ronocdh

Torchred

ARP

OMG! Ponies!

I mean how do we bring about a Blade Runner or Syndicate style utopia without a wrecked environment?

@OMG! Ponies!: Aw shit, it has Belle and Sebastian music? I don't want to see it anymore.

Mister Adequate

Eac_o_System

A hell of a lot of Apocalyptic films came out then; Mad Max, Salute of the Jugger, Cherry 2000, Death Race 2000, Escape from New York, and so on...

Yes, there were similar things happening during the 80s. The USA didn't have to worry about terror, but the Brits had the IRA blowing things up all over the place. But Iranians were hijacking planes, Russia was the big nuclear threat, and petrol prices were excessive.

But moreover there were long term conservative governments in power, and with artists being liberals, it's a way to stick it to the man without being branded "left wing".

Furthermore, and I think this is more important than anything else, culture recycles itself roughly every 20 years.

As the kids growing up with these films move to an age where they are working in positions of power in the industry, they recall with fondness the nostalgic feelings these movies gave them, and seek to re-create them by greenlighting movies that have a similar theme.

It's also why "electro music" is so popular in dance clubs, it's why the ghetto blaster is making a comeback (albeit now with ipod docks) and Alvin and the Chipmunks is now playing in cinemas.

FunkyJ

Amiash

aspiringexpatriate

It annoys me that people's main argument against Juno is that there's no way a 16 year old could handle that. Thousands, maybe millions of 16 year olds have kids around the world all the time, but none of us can conceive of one who doesn't break down until the last minute, for a speedy recovery in the third act.

Yes, it's a bit too clean, but not so clean that it pisses me off. And I've always had a pet peeve about the 'character development' thing as well. But maybe that's just because I hated Jackson's Aragorn.

Maybe it woulda been better on a rewrite, 99.9% of scripts could benefit from a rewrite, but to say this one needed it more than others? Well, that's a bit much.

Personally I don't mind the occasional clean breaks in film relationships, when the people are portrayed well enough. Yes, there was room for improvement, it's not the best film of the year by any means, but it was fun.

aspiringexpatriate

gazoline

Ghede

Except for the chance to eat cloned panda cub, the Transmet world has basically nothing to recommend it.

braak

The entire movie was exceedingly shallow - from the failure to address any relationship beyond setting up a premise (poor girl - her best friend's a cheerleader; the guy who supposedly doesn't like her has a crush on her; her parents love each other and give her freedom, support, and guidance; and the adoptive couple amicably breaks up without any fighting) to the insulting treatment of music by the movie (look, Jason Bateman is edgy because he has a Soundgarden tee-shirt and a copy of "If I Was A Carpenter"; Juno has good taste in music because she listens to Iggy Pop and David Bowie).

The music and animation were Jason (son of Ivan - indie my ass) Reitman's fault. The lack of any character or plot development was the writer's fault - who should have spent more time either realistically dealing with a pregnant teen whose mother abandoned her and who now plans to abandon her own child or writing more and better jokes. Unfortunately, she spent most of her wit in coming up with the story of the stripper name.

If ever a movie needed a re-write, it was that one. Pick one secondary character, explore Juno's relationship with that character in depth, and then you have a good movie. Otherwise, you're just wasting perfectly good celluloid.

But I digress...

OMG! Ponies!

And, mark my words, it's COMING.

banmojo

wishnevsky

aspiringexpatriate

aspiringexpatriate

aspiringexpatriate

When you're paying $52,000 a year for the privilege of saying that you went to a school that's more expensive than the Ivy League, you don't ride mass transit.

/signed

An NYU alumnus who, like a lot of NYU alumni, hates NYU

OMG! Ponies!

How much of Cloverfield aesthetic was ripped off from 28 Days Later?

What is a movie if not an illusion. Hollywood will always be cannibalizing the fringe and passing it off as new. Whether it's shooting a movie on handheld cameras or using ham-handed politics to pass off a spectacle as "topical" and "prescient", when Hollywood needs new, it just looks at what's hot and what's cool.

Which is why the son of a director who has grossed almost a billion dollars can pretend to be "indie" when making an "low-budget"-like movie with some crappy "hand-drawn" animated titles and a Belle & Sebastian soundtrack.*

*sorry, I really hated Juno and everything it stands for.

OMG! Ponies!

mitchel_stevens

I think most of us have hit it on the head: When bad/scary things are happening in the real world, we follow the route of escapism and at the same time, follow our path to its logical conclusion. What if global warming continues (Waterworld [cringe], AI), what if we become a totalitarian state (V for vendetta), etc. So often the scarier things are in the real world, the more we react in our sci-fi. I wonder if you could correlate the number/type of sci-fi movies to geopoliitical events. That would be a great graphic.

ARP

goldfarb

I think there's one more thing in play here, though. Mobile Internet devices, stronger-than-natural prosthetic arms, pain-inducing energy beam weapons, genetic tinkering and countless other facets of modern life clearly indicate that we have now entered THE FUTURE.

And sadly, THE FUTURE isn't (as of now) one in which everyone on Earth has learned to get along and cooperate in a perfectly Socialist community (Star Trek), or even one in which everything looks perfect, despite a rotten core (Brave New World or Logan's Run). Instead, we're well on our way to Road Warrior.

Most Hollywood science fiction comes from people who aren't as attached to the genre as many of their fans, but who want to make a point.

And the point? It's almost too late to keep THE FUTURE from being someplace where we eat dog food in Hell.

Balam

Gann

I have always enjoyed the idea of people having to find their own roots by living in older, simpler ways, with fewer technological distractions and societal conventions...

Lab_Cat

I don't think enough people are fed up with current civilization to make self-destruction a primary reason for post-apocalypse popularity.

aubreyAubrey

wishnevsky

Then there was all those Distopias, like "Space Merchants" that might have looked back to "1984" Not to mention all those John Wyndham/J.G. Ballard books that came from "War of the Worlds."

I think they ran out of ways to destroy England with Tiffids and such, just about the time the movies started to do the same.

I always thought that genre was a reaction to the Loss of the Empire, but so was the Rolling Stones.

These Zombie movies are a lot less inventive than the stuff in the old days, but movies cost so much they have to be imitative and safe.

You can always count on Zombies.

wishnevsky

tetracycloide

papercup mixmaster

Well, that and I think there's always a little part of us that, regardless of culture, remains stuck in a Lord of the Flies mode, possibly even looking forward to it. We want the world where the only thing to rely upon is grit and luck, because so much of what makes up society is utter bull so much of the time.

Slatz_Grobnik

braak