Golden Age of Science Fiction.(1950s-early 70's)..Why doesn't Sci-Fi work anymore?

That recent movie "The Island" reminded me somewhat of
the Golden era of Sci-Fi, but it quickly turned into another
Hollywood carbon copy action flick about half way through.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

The first Star Wars

The Terminator

John Carpenter's The Thing

ET: The Extraterrestrial.

Wanna rethink your original post?

what about the special effects boom since Star Wars; mind-boggling eye candy as in Blade Runner and all the copycat movies

the times were simpler then...no cellphones, no cable TV, we were so innocent in those days...hell, we had rotary dials on the phones!!! AM radios in the cars, 3 on the column...we have become people that can't think or imagine things with our minds..

Terry Gilliam´s Brazil is a classic

The Matrix

I like all the cheesy flying saucer movies from the 50s

Originality is out the window. This is apparent if you try to watch a "made for sci-fi channel" movie. I don't think I've seen one of them that rates above zero stars.

I mean, there are only so many ways aliens can take over the world. This genre is so used up.

Same with slash-em movies. How many more ways can a body be mutilated with the associated high pitched screams of pain. That genre is also used up.

Movies, music, sit-coms, and whatever else. Today's product has only remakes and clones all feeding off of originality from the past.

Try to imagine something as shocking as Metropolis made today, what would it be like?

No, I don't need to rethink my original post, I know what my opinion is, which was all I stated. I just wanted to know what others thought.

All those movies you mentioned are great movies, but I still just see them as action movies, even though their descriptions may be sci-fi.

What's missing in those movies that the earlier ones had, was that ability to really make you wonder about things, (or at least me) it's just very hard to describe what I mean.


The Omega Man
Planet of the Apes
2001 a space oddessy


While those weren't GREAT movies, they had a certain something that just seems impossible to recreate today.

I admit it just be my perspective, but it seems the ability to capture imagination just isn't there anymore. Like the future has already passed us.

Most of the 'Sci-Fi' crap that makes it to the screens has little
to do with what is available in print.

And remember what Science Fiction author Theodore Sturgeon said:
"Ninety percent of everything is crap."

(Except crap. One hundred percent of crap is crap. )

And Star Wars is not science fiction. Yikes.

Heh heh, do you remember party lines as part of your phone service? A chat room was a few folks yacking in the living room. My b&w TV had only three channels to choose from, but who cared as there was plenty to do with friends in the real world of flesh and blood interaction.

I agree with that 100%

I can't bear to watch the Sci-Fi channel unless they are showing an old movie.

There has yet to made a movie featuring plausible civilized ETs, in my opinion. For example Close Encounters didn´t characterize any ETs, ET: The Extra Terrestrial was a cartoonish depiction, etc.

That's a big part of it I think

Sci-Fi sucks now because we've almost reached "the future" that we all fantasize about. We are so close to having all the technologies and capabilities that Sci-Fi imagines. Maybe we need to think of the next thing around the corner from "the future" and manifest that. But maybe we can't get to that point until we are completely into "the future" that Sci-Fi seems to mostly be set in.

Maybe the genre illustrates an important psychological developmental issue for the post WW2 era, the dawning awareness of a larger context

what´s the most conceptually shocking idea you can think of? (question for anyone)

Sorry OP, but your wrong, sci-fi does work, its just not been done well recently, and hasn't for a while.

Some of the best stuff was a product of the 70's 80's and 90's, people have already mentioned the obvious works, however ill give you all a good 2000-present day list.


Donnie Darko
Sunshine
The Prestige
Children of Men
Planet Terror (Grindhouse)( More Horror Sci-fi )
V For Vendetta
Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind
The Man From Earth

TV Shows such as 'Firefly' and its spin off movie 'Serenity' you must watch the series first though, and the new series of 'Battlestar Galaxtica'

Couple of weeks/months good viewing there with repeated watching and pondering, and thats all stuff from the past 6-7 years, your just not looking in the right places OP, too much mainstream crap romantic comedies and teen movies.

Just Look harder, or use wiki.

Oh and how can i forget 'Heroes' the tv series, please excuse my spelling mistake of battlestar galactica up there.

It's because it's become less magical.

I remember reading about an astronomer that was going to give a talk, and the taxi driver asked him about Sputnik which had just launched.

The taxi driver wondered isn't Sputnik just going to 'bounce around' all the rest of the stars up there?

Just open up old books from the period, and we are down right primitive, it's sort of like the adventures of baron Munchausen, in that the stories never get old, just the people, and the places, as does the believability of the whole thing....

I’m doing a bad job of selling this, but check that movie out, it'll probably answer your question in a really round about way....

There is nothing wrong with the Queen & King of the moon, we just know now it's ridiculous.

Solaris the 2002 remake is worth checking out too.

Alot of people dont know there was an earyler russian film based on the same book.

The Butterfly Effect - The Directors Cut (2004)

When I see some of the 1950s sci-fi it seems... uh... to be suggesting something that isn´t fictional. That cartoon Colonel Bleep is a good example, there´s something suspicious about it, almost as if it was conceived in a smoky back room with Enrico Fermi and some top brass from the Air Force

I nearly forgot what I'd call the all time greatest, I'd put over 2001....

Blade Runner.

I mean how couldn't you have been blown away by an android that thinks it's human hunting down, and killing fellow androids, that is redeamed by one of the androids that it is sent to kill?

NOTHING from the buck rogers days comes even close to this movie.

Its such a shame PKD is no longer with us.....

Because we've run out of room to dream. We've sent probes there and there's not much of interest there to go see, except rocks and maybe maybe bacteria. Gone are the days of unlimited imaginative playgrounds and Edgar Rice Burroughs. No more staring through telescopes and thinking we've seen canals. Nothing except the indirect gravitational traces of a few exoplanets to give us room to speculate and bend reality. Not even a space program that's pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

The future on Earth is scary; we know that if our population increases at this rate for much longer its going to crash eventually. Everybody knows about peak oil and water shortages and how aircraft allow a virus to hop around the whole world in a day. Can't write science fiction about what's already starting to happen...

The most shocking thing to imagine now is an optimistic vision of the future

12 Monkeys is my favourite Gilliam Movie, and its also one of the best sci-fi movies ever made in my opinion.

You've done a far better job of explaining it than I.. But then I did qutie like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen ......

The physical world doesn't work the way scientists imagine. Big things will happen that they will be completely unable to explain. Rules that seemed inviolable will be...violated, in the physical universe.

At the same time, certain things that are familiar will be discovered to have uses far beyond what people imagine. For example, there will be ways to heal people with music. (Not relax people. Heal actual diseases.)

Nicely said. You show some balls...lol