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.

It insists upon itself, Lois.

Dsco,

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.

GrayBackgroundMusic,

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.

khab,
@khab@kbin.social avatar

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.

VectorSocks,

Star Wars was never good, or Predator is a 5/10 are probably my hottest takes

Steinawitz,
@Steinawitz@kbin.social avatar

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.

elrac,
@elrac@kbin.social avatar

Not sure that's an unpopular opinion, that was a good show and deserved a real ending.

zarathustra,

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.

jalda,
@jalda@kbin.social avatar

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.

rty654rty654,

Space sounds in movies are BS and they ruin the atmosphere.

I shouldn't hear lazers, craft screetching by, etc.

Fucking starwars.

khab,
@khab@kbin.social avatar

Star Wars never was Science Fiction, though. It’s got space wizards and hyperspace stuff. It’s fantasy set in space.

Kaizo107,
@Kaizo107@kbin.social avatar

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.

CoderKat,
@CoderKat@kbin.social avatar

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).

Meshuggah333,
@Meshuggah333@kbin.social avatar

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...

funnyletter,

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.

MudMan,
@MudMan@kbin.social avatar

OK, seeing how much Trek is in this I think my unpopular opinion is that modern Trek power ratings are, best to worse:

  1. Strange New Worlds (not unpopular yet)
  2. Discovery (now we're there)
  3. Lower Decks (all seasons except 1)
  4. Kelvin Movies
  5. Prodigy
  6. Picard
  7. Lower Decks season 1

Bonus unpopular opinion is that they're all alright at worst and none of them are outright bad.

StillPaisleyCat,
@StillPaisleyCat@startrek.website avatar

I’d move Prodigy up to 2nd place and Picard to the bottom, but I can get behind your perspective.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@kbin.social avatar

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.

MudMan,
@MudMan@kbin.social avatar

Unpopular real world opinion: There is no difference.

FaceDeer,
@FaceDeer@kbin.social avatar

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?

NotTheOnlyGamer,
@NotTheOnlyGamer@kbin.social avatar

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.

OldFartPhil, (edited )
@OldFartPhil@kbin.social avatar

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.

MudMan,
@MudMan@kbin.social avatar

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.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@kbin.social avatar

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.

FaceDeer, (edited )
@FaceDeer@kbin.social avatar

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.

nymwit,

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!

wjrii,
@wjrii@kbin.social avatar
  • 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.
MudMan,
@MudMan@kbin.social avatar

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.

wjrii,
@wjrii@kbin.social avatar

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.

MudMan,
@MudMan@kbin.social avatar

I think it has a much more interesting thing to say than any of the other modern Star Wars movies, that's for sure. Much as Iove many of the other Rian Johnson movies, though, I do feel he didn't navigate the requirements of this one to get a fully rounded result.

He should have given up on the whole "Stagecoach in space" idea the moment he couldn't find a way (or was told not to) keep the whole thing within the chase.

And they shouldn't have deliberated the point of the trilogy by making movies at each other, but that's not a problem with TLJ specifically, so I don't count it against it. Hell, Empire directly contradicts Star Wars just as often and it's also fine, mostly because Jedi sticks with those choices.

Nah, all of that is fine. It's the part where it can't keep the tension or weave all the characters into the same story effectively that kills it for me. Great outline, great concept, compromised execution, sadly.

Only you can't make that point in public in most places because the disingenuous trolls will immediately derail the conversation towards stupid stuff like image projection or family legacies or force pulling in space or whatever. I feel even here we're pushing by talking about it like normal people for this long.

infinityto1,

Don't agree about TLJ, the prequel trilogy is just too ridiculous not to love, but I agree about rogue one. It was dull in all regards, color palette, characterization, erso's backstory and motivation...Im still confused by it's popularity. But I guess a lot more people than I realized actually don't like the Jedi. Which...then why watch star wars?

FaceDeer, (edited )
@FaceDeer@kbin.social avatar

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.

MudMan,
@MudMan@kbin.social avatar

Refer to the above. I disagree.

DuckCake,
@DuckCake@kbin.social avatar

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.)

jalda,
@jalda@kbin.social avatar

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.

stephfinitely,
@stephfinitely@kbin.social avatar

Star Gate is just as good if not better at time then Star Trek and Star Wars.

pasci_lei,
@pasci_lei@kbin.social avatar

I love Stargate, too bad it kinda died.

infinityto1,

I agree it's better than star trek. Even universe.

emptyother,
@emptyother@lemmy.world avatar

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.

infinityto1,

I watched it as being Stargate in name only, and on its own I think it was an entertaining show. What brought it home to me was that they were trapped on a ship jumping to random worlds. I thought that was an amazing framing device.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • uselessserver093
  • Food
  • aaaaaaacccccccce
  • test
  • CafeMeta
  • testmag
  • MUD
  • RhythmGameZone
  • RSS
  • dabs
  • KamenRider
  • TheResearchGuardian
  • KbinCafe
  • Socialism
  • oklahoma
  • SuperSentai
  • feritale
  • All magazines
    •