas, stuck it through.

That movie was *bad*. Not bad in a "Battle Beyond the Stars" kitschy kinda way. Just bad structure, writing, directing, the editor should be shot with a DL-66 Heavy Blaster in both kneecaps. The acting... well it wasn't good... but due to the bad writing, directing and editing I'm not confident enough I can blame them.

The fact it was Star Wars was irrelevant (or made it worse considering it rendered so much of the previous movies and EU content meaningless). Just as a sci-fi movie it was very unintentionally bad. Beautiful visual effects tho.
 
I’m not going to argue with the majority of your post although I would love to, but the EU was meaningless the second Disney purchased Lucasfilm. Even before that, Lucas himself would override EU, as he did with the prequels.
 
I’m not going to argue with your post, but the EU was meaningless the second Disney purchased Lucasfilm. Even before that, Lucas himself would override EU, as he did with the prequels.
The EU was crap. Endless regurgitation of the same plot, with new improved superweapoms. The high water.mark of the whole thing was a coincidence driven mess.
 
"There is always a bigger fish"
And a bigger one. And yet another clone.

But seriously, the Zahn written Heir to the Empire trilogy is widely held as being the best if the EU. And it's basically three books of extra vowels, with Thrawn saying "I knew they would do that and planned for it!" Not to mention the amount t of times people conveniently turn up in the same systems.

Almost as if the galaxy was a city and people kept going to the same bars. Rather than millions of inhabited systems.
 
I liked the Zahn books when I was 12, and I used to enjoy the Marvel comics, besides Splinter of the Minds Eye never really explored much of the EU. I recall there was some mid 90s Dark Horse Star Wars comics that were highly regarded at the time, but this was at the height of the collectors boom so I wasn't compelled to jump through hoops Tracking them down.

I liked the Droids and Ewok cartoons as a kid. Droids especially really actually expanded the universe, always thought it would be good fodder for a D6 Star Wars campaign
 
Dark Empire by Dark Horse was the height of Star Wars comics. The main gist was that Palpatine comes back as a younger clone and Luke tries to defeat him by destroying evil within, by becoming his apprentice. It doesn’t work like he planned and he starts to get a little evil inside. Leia has to pull him from the brink before he falls to the Dark Side.

Fans back then were like “Luke turns to the Dark Side!??? How kewl is that!!?” I think you know where I’m going with this...
 
I’m not going to argue with the majority of your post although I would love to, but the EU was meaningless the second Disney purchased Lucasfilm. Even before that, Lucas himself would override EU, as he did with the prequels.
That's because the rule he made was that everything was canon unless it contradicts his (Lucas) movies. Which is why the Zahn Trilogy was never canon as of 2002 with Attack of The Clones. That's why there was a fair amount of stuff that didn't go into to much preexisting detail.

The EU was crap. Endless regurgitation of the same plot, with new improved superweapoms. The high water.mark of the whole thing was a coincidence driven mess.
The West End Games line of books were really popular, and are part of the EU. In fact, I've heard a rumour that some material from them were used in Rogue One. Possibly the best movie in the Disney Wars saga, which isn't saying much given it's competition but even a by-the-numbers spy/war movie that it was, I actually enjoyed more, despite having not twists or shocks in it.

Personally, the EU was no better, nor worse than anything Lucas did, and for me? That's just fine.
 
Personally I don't think Star Wars even belongs on the list, it is way over the line into sci-fi, not a whole lot of fantasy except in the broadest of terms. Enhanced mental powers like the force, are not uncommon in sci-fi fiction. As someone else mentioned, you could almost run Star Wars with stock Traveller. ...
It's funny you say that because Bill Roper (of Diablo and Warcraft fame) wrote up a Mongoose Traveller 2e hack of Star Wars. The update for 2e was announced here and if you don't wanna go to that link you can just look right here.

I'd like to throw in the space fantasy show of Farscape. Farscape has some very questionable scientific explanation for its science. It also has some very strange stuff that's honestly pretty fantastic, such as Zhaan's telepathic magic and some Q-like space wizards. Alderac Entertainment Group actually made an RPG for it in the d20 system (might've been AEG's first foray into RPGs, idk). I'd probably not use it with the d20 system given my current gaming interests, but I might use GURPS or maybe D6 Space. That said, it's still useful for some extra source material.
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It's funny you say that because
It's funny he says that, because I'd say Star Wars doesn't belong to the list due to the distinct lack of SF elements:devil:.

(No, sorry, spaceships don't really count - not when they don't really impact the setting in any meaningful way that couldn't be replaced by horse carriages, leaving the plot of the trilogy intact. OTOH, you've got Space Gishes battling it out:tongue:!)
 
Eh, I'd say it would be hard to replace them with horse carriages. The final battle in A New Hope would be odd. That said, you wouldn't need scifi, as you could replace it with just WWII era planes and ships.

EDIT: ... Now that I think about it WWII era planes and ships with mystical powers sounds pretty dope for a setting.
 
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The final battle in A New Hope would be odd. That said, you wouldn't need scifi, as you could replace it with just WWII era planes
And that is exactly how Lucas did his rough cut of the story, using Battle of Britain cinematics for the space dog fights :smile:
 
It's funny he says that, because I'd say Star Wars doesn't belong to the list due to the distinct lack of SF elements:devil:.

(No, sorry, spaceships don't really count - not when they don't really impact the setting in any meaningful way that couldn't be replaced by horse carriages, leaving the plot of the trilogy intact. OTOH, you've got Space Gishes battling it out:tongue:!)
I have to disagree there... The Deathstar and the whole stolen plans for the Deathstar make it very Sci-fi. It actually has a lot of the elements for contemporary sci-fi. The main difference is the SW universe is old and tech is just a part of life. Nothing is new or a frontier, so it's more people focused on story.

Also, the Millenium falcon can't be replaced with something like a sailing ship or the Spruce Goose... it just wouldn't work the same.
 
I'm curious when people think that more experimental lower budget sci-fi movies took a dive, cause the first more recent move I think of when someone mentions that type of movie is Moon, which was 5 million (which would be less than Zardoz was made on when you consider inflation).

And Moon is an amazing movie.

(Granted Moon isn't as recent as I remembered it being, and it is my brain doing the "that was only a couple of years ago FUCK IT WAS 10 YEARS AGO thing).
Moon was great!
 
And that is exactly how Lucas did his rough cut of the story, using Battle of Britain cinematics for the space dog fights :smile:

If you watch the RIDICULOUSLY awesome documentary "Milius" on Amazon - you'll see *exactly* where this (and every great thing in Hollywood from the 70's - 80's) came from - John Milius. They were hanging round Martin Scorsese's house watching Howard Hughes aerial photography on an old reel... and it looks like shit. But you can directly see where Lucas was influenced by the amazing cinematography of the shots.

Side note: Everyone should go watch Milius. And watch the credits. He invented the UFC!

Warning - Language.
 
It's funny he says that, because I'd say Star Wars doesn't belong to the list due to the distinct lack of SF elements:devil:.

(No, sorry, spaceships don't really count - not when they don't really impact the setting in any meaningful way that couldn't be replaced by horse carriages, leaving the plot of the trilogy intact. OTOH, you've got Space Gishes battling it out:tongue:!)

The distinction I make between Hard SciFi and any other type is that Hard SciFi primarily explores the implications/affects of a new technology.

This is why Kids in the Hall Brain Candy I'd say is one of the best Hard SciFi films. But anything that isn't Hard SciFi could switch out their plots with any other genre, as plots are not genre dependent.

That said, I still consider the presence of spaceships, advanced technology, and aliens as Science Fiction.

2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien Nation, Predator, Alien, The Forbidden Planet, 99% of Star Trek/Farscape episodes across the franchise, john Carter, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, etc etc all fall under this umbrella. Hard SciFi actually only accounts for a very small portion of the genre overall
 
I lurve Masters of Umdaar (a world of adventure for Fate accelerated).

It's like Gamma World meets Thundaar the Barbarian. Easy to run, quick generation of zany,.out-there characters. Simple but usable premise. And I can generally quickly spin up scenarios for it by taking a D&D module and making the trappings more SF-y (monsters become Mutants, golems become robots, etc.)
 
It's funny he says that, because I'd say Star Wars doesn't belong to the list due to the distinct lack of SF elements:devil:.

(No, sorry, spaceships don't really count - not when they don't really impact the setting in any meaningful way that couldn't be replaced by horse carriages, leaving the plot of the trilogy intact. OTOH, you've got Space Gishes battling it out:tongue:!)
I'm gonna call Bullshit here. If that's truly the case than about half the choices in the poll don't count either, namely Gamma World, Talislanta, Rifts and Blackmoor. If they can be considered Sci-Fantasy with the little tech and/or explanation as to why, then Star Wars most definitely fits.
 
I have to disagree there... The Deathstar and the whole stolen plans for the Deathstar make it very Sci-fi.
Sorry, but no. Replace Deathstar with Juggernaut (the Behemoth warmachine from Exalted). The plans reveal that it must be shot in a precise location, same location where it was shot ages ago, by fire arrows. But you must fight the riders which defend it:smile:.


Also, the Millenium falcon can't be replaced with something like a sailing ship or the Spruce Goose... it just wouldn't work the same.
Again, disagree. It can be Millennium Falcon, the pride of Her Majesty's fleet...or of Lando's trade empire's fleet. Still no difference.

The distinction I make between Hard SciFi and any other type is that Hard SciFi primarily explores the implications/affects of a new technology.
Right, there's a difference in the use of terms, then. Here's my distinction:
Any and all Sci-Fi explores the implications of a new technology (and, possibly, societal condition in a developed world, or contact with a different civilization that changes* us). Hard SF explores plausible/scientifically remotely possible technology.
Everything else is fantasy.


*Yes, that means "All Flesh Is Grass" is SF where Star Wars ain't. Sorry.

That said, I still consider the presence of spaceships, advanced technology, and aliens as Science Fiction.
As you can see from the definition above, I don't. I also distinguish between the essence of a genre, and the trappings of a genre.
To give another example, you can have samurai and katanas all you want, but if your game/novel/whatever doesn't feature a conflict between duty/humanity/ethics/desire/obligations, and duty/humanity/ethics/desire/obligations, where you have to make a choice...it's not chanbara to me.

2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien Nation, Predator, Alien, The Forbidden Planet, 99% of Star Trek/Farscape episodes across the franchise, john Carter, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, etc etc all fall under this umbrella. Hard SciFi actually only accounts for a very small portion of the genre overall
Most of those would be "space opera" at best. And some are Swords and Planet, which is just tangentially related (at times).

Again, according to your definition, your conclusions work out. According to mine, my conclusions are hard to contest. We'd best agree to disagree.
 
I guess my definition of fantasy is different than some. Then again if we really get right down to it, almost everything is really a western at heart. Or maybe westerns are sci fi and or fantasy?
 
Yeah AsenRG AsenRG I can't get behind that. Star Wars is more Sci Fi than Fantasy in my books. I can't see how replacing the setting as a fantasy one it erases way too much of what Made Star Wars great... namely the Sci fi elements themselves.
 
Again, according to your definition, your conclusions work out. According to mine, my conclusions are hard to contest. We'd best agree to disagree.


I wouldn't even say it's a disagreement, anymore than how we individually iorganize socks in a drawer. Ultimately these terms mean nothing
It's funny you say that because Bill Roper (of Diablo and Warcraft fame) wrote up a Mongoose Traveller 2e hack of Star Wars. The update for 2e was announced here and if you don't wanna go to that link you can just look right here.

I'd like to throw in the space fantasy show of Farscape. Farscape has some very questionable scientific explanation for its science. It also has some very strange stuff that's honestly pretty fantastic, such as Zhaan's telepathic magic and some Q-like space wizards. Alderac Entertainment Group actually made an RPG for it in the d20 system (might've been AEG's first foray into RPGs, idk). I'd probably not use it with the d20 system given my current gaming interests, but I might use GURPS or maybe D6 Space. That said, it's still useful for some extra source material.
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Farscape is the most D&D show ever made. The specific classes of the PCs, the way they clearly go up in levels over the course of seasons, even the way the GM works it so one player can play with both groups when timing conflicts mean half the players can't meet at the same time for one season...
 
Guilty as charged. I remember liking it in college. Wasn't my favorite or anything, but I tucked it into my love for cyberpunk-fiction and cheeseballs movies trying to be more than what they were.

Worst Sci-Fi movie? If I remove schmaltz-factor? I'm gonna say it.. Since 1996... I've never walked out on a movie. And I ALMOST did it - "The Last Jedi". My son got up and walked out 45-seconds into the movie... I, alas, stuck it through.

That movie was *bad*. Not bad in a "Battle Beyond the Stars" kitschy kinda way. Just bad structure, writing, directing, the editor should be shot with a DL-66 Heavy Blaster in both kneecaps. The acting... well it wasn't good... but due to the bad writing, directing and editing I'm not confident enough I can blame them.

The fact it was Star Wars was irrelevant (or made it worse considering it rendered so much of the previous movies and EU content meaningless). Just as a sci-fi movie it was very unintentionally bad. Beautiful visual effects tho.

I have never seen Battle Beyond the Stars thought of as a bad film. It is knowingly campy but also clever and well paced with a script by the great John Sayles. Among b-movie fans it is widely considered among the best Corman films of the 80s.
 
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