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Originally Posted by FormerPresJamesTaylor
Children of Men is the perfect movie but Star Wars (OG trilogy, Empire specifically) are pretty f'n great too.
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First of all, they're not that great. They're very entertaining movies, especially for kids, and as a result you have a combination of nostalgia for basically everyone who was under 25 when they came out until today remembering them fondly and overestimating their actual quality. They're neither particularly well written (aside from a few lines here and there) nor are they well acted. There are obviously plenty of visuals that were spectacular at the time, but while they hold up pretty well, they're obviously not up to par now. They're also more fantasy than sci fi - there's no real use of sci fi elements to make any particular point; it's just a fun and exciting romp through a fantastic world bearing little to no resemblance to our own.
I like Star Wars. I think everyone should show Star Wars to their kids, the way it was shown to me. I'll happily re-watch the original trilogy for fun, or with someone who hasn't seen them (if such people exist). But despite having some good qualities (I don't think they're BAD movies) they're simply not great examples of movie making and don't deserve to be compared favourably to films that are.
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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Artistic merit and entertainment aren’t totally discrete values. Science fiction can be serious or light, entertaining or dull. And opinions vary on all of those qualities.
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To be good, it can't be dull or hard to sit through - no great film is hard to sit through, other than for reasons where it's part of the point, like Schindler's List - but it needs to be much more than just entertaining to be great.
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For example, you raised Heinlein as serious science fiction. I think his work is badly written schlock.
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To compare movies to literature, nothing Heinlein wrote would feature in the top 25 novels ever written, no. I wasn't suggesting it would. I was more making a point about people not knowing what science fiction is. It's about using the science fiction setting to make a point, either philosophically, or about the human experience, or anything else art can explore. People seem to think if they like shows with cool action sequences in futuristic settings they like sci fi. That's... not how this works. I'm basically capturing the New Trek vs. Old Trek debate - New Trek isn't really science fiction. TOS and TNG were.
That doesn't mean you can't make action-packed sci fi movies, obviously. I don't know if The Matrix makes a top 25 movies list based on its overall quality as a movie, but it's very entertaining, and it's absolutely
pure science fiction.