Last week John Scalzi's SciFi Movie column for AMC talked about why so many classic Sci-Fi films are actually bad films. Being limited to 800 words he barely scratches the surface (he expands some thoughts in the comments, and doesn't answer one question with the response "What? Tell you now and waste a whole potential column? Madness!", so hopefully he will come back to this theme). Which begs the question, is our focus on bad sci-fi in this blog and our viewing a reaction to the high levels of badness in the classics of the genre, or are we just so-bad-it's-good weirdos?
The crotchetyoldfan, who, not entirely coincidentally, is behind the Classic Science Fiction Channel my last post was about[1], talks about this column and SF films he's watched three times on his blog. If nothing else, there's several films I'd like to see and several more I'd like to see again I got from this.
Additionally, there's a point he touches on in passing, which is that the movie business marketing label "Sci-Fi" doesn't make a film SF. Related is the question that came up last week, namely is Hellboy a Superhero movie? An associate, who we may or may not be referring to as LeMat in these posts, said yes. The question is, if it wasn't from a comic book would it still be? (Of course if it wasn't from a comic book, the film would almost certainly have been very different).
Anyway, enough talking about talking about bad sci-fi - this afternoon I hope to get back to just talking about bad sci-fi.
[1] I'm clearing out my things to blog about list, so I can review the first two episodes of Crime Traveller before tomorrow's movie night.
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1. thanks for reading.
ReplyDelete2. I know you have a "vested interest" in the existence of bad scifi, but as I'm discovering, there's really not all that much badness out there.
First we have the issue that you touched on that I touched on(volley to you): many films (and a high percentage of bad films) aren't really SF films.
Second, many of the bad SF flms that are SF films are REALLY bad SF films. Really, really, atrociously, god-awfully bad.
So I don't feel all that bad about taking away some of your material: you'll still have quality bad SF films to discuss, even if you don't have quantity...
Karen is actually the wife of the Crotchey Old Fan
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