What's your Sci-Fi unpopular opinion?
What's your Sci-Fi unpopular opinion?
It's a slightly click-baity title, but as we're still generating more content for our magazines, this one included, why not?
My Sci-fi unpopular opinion is that 2001: A Space Odyssey is nothing but pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. I've tried watching it multiple times and each time I have absolutely no patience for the pointless little scenes which contain little to no depth or meaningful plot, all coalescing towards that 15 minute "journey" through space and series of hallucinations or whatever that are supposed to be deep, shake you to your foundations, and make you re-think the whole human condition.
But it doesn't. Because it's just pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. Planet of the Apes was released in the same year and is, on every level, a better Sci-fi movie. It offers mystery, a consistent and engaging plot, relatable characters you actually care about, and asks a lot more questions about the world and our place in it.
I think this might be a truly unpopular opinion, but I could not get into the expanse at all. Just never got invested in the characters enough to stick with it. I've retried watching it 4 times due to everyone recommending it, kind of given up now!
Also the latest star wars films killed any interest I had in star wars.
That means you've missed out on Andor, which I think is better than any live action Star Wars (including, perhaps controversially, Empire Strikes Back)!
It's mature, deep, detailed, grounded, and very political. The characters and world are built up phenomenally, and it's much more contemplative in its pacing, and it definitely treats its audience as intelligent rather than beating them around the head with obvious exposition. It feels more like an HBO show than your standard Star Wars affair, frankly. And it works as a standalone, too - it's not just yet more Skywalker family drama.
I've always loved anything Star Wars that didn't really involve Jedi. The universe is incredibly diverse and interesting, and cutting out the light side vs dark side trope most star wars content is centered on lets writers make really interesting characters and situations. Like in Mandandolrian the scene with Bill Burr confronting the Imperial officer that spearheaded the Burning Khan massacre was just fantastic, regardless of it being star wars.
You know how OP said 2001 was pretentious nonsense? That's how I felt about Andor. It was actively bad, and I struggle to see all the praise it gets as anything other than Morbius level trolling! It was badly written, badly plotted, was trying to be about three things at once and didn't do any of them well, and was about six episodes too long. It's what really turned me off Starwars!
If you are least made it past s1e4 CQB then you gave it a solid shot. That episode imo is where you either pick it up and like it or move on. The first 3 episodes can be a bit slow and introduce so many characters.
I imagine you've probably heard this a few times as well, but give the books a try instead, I read them first and now I can't watch the show.
Oh, thanks I'd actually never heard this before. I will try the books!
How far do you usually get before giving up on it? Not saying you should force it more, just curious.
I'd heard it was a bit hard going until episode 5 so I always try and get to that point but I don't think I've got past. At this point I've rewatched the first episodes too many times
I would say that while the show does a fantastic job of bringing the books to the screen, it misses the interpersonal intimacy that makes the book series so fantastic. The plots are cool, but at its core, The Expanse is really about its characters. If you like to read or listen to audio books, I HIGHLY recommend them. A big part of where the show fails, is it was impossible for them to tell the story and also deal with the internal dialogues of each character. In the books, every chapter is told from the point of view of a specific character, so you get to know their inner thoughts and feelings on an extremely personal level.
This is one of those series where I will tell someone that if they read the books and enjoyed them, they would enjoy the show - and vice-versa. That said, if you didn't enjoy the show for the reasons you stated, and you're willing to give it a go, I think you'll probably enjoy the books.
You're valid. It took us a couple tries before we really got into The Expanse.
As for Star Wars, we stick with the Dave Filoni shows now. If I may suggest, try a Clone Wars rewatch with a viewing order that emphasizes the story arcs. That's what brought me back to Star Wars, and I hated the sequels and the prequels.
Thank you, I appreciate the star wars watching suggestions! I'm more of a trekkie but there are elements of star wars I love, they just became less and less with the latest films!
Unpopular? Yes. Wrong? I don't think so. I finished The Expanse and at the end I didn't feel like it added anything to my life but I didn't hate it either. There was definitely some standout moments but I would not rewatch it.
Interesting! I've only ever heard people sing it's praises, so I've definitely felt in the wrong for not loving it. Someone else suggested the books so I might try reading them instead of going for the 6th rewatch
Completely agree with both of these (and also with the other comment that Star Wars isn't actually sci-fi anyway). I'd read the first couple of Expanse books and wasn't super taken with them, the tv version even less so. Meh.
My sci-fi unpopular opinion is probably that I don't consider Star Wars to be sci-fi. It shares more with fantasy in that it's more character and story driven and less about philosophy and the way technology changes the human experience which imo is what defines sci-fi.
Unpopular opinion: Star Wars is in space and has spaceships and aliens. Good enough, it's sci-fi.
People attribute these silly, gatekeepy characteristics to sci-fi, but sci-fi doesn't need to be about anything. Sci-fi is allowed to be shitty or irrelevant.
Sci-fi is allowed to be shitty or irrelevant, but that is absolutely unrelated to Star Wars not being sci-fi. Star Wars isn’t shitty, and it is relevant.
The reason it isn’t sci-fi is because it a) makes no attempt whatsoever to explore the implications of the differences between its world and ours, and b) it makes no attempt to scientifically explain those differences.
There has been exactly one time when SW has attempted to explain its universe, and midichlorians have been a meme for decades because it was trying to introduce scientific explanations into the wrong genre.
To be clear: this is fine. Saying Star Wars isn’t sci-fi is not an insult. It’s just a genre, and genres aren’t better or worse than each other. If Star Wars did try to be sci-fi, it wouldn’t be able to tell the grand good and evil story it’s trying to tell - that’s the advantage of fantasy.
so brave
Sci-fi and fantasy are genres that naturally bleed into one another, and everyone will draw the lines differently. I'd personally agree that Star Wars is more fantasy than sci-fi, but I wouldn't want to gatekeep anyone who called it their favorite sci-fi franchise.
A thought I've been having that might be more controversial: Star Trek isn't sci-fi.
It's basically a series of morality fables with magical premises. There's always a paper-thin sci-fi explanation, but for all that these matter to the story, they might as well just say "fairies did it."
(And many of Gene Roddenberry's "godlike being" characters, like Q, are almost literally fairies).
There's also its treatment of space. Just as Star Wars' combat was an excuse to do WWII fighter combat in space, Star Trek is an excuse to do WWII submarine combat in space. They're equally unrealistic in that regard.
I agree on the fable argument but not on having to have a scientific explanation. Scifi is about sense of wonder, societal impact etc. Realism is optional as long as things don't work in arbitrary ways.
Star Wars was a reboot of a semi-forgotten genre called sword and planet, which is basically fantasy with technological trappings. It is its own thing, but sci-fi has become so diluted nowadays that it can pass itself as legitimite part of it.
I agree with this so much, I have just been afraid to say it online ahah
Plus it isn't futuristic. It happened a long time ago.
I think it is sci-fi, but “old sci-fi” and “for the masses”. Because if that, it is just not so good as sci fi.
Is that unpopular? It's usually considered sci-fantasy.
I agree so no upvote for you.
Wow, never thought of it from that angle!
I honestly consider it more of a space western, but I also find them boring so have not delved too deeply into them.
My unpopular opinion is that I don't like space operas. I'd rather read pages of explanation of technology and world building. I don't care that the star princess in exile has to assemble a rag tag bunch of fringe worlders to take back the throne from the cruel council of the galactic core. How dat engine work tho?
Seriously most of these stories might as well be written by AI for how original they are. I am trying to read scifi and fantasy for the originality that just doesn't exist. Authors will even accidentally add great ideas to the books on background characters or in random world details and do absolutely nothing with them. They instead will repeat the most generic trope driven story every. They might aswell be plagiarizing for how little their stories add to the genre at least then I could just throw their book away without trying to read it.
In that case I highly recommend the bobiverse
Yeah, I initially thought it was a kinda silly premise of a guy being hit by a bus and turned into an ai to explore the universe, but Dennis Taylor really hit it out of the park.
Popular-unpopular opinion - Space opera hits a lot of tropes that have been constanly re-told since ancient Babylonia and Greece, and people like when a story hits familiar beats.
Unpopular-unpopular opinion - Worldbuilding is important for the story to be grounded and coherent, but if there is no story to be told atop of it you end up with a catalogue of author's personal anthropological and technological obsessions.
I definitely agree. I just end up dropping off of series after the second book because I'm off to other worlds. I don't begrudge people who want more of what they like. To each their own.
Also, I'm a hypocrite because I find a lot of Kim Stanley Robinson's stuff too dry because there's not enough character building for me.
I think sci-fi writers constantly make their stakes far too high, stack the odds far to heavily against the protagonists, and go for a scope far to broad. I don't need 3 people to save the entire intergalactic population from a super mega back hole bomb with .002 seconds to spare. I've seen it and read it a thousand times.
Give me the guy who thinks maybe his spaceship could take on exploring one planet, tell me what he finds and why it was wise for him to run home and call for extra resources to be redirected to that planet. Tell me how the technology of your imaginary world brought 2 characters together and allowed them to build a beautiful life together.
That's why I adore The Martian and can't get excited about Star Wars.
This is exactly the problem I also have with Marvel movies. Once you've raised the stakes so far it's impossible to go back without seeming less than your predecessors. It's why Iron Man worked so damned well as it was a pretty small, personal story... same for most of the early Avengers movies. Ever since Endgame it seems like everyone wants to either make it even bigger still (?!??) or challenge these people who have saved literally the entire universe with.. emotional trauma? I don't know... I've seriously lost interest.
And the earth apparently is to the Marvel Universe what New York is to aliens.
Yes! This helped me put it together why I like origin stories better than team-ups and other sequels. The quickly switch from one person finding their place to suddenly saving the entire world (of new York City)
Becky Chambers books tend to be pretty low stakes, so you might want to check those out.
Have you read Murderbot by Martha Wells? Because that's exactly this.
I started listening to it long enough ago that I forgot why I didn't get very far with it. Maybe should pick it up again, it's one of those that is always in my recommendations.
If you haven't seen it, you might like Prospect
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is highly overrated!
The main characters were obnoxious, I didn't end up caring about any of them, and quite frankly, I wished the towel guy had died at the beginning along with everyone else on Earth (except the dolphins). I wasted hours of my life over those 3 books!
Well, that's certainly an unpopular opinion.
I just can't go with you on it =P
Upvoting cause I hate this.
Ouch my avatar! But it’s okay. Don’t panic.
Well, I would agree that the later books went downhill quite quickly and so the series as a whole is overrated.
I still rather liked the first one, though, and I've also enjoyed its many diverse adaptations.
Rookie numbers. I've wasted weeks of my life over them.
I've only read the first one. So. Many. Quotes.
Like half the book was "oh, that's where that comes from."
I wouldn't call it excellent literature, but I did find it hilarious and they managed to keep it surprising.
The whole affair started as an obscure comedy radio drama, and was propelled to popularity by servere nerd obsessions with it.
I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.
The movie is far, far better than the books.
Upvoting because I viscerally hate this 😂
Enterprise was an absolute solid series. Not perfect, but I wished it would have had more fans when it was on TV
I started Enterprise begrudgingly as it was the last series I hadnt consumed yet. I got a few episodes in and thought "hey this aint that bad!"
One of the best Mirror arcs in the franchise IMO.
They cocked it up by introducing the whole "temporal cold war" nonsense. Time travel cheapens the premise of any show that isn't built around it, and I would have been perfectly content to watch a show where the Enterprise is a small and underpowered craft trying to explore space without getting its ass handed to it.
I really enjoyed Enterprise. I think it is just on the level of all there series after TNG and yet no one talks about it besides they disliked it.
@somniumx Totally agree. I have been going through every Star Trek series watching and fully expected not to like this one. Maybe it's my old age, but it wasn't terrible. If we look at TOS for what it is, Enterprise was absolutely good sci-fi.
I got a very unpopular one: Enterprise's theme song was great! I still got it in my playlist.
I've got one. I thought John Carter was a fun movie and I have no idea why everyone was so pissed off about it.
I always thought the biggest problem was the marketing - John Carter is not a name that tells you anything at all about the film's setting and I don't recall anything much promoting it suggesting it might be that John Carter even if you did know the source material at all!
But i am with you, it was a fun popcorn movie, and sometimes that's what you really want
Yep John Carter to me sounded like another action movie in the John Wick style, I didn't even realise it was sci fi
I'm with you! I thought it was fine! I mean, we weren't redefining cinema here, but it was fun.
John Carter is such a fun romp, I think it really captured the spirit of old scifi, where things were a little silly compared to today bc they were really just flying by the seat of their pants imagining space travel and other planets. It was a real melding of scifi/fantasy. Today, we've seen pictures of the surfaces of those planets, and now current scifi is more like reading a thesis (nothing wrong with that), where the author really delves into the science, so the old stuff does seem corny. But it's great. It's like Jupiter ascending but good
As someone who'd read the books before the movie ever came near existing, I wasn't pissed off at all. I loved their representation of Barsoom, the tharks, and Woola. So I'm with you on this one.
I appreciate the support. There aren't many of us!
It was great. I don't know anyone who's seen it that actually disliked it. It bombed really badly due to marketing failures though.
2001 book was great. Arthur C Clarke has always been my favorite author. I think Rendevous with Rama would’ve been a more approachable story to adapt into a movie. Full of mystery and curiosity. Creative direction could go wild on art without changing bay of the books story. Starts with a mystery, reveals bits and bobs in the middle, ends with mystery. Leaves you questioning. Chefs kiss.
Haven’t really kept up with modern sci-fi opinion. So maybe my opinions are popular maybe not.
I believe Ilium and Olympos are part of the greatest sci-fi story ever written. Far better than Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos. It presents wild and imaginative futuristic ideas with insane scientific basis for them.
I tried Ilium and took a break after the many pages long exposition on a naked teenager at the beginning and then never had the energy to go back. Should I try again?
Hyperion is my number one sci fi of all time and I need to know if I'm missing out
I read Ilium and Olympos a few years ago and all i remember us that i thought they're a bunch of pretentious crap. So no, don't bother.
Yes I'm not a fan of the 2001 film myself but the book is actually fantastic, highly recommend.
A lot of sci-fi (at least where TV/Films are concerned) keeps getting too bogged down in what it thinks that it should be, and doesn't actually try to explore new possibilities or expand much, which generally means that the quality of sequels progressively gets worse, and the show ends up being a sort of even mush vaguely resembling the original.
The main example I could think of is probably Star Trek. It's too fixated on everything as it is, so even things that are supposed to be radical changes just re-establish the status quo with a new coat of paint. A radical show with radical viewpoints would never take off, as newer iterations would try to emulate the success of the show, and keep to the old.
It's part of why later Star Trek shows seem to be a bit more conservative, by comparison. Sure, values have changed since the original show, but the level of radical progressiveness has also gradually wound down too. Compared to the original show, which tried to push things from all angles, something like Star Trek: Discovery would seem almost conservative. Most of its more progressive elements are fairly standard for the time period it is set in, rather than pushing the envelope like the original did.
Similarly, all the shows end up trying to emulate the same formula, and even the same rough starship design. The Enterprise was originally specially designed and built to seem future-y, but many other of their starships since them seem to just be iterative designs on the original. Even one of them set 900 in the years in the future seems to have almost identical technologies, polities, and culture as one set in the 24th century. The visuals are different, but everything seems to be effectively the same under the coat of paint.
Not having that baggage is probably why up-and-coming shows, like The Orville, tend to be able to get away with more, since there isn't a previous Orville that it keeps trying to recapture, just yet, which should mean that it gets more leeway.
From a non Star Trek standpoint, it's also rather happened to Star Wars. The newer films are just trying to recapture the older films, rather than expand into their own thing, to the detriment of the films as a whole. The latest trilogy seems like a rehash of the old ones, down to having what is basically another death star, Rebellions, Vader-ish Masked Sith Lord, and Friendpatines.
I don't really have much of a solution, besides wanting the shows to just branch out more. I think Star Trek in the 32nd century should have gone with a brand new slate, where everything was different (from both an ideological, political, and technological standpoint), and the 23rd century ship that ended up there would be woefully outdated, not just on paper, but with the technology it was fitted with.
Star Wars has a bunch of interesting things that it could run with, such as the aftermath of the major wars, where the Rebellion is now having to deal with multiple smaller wars from various factions under the splintering empire, or have to secure its place in the resulting power vacuum.
One show that hasn't succumbed to this as much is Doctor Who, but that had a major revamp in its 2005 revival which drastically changed the nature of the show itself. Still, it doesn't seem to be particularly immune to it either. Behind-the-scenes, they're suddenly going back to the old composer and old showrunners, and the main character doesn't seem to evolve too much beyond "conflicted, but brilliant and eccentric hero". It also seems to be slowly settling into its own ruts, as well, with the most recent run rather resetting a redeemed villain's character development suddenly.
As a slight tangent, I also feel like that considering the messaging of the show itself, there could be quite a bit of interesting mileage that could be achieved by having a companion who is a species that is normally an enemy. Maybe something like a Dalek.
I would be so happy with The Orville if it weren't for Seth MacFarlane using the show's casting as his own personal creepy Tinder.
It's really hard to watch the show knowing how predatory and gross the creator and main character are.
Arguably the only reason doctor who has lasted this long is because it does change so much. Regeneration, keeping the third doctor on earth, making the 6th doctor an asshole, all the things that changed with the new show, the fairy tale feel of the Matt Smith era, etc. Some are more successful than others ofc but I think if doctor who ever ends (again) it will be what you said - settling into one thing for too long.
I really hope this new run does something unique instead of trying to replicate the original RTD run.
As a slight tangent, I also feel like that considering the messaging of the show itself, there could be quite a bit of interesting mileage that could be achieved by having a companion who is a species that is normally an enemy. Maybe something like a Dalek.
Funny that you mention this; there was a short time during Matt Smith's run where he was friendly with a Sontaran.
The paternoster gang were pretty fun as a concept, and it's a shame that they weren't used more.
Although I also wouldn't qualify them quite as companions, any more than the Lethbridges-Stewart would be.
I don't care for Deep Space 9.
Characters were mostly bad and uninteresting - they had to bring back worf. Limited plots stuck on a station - they had to add a ship. Then start a war just to have something to do.
Now THIS is a bold claim. DS9 is the only consistently beloved Star Trek series I've seen online. I personally enjoyed it more than most of the series.
I disagree with you completely, but I boost your opinion and am glad you can voice it!
I liked DS9 over all, but it;s 9 series could have been 5 and lost nothing, and could have been 3 and lost little! so... much... filler!
I think this the only other truly unpopular opinion here lmao.
Hey. Hey? Hey.
I see you.
Honestly, the entire gaggle of nerds complaining online that modern Trek isn't Trek should take another look at DS9, because even at the time I thought it was a different show reskinned as Trek and missed the spirit of the thing. I'm assuming the other show is Babylon 5, but I never got into that, either.
The writing in The Three-Body Problem is so dry that I could barely keep up with the plot due to being deceased from boredom.
Totally a me problem but it just did not vibe with me. I could never bring myself to read the second book. Tho to be fair to Ken Liu I have trouble with translations in general and I've never read a translation of Chinese-language literature I did vibe with.
You know, I'm really with you on this one. I read it, and it never rose above a resounding "meh" from me.
My big dislike of the Three Body Problem is somewhat meta. The Fermi Paradox solution that it presents, the Dark Forest hypothesis, only "works" in the books because the author made up a bunch of magic technologies and just-so scenarios to make it work. But ever since then /r/Fermiparadox has been overrun with "what about the Dark Forest??" shower thoughts.
I guess it's not so much a problem I have with the Three Body Problem as it is a problem I have with humanity in general.
Arguably it doesn't work in-universe, either, as proven by the fact that... well, it literally doesn't work, the dark forest is plenty bright by the time it all gets wrapped up.
From a western perspective the idea that the entire planet would successfully suppress a Dune-style disapora because "either we all make it or none of us does" also seems absurd, but it's not just a humanity prerequisite for the plot, it's a universal prerequisite for the dark forest, at least if the technology rollout is somewhat plausible.
Also, see above my point about Star Trek under the Prime Directive technically being a dark forest. Which is a funny meme, but also makes just as much sense as the TBP solution.
But hey, it's fun to think about for a minute and not that much wonkier than the Foundation or Dune takes on the same scale of problems. Except perhaps the slightly harder sci-fi approach making people take it more seriously than it deserves.
Hah. I read the whole thing in pretty much one long sitting over a weekend, so I don't think I quite agree. I was way more bothered by the obvious propaganda than I was about the writing or the translation. But then again that's pretty frequent in all sci-fi, don't think I don't notice it just as much in US media.
EDIT: I also don't quite thing its game theory approach to the Fermi paradox makes too much sense, but once again, that one is shared with a lot of other hard sci-fi.
EDIT EDIT: Oh, here's a fun one: given the Prime Directive, Star Trek is technically a "dark forest" sci-fi setting. That one may need its own thread.
Yep, totally agree with you there. Couldn't get past the first chapter, just glazed over and gave up
I wasn't a big fan, either. I think for me it was cultural; I had trouble understanding the main character's motivations and why she made the decisions she did.
I think there are some forms of world building that just aren't everyone's cup of tea. It requires a certain willingness to be completely confused, lost, and aimlessly wandering with no discernable plot goal to get through something like 3BP, the first few episodes of The Expanse, or Chris Nolan's Tenet.
But can I tell you that holy shit, the reveal in 3BP is probably the single best set up and truly unexpected, shocking payoff for any fiction I've ever read. It's just one of those "you can only experience it for the first time once" moments that will stick with me that I wish I could help other people experience.
But I get it, the price you pay to get there is steep. That book is dense.
Yeah the weird thing is I love the Expanse and also Tenet and my favorite book is Gnomon by Nick Harkaway, a book in which you literally have no idea wtf is going on until basically the last 10%. AND I studied a bunch of stuff about modern Chinese history and the cultural revolution in college so I have some background on the politics! Like, I SHOULD enjoy it, on paper. It's literally just the prose that's ruining it for me.
I actually really hope the TV show is good because I think I'd actually really enjoy it presented in a different format. Maybe I should try an audiobook.
Star Gate is just as good if not better at time then Star Trek and Star Wars.
I agree it's better than star trek. Even universe.
Nope. No. Universe is anti-thematical to everything I liked about Stargate and Star Trek. A show where everyone (except the gamer-nerd) is completely unable to cooperate. I'd rather watch Discovery, thats only one person, the main character, who is unable to cooperate with others.
I really hope your opinion is an unpopular one. Here, have an upvote.
I love Stargate, too bad it kinda died.
Not sure if this is a hot take or not, but modern Star Trek sucks arse. The magic died with voyager, everything after that has been trite and forgettable. And I’m not even talking about those god awful movies.
It depends a lot on who you ask.
Although I'm rather of the opinion that the "magic" died sometime before Voyager. It was already on the way out when the network executives tried to recapture The Next Generation with it, and also launch a new television network with it at the same time.
It just ended up trying to be both its own show, and a copy of another, not succeeding particularly well at both.
Voyager is definitely hit and miss, although I do like a lot of the stuff they did with the Borg, with the exception of the incredibly weird Borg queen. Also, Q’s dynamic with the Voyager crew is something truly special.
I love TNG though. It took awhile to truly get off the ground, but my god it was great once Gene Roddenberry finally left.
Star Wars is not good, for the most part. There are a couple good movies and shows, but the majority of Star Wars is not good at all.
Rian Johnson’s movie didn’t deserve the hate it got! It wasn’t bad.
Rogue One is fantastic. Full stop.
Rogue One had no business being as good as it was. Makes the other movies feel kinda absurd in comparison
Don't know about good but Star Wars is not scifi. Most "scifi" movies aren't but SW doesn't even try.
Episode 4,5 and 6 are great. The Prequels were a mess and visually did not fit, story was dreadful and George should have been shoo'd away.
The sequels are some of the worst cinema ever, and I have seen Vampire Trailer Park in full as well as the full, uncut version of Pink Flamingos.
Star Wars is massively overrated. The only reason why it’s considered sci fi is because it has aliens, lasers and space but essentially has the same sci fi level as Guardians of the Galaxy. Im not saying its bad but really im more into Star Trek (even the bad ones) or even something like Titan AE where the sci fi topics are really drilled down into. I completely dont blame anyone for disagreeing with this viewpoint though
The Fast and Furious movies are science fiction movies. The complete disregard for how physics work is literally impossible visual fiction foisted into our faces against the concept of reality.
and because, Family.
I'm actually of the opinion that the main characters know they are in a movie - or at the least are aware they are able to do completely unrealistic feats.
Science fiction is per definition based on science and the F&F movies ignore it completely. They could be classified as fantasy or whatever, but from sci-fi they are as far away as they could be.
Technically their cars have boosters and stuff that's kind of sciencey and they use computers.. there's one whole guy who does nothing but uses computers and stuff
We ride together we die together
Foundation sucks ass.
The premise was great: restart the human race after a predictable collapse by writing an encyclopedia galactica based on our collective knowledge that would help the survivors to rebuild a civilization. I was all for it and I was thinking about my own encyclopedia.....and boom the story was a boring political struggle. What a letdown.
You didn't even like the good half of the show? (The Empire) I will say the other half of the show sucked, so I half agree.
The emperor was cool, that's true. But it's like those shows that start full SciFi or fantastic and then turn into boring love stories, very cheap to write and film.
I wanted a humanity that falls into chaos and turns to a book of knowledge for guidance.
Books or TV series?
Books, I couldn't finish the TV series.
5he prequel book was honestly the best part of the series for me. Though I did enjoy the series, it just kind of lost the plot after the Mule showed up and diverted the basic plot of the series.
I was annoyed by Harry Seldon's omniscience. I can understand being able to predict a broad outline of an Imperial collapse and subsequent rebuilding, but predicting specific events in the timeline? Magical prophecies are not as accurate as Harry's psychohistory.
Deep Space 9 is and always was the greatest Star Trek series. Also I'll go one more and say that I would take Sisko over Picard or Kirk any day of the week.
In The Pale Moonlight (s6e19) sealed these opinions for me.
Idk if this is an unpopular opinion these days, the show seems to have had a bit of a reassurance. Back when it came out, the more serialized nature of it might not have worked as well, but in the age of streaming it's aged amazingly. The only other Star Trek series I've watched are TNG and a bit of TOS, but DS9 has definitely been my favorite by far.
Yes! I agree with you that DS9 was better than the others. It moved away from The Alien of the Week storylines to something bigger. A great show.
I went to film school, and had to watch 2001 like five times in classes, breaking down every little element of it. And you know what? I also think it's boring and pretentious AF. The fx and production design are incredible, and parts of it are good enough, but other than that it's just Kubrick demonstrating how much smarter he thought he was than everyone else (I am not a fan of his films, if that wasn't clear enough).
I did enjoy the book a lot, though! If you haven't read it I think you'll be surprised how it tells the same story, just better.
Another film school refugee! My brother/sister/other in arms!
It truly was like being on another planet. Not only did I obtain a functionally worthless degree (I'm grateful for the media literacy I learned, but holy crap), but I also got to spend three years feeling like a stranger in a strange land, because almost any time something popular came out in the theaters my peers immediately labeled it Absolute Garbage and moved on.
Yeah? Well screw you, Mike! I liked The Matrix! I saw it in theaters twice!
It was fighting words to say Kubrick was overrated in film school-- people would get really mad about it! (I admit, I do really like the Killing, but that's about it).
And I saw the Matrix multiple times as well! It's okay to like action movies, and sometimes they even have real value too!
I've got 3 of them...
- I liked Prometheus. I had no issues with Covenant, enjoyed it as well.
- I'd like to see more original sci-fi shows than just yet another time-travel or evil alien/AI destroys humanity scenario. I enjoy them, but I'd like to think there's a lot more to the future than just those two possibilities.
- I've never seen Firefly or Serenity and have no interest in doing so.
Is the disinterest about Firefly because of the years of people hyping it up?
idk, when I've watched snippets or clips, it just doesn't appeal to me? I always got the impression, to me, that it looked like "Friends in space".
The fandom hasn't bothered me, everything has a rabid fandom. You should see the frothing at the mouths when I dare to say that I liked the new Starbuck as much as I liked the old Starbuck from BSG 2003/1978.
My unpopular opinion is that Mass Effect 1 is the best game in the series. 2 was a giant side mission, and 3 was great but, the ending (which isn't as bad to me as it was to others). I keep going back to the first one (24th playthrough now) because it's more of an RPG than a shooter and had the best story of the 3.
I'm a great admirer of Isaac Asimov, but Foundation - the book - hasn't aged well at all.
Asimov had some amazing ideas, but he had absolutely no idea what women even were!
The Foundation series is honestly some of the greatest high concept science fiction to be written. But you're not wrong. That shit is hard to read now
A great many of the "old classics" really aren't very good, IMO. Some of them are downright awful, in fact.
One that comes to mind that has garnered me many downvotes in the past is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, which I disliked on pretty much every level. The characters were uninteresting, the worldbuilding was bad, the lunar culture made no sense and was an obvious "isn't libertarianism awesome?" author insert, the Earthside baddies were cartoonishly stupid, the military conflict should have never worked out for the Lunarians, and Mycroft was a lazy deus ex machina.
How's that for an unpopular opinion.
You're probably right. I absolutely adored Heinlein, Stranger in A Strange Land and Moon is a Harsh Mistress were probably my favorite books EVER other then Foundation and Dune, but this was also 20 years ago when I was a teenager. I'm scared to read them again since I'm sure they haven't aged well.
I'm curious what parts of Foundation hadn't aged well in your opinion.
Is it just because Asimov struggled to write women?
This may be a more popular opinion than you think.
A lot of his work makes me cringe internally, and I grew up on a steady diet of his stuff. I'm always thinking of "I'm in Marsport without Hilda" and it was supposed to be ROMANTIC? Bruh.
I don’t think the original Star Wars trilogy holds up well. It takes too long for the scenes to unfold and feels more monotonous than I remember it feeling when I watched it in my youth.
This is almost certainly an unpopular opinion haha.
Not sure how unpopular this is, but I think Interstellar was fantastic and loved everything including the climax (which everyone seems to hate).
I didn't know people disliked the climax. Weird! I thought that was one of the best scifi movies in years. Instant classic for me.
It's funny, I hate almost everything about Interstellar except the climax, which had an example of an immutable self-consistent time loop. I'm a sucker for a good ontological paradox.
The rest of the movie was just characters doing things that made no sense, and flagrantly violating basic physics in the process while the audience went "ooh, this is such a physically accurate hard science fiction film!"
Everybody loves that film. I despise it. I think I might be the only one.
I don't know that I'd go so far as "fantastic", but I found it an enjoyable movie. I actually wasn't aware that there was hate for it.
My SciFi unpopular opinion is that is that any book by H. G. Wells is mind numbingly boring.
Someone finally said it. I tried War of the World's twice and couldn't get past Chapter 1. My in-laws mocked me for shunning it.
Unpopular opinion: I really liked Star Trek Discovery Klingons...
I agree, apparently they are an old caste too. Though that's probably just to work them I to the universe.
Inverse article talks about it a bit.
Shared universes between franchises are a bad idea. I don't mean commercially. They're a great idea if you want to make a billion dollars. But they're bad for storytelling.
Reason 1 is that the story being told is always in service to some other story. By which I mean, the writer has to make decisions that aren't about making this story the best it can be, but about making it make sense in context with everything that's come before it. For example, Batman can't just be a story about a smart, athletic vigilante in a costume. He has to be the smartest, most athletic human being who has ever lived, because he has to compete with, and remain relevant amongst, actual superheroes and supervillains.
Reason 2 is that it undermines the impact of each story because, again, the stories have to be considered within a massive context. In Watchmen, we can imagine the awe and horror people felt about Dr. Manhattan because, like in our world, nothing like him had ever existed. If you put him in the same universe as Superman, he's just another superhero.
Obviously I'm talking about large comic-book style shared universes with multiple authors and largely independent stories. I have nothing against franchises that use other works to expand on previously introduced concepts and do it in a coherent way.
At the same time, they can also be interesting in their own right, especially if you want to see how different things might merge and interact with each other.
Would Captain Kirk be very confused by Doctor Who, or Optimus Prime showing up on his ship, yes. Would it be interesting, but also cause the writers no end of headaches? Also yes.
I think Reason 2 might actually be a fairly good story in and of itself. You have someone who was an extraordinary being in their originating universe, suddenly finding out that they're just another superhuman in another. That would be an excellent point of character development, and a way for them to be suddenly placed into a completely new perspective.
Bouncing off of this, I think that crossovers can be fun. But I like crossovers that are one-off, non-canon adventures. A "what if" scenario.
I don't like how the MCU starts piling sequel upon sequel, with references to so many different stories that I'd need to watch to understand, most of which I don't care to keep up with. I like Toby Maguire's Spiderman films more than Tom Holland's is specifically because they're self contained, simple, and focused.
Starship Troopers is a good movie. The book is legendary, and after having consumed both pieces of media, I can safely assert that both were far-forward thinking for their time, both in terms of the tropes they helped enshrine into SF (dropship landings on planets, orbital bombardment, using exosuits to combat or enhance gravity, and so many more), but also in the realm of political commentary. The movie alone, to say nothing of the book, is a masterfully crafted parody of a fascist earth. The subtle inferrences into the unneccessary costs of a war that only serves to keep taxpayer costs down being carried out believably by a cartoonishly militaristic world government definitely gave me pause when I reflected on the histories of modern democracies.
I agree, just watched it again last week. So entertaining and just a fun movie to watch. Then when you watch it again you can dissect the political backgrounds and all the depth they put in the movie. Yes the book is great also, I think they should be considered separate stories though.
I see the entire movie as a satirically propogandized version of the book, all down to exactly what they chose -not- to put in from the books, such as Rico's father's plotline. Focusing on "the hero of Klendathu" turns a straightforward critique on the military industrial complex into a brash critique on exactly the kind of toxic patriotism that leads to warmongering, and how the soldiers on the ground are the victims to that end. Certainly different stories, but I argue they both fit neatly into the lore when taken on face value. [Would you like to know more?]
Star Wars isn't Sci-Fi, it's a space fairy tale.
Enter my hot take: I dont really like the golden age of science fiction books. They are boring to read and the concepts are clunkily applied. Personally I think this is because while the authors might have been very creative, Ive since seen and read the same concepts and ideas in books and movies much better written, with a better ending and more mature thoughts on it. Those movies and books obviously stand on the shoulders of the golden age of science fiction. But that fact doesnt make me like those books more.
At some point, books like Doc Smith's and Edgar Rice Burroughs' are more interesting as historical texts than entertainment.
It's not just science fiction that ends up like this, IMO. I've bounced pretty hard off of most of the "classics."
Most, but not all, I should note. There's a few now and then that have surprised me. But often those are lesser-known works, not ones widely labeled "classics."
This should make some people mad... I thought The Dispossessed was an awful book. The characters were flat and the way Le Guin explored the themes had all the nuance and subtlety of a Garfield comic. It's the only book of hers that I've read, put me off exploring the rest of her work.
hottest take, and written with poignant scorn
I really liked it when I was a teenager, but I'm forced to agree, I re-read it a couple years back while I still enjoyed it overall, there were a few aspects I found didn't age super well.
"Left Hand of Darkness" was way, way better. "Earthsea" too, actually (here's a bonus fantasy hot take: LOTR is at least as good as Earthsea). "The Dispossessed" gets hyped because left-anarchists like the depiction of anything close to what they're into, but in many ways it's not actual a very strong novel for the reasons you mention.
My point is, some of her other books are much better if you ever feel inclined to give her another try. IMO She developed a lot both as a writer and in terms of the depth of her personal philosophy. "Always Coming Home" is an extremely ambitious scifi project that is IMO underappreciated in expanding the idea of "worldbuilding" as a thing that authors share with audiences rather than do behind the scenes. It's less of a novel and more of an anthropoligical survey of a fictional future culture. Also it's the only scifi novel I know of that comes with a bangin soundtrack.
I love "The Dispossessed", but thats an interesting perspective! Ive had most of these books on my reading list for some time, guess i have to move them further up. Thanks!
Haha, I once mentioned on reddit that I thought I would've liked it if I'd read it as a teenager and got downvoted to hell. The setting was interesting, and I appreciated the ideas, I just thought the actual writing was very clunky. No judgement on anyone who liked it is intended, I've certainly enjoyed some poorly written books just because the ideas explored were new to me.
Thanks for the recs, I may give another book a try once the memory has faded more.
My unpopular sci-fi opinion is that Discovery is an amazing adaptation of the Star Trek universe into the gritty, modern sci-fi paradigm.
I love it and I love that it is in the Star Trek franchise.
For perspective, my favorite Trek series is TNG.
It's pretty interesting as a Star Trek show, since I think that it is also one of the few that actually pushed its boundaries. It might not have been well-received, but it also tried to do something new, like Deep Space 9, and the original Star Trek, and stuck to that something new, despite having to find its footing under a myriad of production issues.
Although I would say that it wasn't a direct adaptation in and of itself. It seemed to be following the lead of the 2009 films in that sense, seemingly leaning on some of their groundwork to try and "modernise" Trek. They didn't quite succeed, but the attempt is at least commendable.
Personally, though, I'm more of a TOS fan, just because the world building seemed much more expansive on the older show, but TNG is also quite good.
I mean, my unpopular opinion then would be that Discovery is not at all gritty and modern. Even in season 1 that drops off pretty quickly, but by S2 they're all making big speeches and having emotional declarations about the spirit of Starfleet and saving the space whales and whatnot.
I do think it's a pretty great adaptation of Trek to modern serialized TV narrative. I guess from that perspective, my unpopular opinion is that Discovery is to serialized shows what Strange New World is to episodic shows.
Teleporters kill you and clone you. The person walking out of the teleporter may look like you and have your memories, but you are dead and that is a clone.
The process is likely incredibly painful, but because the memories of the clone are copied from just before the process started no one actually knows.
Heh. I just mentioned this one in another comment in this thread a short distance further up.
My response to this philosophy is... so? The end result is the same, it makes no difference to me.
Though we do know for a fact that it isn't painful, there was an episode where we saw Barkley go through a very slow transport sequence and he was aware through the process. He was nervous but not in pain.
If it's an exact copy then it's just a break in consciousness and it follows logically that there's no way to tell that the you that woke up is the you that went to sleep. Obviously a thought experiment since there's no such thing and it would depend on whichever imaginary teleportation technology. I don't agree with you so I'm gonna agree it's unpopular (ha!), congrats!
The newest Robocop movie was actually REALLY good,
as probably the best prediction of how we will start with autonomous robots in the battlefield being sidekicks to a prime human operator,
and that there will be a public push back about them being deployed in a police manner, but a political push to deploy them in a civilian theatre.
And when the majority of someone's body is replaced by artificial limbs/organs/etc. At what point are they still human.
And when the majority of someone's body is replaced by artificial limbs/organs/etc. At what point are they still human.
The Cyborg of Theseus?
Both it (and the original) also raise the subtle question of, if cybernetics are owned by a business, at which point are they considered a person in their own right, or just another piece of company property?
I liked Terra Nova and wish it didnt get cancelled after one season even though it wasn't a great show. I loved the premise of humans going back in time when Dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Now there's a show I haven't thought about in a long time! That was such a fun, escapist one. Beautiful actors too
I recently rewatched it and I have to say... I still like it, but mostly because of the nostalgia. Objectively, the show was a fetch-quest-of-the-episode kinda thing. Still love it though, and the cliff hanger was sick.
I didn't love The Martian. It wasn't a bad book, but I got bored in places. I was more engaged by Project Hail Mary (which is probably another unpopular opinion).
EDIT: Guess I should mention I'm referring to the books. Never saw The Martian movie.
The Martian is one of the few times where I feel strongly that the movie was "better" than the book, though I think we do well sometimes to question whether maybe we just like books better than movies. :-)
Weir is never going to be Tolstoy or Faulkner, but as of the time he wrote The Martian, it was clear he only had the skill and/or interest in making his author-insert anything like a real human being. Most scenes without him are some combination of tedious, juvenile, and unbelievable. A couple of rounds with a screenwriters and then professional actors to deliver the lines improved them dramatically. Throw in that Matt Damon was absolutely in his wheelhouse and that they didn't cut out too much until the rover trip, and there you go.
Artemis was Weir trying to grow as an author, partly succeeding and partly very much not, and Project Hail Mary was him settling in and evolving what he does best without exceeding his grasp.
Project Hail Mary was SO good. One of the times when the audiobook really added to the experience, too.
ST:TNG specific: Data is not sentient, there is no ghost in the machine. His code is just very good at mimicry. he doesn't understand what he is saying any more than ChatGPT does. He is just predicting the appropriate course of action to do next.
Unpopular real world opinion: There is no difference.
Indeed. This seems right up there with the "the transporter kills you and creates an exact duplicate at the destination to replace you" take.
Yeah... so?
I like the Total Recall remake with Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, and Colin Farrell more than the original with Arnold. The original is overhyped gibberish, in my opinion.
Also, perhaps a premature unpopular opinion: If - IF - it continues to present the same level of quality for the length of its run, Silo will be better than The Expanse.
RE: Silo. The books were good... the first was the best in my opinion and the quality didn't shift too far in the subsequent books, but Dust was definitely the weakest (and last) of the three. Still consistently good, but I did find myself a lot less invested by the end of Dust than I was by the end of Leviathan Falls.
TV series I haven't started Silo yet but it's definitely on my radar. The Expanse TV show was really good and I felt ended at just the right point in the story.
Okay, this is good info to have. The books were on my TBR shelf when I started the show, and when I say the show surprised me...I mean, the first two episodes I caught myself actually leaning forward, resting my elbows on my knees because I was so intent on what was happening. And it has honestly been just about that good with every ep. The cast is incredible!
Original Star Trek with Kirk was the best, the rest just copied the formula
I'm so glad that we have a place on the internet where people of like mind can come together.
It's too bad that you had to come here and ruin it with this nonsensical drivel.
/s (I just grew up on and prefer Picard)
The vast majority of Star Wars, new canon and legends, is poorly written trash, but the cringe ass campiness is what makes it a star war.
Rey isn't the problem, revisionist history is.
Star Wars isn't just a dumb action movie franchise, and has a ton of depth to explore. Sequels notwithstanding.
Indeed. The "it's a movie for children about space wizards" argument is IMO just a cheap excuse for modern Star Wars failing to make a decent movie that all ages can enjoy.
Something can be accessible to children and still be a good, mature, complex work as far as adults are concerned. Though I'm a Brony, so I may be slightly skewed in that view.
These comments are pretty 'both sides': for every comment hating a movie, there's one loving it.
- The Last Jedi is the best Disney Star Wars movie, bar none.
- Rogue One is overrated.
- Andor is not overrated, but it also cannot be the blueprint for all or even most Star Wars going forward.
The Last Jedi is the 2nd best Star Wars movie, period, behind Empire, IMO. Followed by Rogue One, so I can't agree with you on that one.
Rian Johnson gets so much insane criticism for TLJ, when he was just doing what he does - making great, original movies. If Kathleen Kennedy and JJ Abrams wanted a cohesive, overarching, three-movie storyline - like the guys down the hall at Marvel - they should have had it in place before pre-production began on The Force Awakens. Instead, you hire two directors to follow JJ who are both huge Star Wars fanboys and have visions of their own, and somehow you're surprised when the guy who takes the baton for the sequel doesn't walk a path he was never told existed.
If what they wanted was Luke coming back and kicking ass, they probably could have found out in a 10 minute conversation that Rian Johnson wasn't going to be their guy. But they gave him creative freedom! And the dude is an incredible writer and filmmaker; he probably looked at TFA and thought, "Well, okay, that was nice. But are we just remaking the original trilogy or...? Nah."
Then Disney doubled down on their mistake by, instead of taking things the new direction Rian had pointed them, bringing JJ back to steer things in to the most awkward, retconned, third-act ever. She's a...Palpatine? And an "ancient" Sith artifact is a map that matches up to wreckage of the Death Star that's like 50 years old? TF is happening?!
Ugh. Aside from the heavy-handedness of the Canto Bight storyline - there had to be a gentler way to impart to Finn that fighting for big causes is always gonna leave you empty, it's the "people you love" you fight for (or whatever) - TLJ is a freaking awesome movie.
(Also, I agree with you about Andor not being the blueprint for everything SW going forward. This is a project that fits a very specific type of storytelling by its very nature. It won't work for everything.)
If what they wanted was Luke coming back and kicking ass, they probably could have found out in a 10 minute conversation that Rian Johnson wasn't going to be their guy.
If what they wanted was Luke coming back and kicking ass, they should have done so in TFA.
Luke's characterization is basically the only aspect that TLJ keeps from TFA. His nephew has turned to the dark side and cosplays as his father as a part of Galactic Empire 2: Electric Boogaloo, his sister was kicked off the government of the New Republic she helped to create, and his brother-in-law goes back to smuggling. And all that Luke does is playing galactic hide-and-seek? The Luke Skywalker of the OT would never abandon his friends, family and the galaxy, but that's exactly what JJAbrams did with his character. Johnson did what he could to save that shipwreck, adding the motivation of his failure and struggle with the dark side. But for some reason, the haters of TLJ think that Johnson is responsible for Luke's character assassination.
I would agree with Rogue One there if not for the fact that it... kinda got mediocre reviews when it came out.
It somehow was reappraised as "the good one" later, but at the time it was thought to be a bit of a mess.
I can't agree with The Last Jedi. The bad faith criticism of that one is way more annoying than the movie itself, which is well intentioned and creative. Its biggest sin is being a bit of a poorly structured jumble, which is also true of the original Star Wars.
Rogue One could have used a bunch of editing, and IMO Chirrut shouldn't have been there (can we not have "normal people" save the galaxy at least once without a magic Jedi wizard monk to take credit). Still the best Disney Star Wars movie of the bunch though.
The Last Jedi was the stake in the heart of Star Wars. The Rise of Skywalker merely desecrated the corpse. I don't think this is unpopular so much as it is controversial, though. Though less and less controversial over time I think.
I'll even go one farther. TLJ is better than any other Disney SW movie, and it's better than any prequel.
It does have pacing and focus issues, and the degree to which Rian Johnson ignored some of the techno-lore didn't really serve him well in dealing with fans, but it's better made than any prequel and is the only Disney era film trying to to do anything interesting.
I really cannot understand why everyone gets so excited by Rogue One. It’s a story that there was absolutely no need to tell, and I felt it only cheapens the stakes of both itself and A New Hope. Besides, the plot is barely coherent at times, with characters who are worked up into huge deals being left behind without any meaningful affect on the story. I liked the Vader scene, I’ll give it that.
I remember enjoying Rogue One overall, but also having my suspension of disbelief thrown out when the movie was ending and you could tell the writers we're going "well, now we have to kill all the main characters, so let's just get it over with one by one in a sequence"
For me, 2001 was a great little mini episode about an awesome killer AI, surrounded by weird imagery about monkeys and fetuses.
But my unpopular science fiction opinion? Fantastic Four (the one with Ioan Gruffadd) was a good movie.
First of, let's suppose that Star Wars is sci fi. Secondly, my greatest gripe with it is that the light side and dark side make zero sense as a mechanic and only as an ideology. AND as an ideology, it also makes little sense. By establishing that there is a good side and a bad side, and establishing that you must be one of them, you necessitate that there will be bad guys. All it takes is to indoctrinate a child into thinking "I must be good, for if I am not then I am evil" to literally create more evil people. I had hoped that the sequels would address this with Luke and they only led to catastrophic disappointment
Only sith deal in absolute or something.
It's the starwars industrial complex.
Think about who was making all the money in the clone wars.
Did you read the novel 2001? I read it before watching the movie and I think understanding the story from that perspective is essential to giving the movie it's full credit.
Lexx: Xev was superior to Zev in every way.
I feel like enjoying Lexx at all is an unpopular opinion, at least where I am. I really loved potatohoe, stand-out moment for me.
I can't believe I've encountered another Potatohoe lover in the wild.
I had a D&D character once who was a simple farmer who'd been dragged into being a soldier and then an adventurer, who worshipped an evil goddess of agriculture. His catchphrase was "potato is virtue," always said with great solemnity and conviction.
Potatohoe lives on in the hearts of its fans.
I'd like to see season 4 of Dark Matter produced. The cliffhanger at the end of S3 was insane and I still can't believe they canceled the show and left it at that.
Not sure that's an unpopular opinion, that was a good show and deserved a real ending.
Came into this thread not feeling like I had any particularly spicy opinions, and maybe this is totally accepted and uncontroversial and basic but, reading these posts has just cemented my belief that sci-fi as a genre works much better in written form than it does in visual.
I love the entire "2001" series, and I've even watched the "2010" movie. I understand where your opinions are coming from and I will not judge you for them; but I personally disagree. Then again, I'm also someone who genuinely enjoys watching Citizen Kane, so I might just have a skewed perspective. Mind you, I also enjoy the 1995 Johnny Mnemonic movie and have watched Overdrawn at the Memory Bank without MST3K - so I'm all over in terms of sci-fi.
Here's my big hot take lately: of the "virtual world" sci-fi movies of 1999, I'm honestly upset that the Matrix was the one that won the cultural zeitgeist, rather than The Thirteenth Floor and eXistenZ. I understand that a Cronenberg movie probably wasn't going to win the public even if it did have Jennifer Jason Lee, Jude Law, and cameos from Ian Holm and Willem Dafoe; but The Thirteenth Floor had a great story, a solid cast, and really nice set designs - not to mention the moment that the covers of the home releases have always spoiled.
As someone who's old enough to remember seeing 2001 on a huge screen when it was first released, it's hard to express how monumentally spectacular the effects were. It brought the moon and space alive in a way that no movie had done before. The closest comparison I can make is with the first Jurassic Park movie, which was the first time movie audiences experienced living, breathing dinosaurs.
The whole psychedelic transit thing, hotel room/zoo and star baby was pretty obtuse for most audiences. You really needed to read the book to suss out what happened.
I watched 2010 before I watched 2001, because back in the olden days you could only watch whatever was on TV.
Needless to say I was very confused multiple times throughout that process.
Unpopular opinion — I enjoyed the movie of 2010.
I read the entire space odyssey series before watching any of the movies and I really liked the books, they're pretty much what got me into sci-fi. But the movie was absolute garbage, I agree. And I say this as someone who's done LSD a bunch of times.
Serialized scifi shows are very boring. Especially when the focus of the show is on the serialization instead of the scifi.
Episodic morality plays are much more likely to support the wonder and excitement of discovery that a truly great scifi is capable of delivering.
Blade Runner and its sequel are just too damned long.
Space Odyssey is pretty close adaptation of book and has more dialogue than book. So there was this art approach which some like and others don't. For me book is amazing but film is boring.
New adaptation of Dune is similar but more digestible for regular viewer.
- DS9 is the best trek
- Babylon 5 is the best sci fi show of all time
Star Wars was never good, or Predator is a 5/10 are probably my hottest takes
I fully agree with you. 2001 is literally the most disappointing movie I've ever watched. Not exaggerating. I heard so much about it and was excited to finally watch it, only to be extremely let down by how boring it is. Only good thing I got out of it is memes and references. I'd name my Google Home HAL if I could (but literally no major smart device lets you set their name).
One opinion of mine that may be unpopular is that Star Wars has very amateur writing. I say this this mostly in reference to how the villains are so comically evil, yet so incompetent that the galaxy spanning villain is frequently defeated by a band of a couple hundred rebels. There's many parts of Star Wars I really enjoy (I've admittedly seen nearly every TV show and movie), but the big picture writing is pretty much never one of them.
Andor had the best writing among any of the Star Wars movies/shows I've seen, because it frequently showed the villains as terrified themselves. Plus the very first "villain" we encounter isn't actually wrong (he's a security guard investigating the murders of some people and genuinely believes he's trying to stop a murderer).
The earth is always moving through space so most time travellers should just end up falling off the earth and dying in the cold vaccum of space.
If you know enough quantum-relativistic-magical-bullshit to design a time machine, you also know the basic Newtonian mechanics to calculate where the Earth was/will be and how to compensate it.
For me, 2001 was a great little mini episode about an awesome killer AI, surrounded by weird imagery about monkeys and fetuses.
But my unpopular science fiction opinion? Fantastic Four (the one with Ioan Gruffadd) was a good movie.
Heretics of Dune is the best of the series. Lots of sex in a SciFi doesn't necessarily make it bad.
Space sounds in movies are BS and they ruin the atmosphere.
I shouldn't hear lazers, craft screetching by, etc.
Fucking starwars.
Star Wars never was Science Fiction, though. It’s got space wizards and hyperspace stuff. It’s fantasy set in space.
I'm a big, big fan of sci fi and I get that it's a classic. I watched it once and it bored me to death. I couldn't believe it's standard movie length; it felt like it was six hours long.
OK, seeing how much Trek is in this I think my unpopular opinion is that modern Trek power ratings are, best to worse:
- Strange New Worlds (not unpopular yet)
- Discovery (now we're there)
- Lower Decks (all seasons except 1)
- Kelvin Movies
- Prodigy
- Picard
- Lower Decks season 1
Bonus unpopular opinion is that they're all alright at worst and none of them are outright bad.
I’d move Prodigy up to 2nd place and Picard to the bottom, but I can get behind your perspective.
I think Mobile Suit GUNDAM directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino is one of the best SF TV show.
I really don't get Sunshine. As much as I like Dany Boyle, this one I had a really hard time getting into: The depressed idiots, the "hey, that's the old ship we thought was lost, let's go on board to get that other bomb, and risk getting killed on that unstable wreck", the crazy dude on said ship cliché, I could go on and on...
I liked most of Sunshine (I blame Alex Garland tbh) but the thing where it turned into a monster movie in the third act was very wtf.
Unpopular SF opinion?
Peter Watts (Blindsight, et. al.) really, really, really needs a hug.
Every captain in a mainstream ST series after Sisko was casted terribly. Like down right garbage. Janeway was unbearable and Bacula?!? Really? Admittedly, Brooks was pretty wooden but you could see his growth into the role once he started to relax. Discovery exists in the same place the memory of GoT now resides.
Janeway would have been amazing of they'd let her call everyone on their bull shit. The "incorrect quotes" meme pages make her far more snarky and I love it.
Interstellar is a terrible film. It's not just bad at science (which it is); it's not just bad at storytelling (which it also is). It's an actively offensive (and racist!) movie that lionizes an emotionally abusive parent.
I even wrote a long essay about it once. The tone of the piece is humorous but I believe every word I wrote.
In what what way do you think it is racist? I did nit find any mention of that in your essay