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On criticism of SF films
Aug. 26th, 2009 03:07 pmFollowing links from a serious work-related news service (no, really), I found an article (and many, many comments) about the bad science in the Star Wars films. In among the rest, there was this comment: by someone who didn't use their real name, so I can't attribute it to them.
none of this matters if the story works (and the bad science and design doesn't force one to drop their suspension of disbelief).
But that's the point. Whether or not it does depends on the observer. If you're an ignorant small child, no doubt you'll swallow the lot. If you're the sort of person who reads SF books, you'll probably notice huge, gaping, holes, in SF film science. If you're writing about a whole universe, then there will always be bits of it (probably every bit) where quite a large group of people know more about the subject than you do: so go and look it up! Get it right! Get someone who does know what they're talking about to check! And at the very least, be internally self-consistent: if a Magic Spell (or a Technical Whizzy Thing) transports you 10 miles in 10 seconds today, then either it will do the same thing tomorrow, or you'd better have some comment in there about how unreliable and unpredictable it is. Don't just assume your audience have the grasp of reality appropriate to a small baby. Don't assume you're such an awesome storyteller you can get away with it either: Tolkein didn't. Get it right!
Back in the 80s, SF books were, let's face it, written for geeks and nerds. People like me, and my friends. The characterisation was minimal, because that wasn't the point. But they did have to get the science right, because we would notice: this was the stuff we were busily getting degrees in. (Larry Niven managed, for some of us, an Epic Fail in having the entire "mystery" of one short story depend on the tidal effect near a neutron star: for us, the only mystery was how the hero could possibly not catch on to something so obvious.) And now, this same audience, plus the younger version of the same people, is being shown SF films: and we haven't lost our ability to think. Show us some CGI graphics, and we're working out how to code it, not being swept away in awe. Show us a plot hole, or a basic engineering flaw, and suspension of disbelief is gone.
/end rant....
none of this matters if the story works (and the bad science and design doesn't force one to drop their suspension of disbelief).
But that's the point. Whether or not it does depends on the observer. If you're an ignorant small child, no doubt you'll swallow the lot. If you're the sort of person who reads SF books, you'll probably notice huge, gaping, holes, in SF film science. If you're writing about a whole universe, then there will always be bits of it (probably every bit) where quite a large group of people know more about the subject than you do: so go and look it up! Get it right! Get someone who does know what they're talking about to check! And at the very least, be internally self-consistent: if a Magic Spell (or a Technical Whizzy Thing) transports you 10 miles in 10 seconds today, then either it will do the same thing tomorrow, or you'd better have some comment in there about how unreliable and unpredictable it is. Don't just assume your audience have the grasp of reality appropriate to a small baby. Don't assume you're such an awesome storyteller you can get away with it either: Tolkein didn't. Get it right!
Back in the 80s, SF books were, let's face it, written for geeks and nerds. People like me, and my friends. The characterisation was minimal, because that wasn't the point. But they did have to get the science right, because we would notice: this was the stuff we were busily getting degrees in. (Larry Niven managed, for some of us, an Epic Fail in having the entire "mystery" of one short story depend on the tidal effect near a neutron star: for us, the only mystery was how the hero could possibly not catch on to something so obvious.) And now, this same audience, plus the younger version of the same people, is being shown SF films: and we haven't lost our ability to think. Show us some CGI graphics, and we're working out how to code it, not being swept away in awe. Show us a plot hole, or a basic engineering flaw, and suspension of disbelief is gone.
/end rant....