Quote Originally Posted by Hensmon View Post
Very true. Its seem psuedoscience-fiction is a very popular trend at the moment in Hollywood (after super-hero movies that is). In general, Sci-Fi has been a huge focus for western cinema in the last 3 years. I love Sci-Fi, but I have been let down again and again with the movies of late. It seems like the same old love stories, ridiculous dystopian futures or cliched ideas are simply being packaged in Sci-Fi environments - The trailer above for Jupiter Ascending could be promising (Wachowski), but has two weak-ass, 'current' and sugarcoated actors, with a trailer filled with love, cheesey music and generic scenes (from what it seems). Looks to me like another Hollywood 'Sci-Fi' that follows every formula in the book to create another generic epic Sci-Fi - Action adventure.

What happened to the dark, atmospheric, complex and thought-provoking Sci-Fi's of past? We get blessed with the beautifully crafted concept design and special effects today, but nothing with any real substance or depth. Fleshed out characters seem to be low priority in current Sci-Fis too. I thought District 9 would set a standard for Sci-Fi's, but so far nothing has come close. Am I missing something, maybe?
For themes such as transhumanism / transcendence I'd simply point people to Bladerunner. An examination at what seperates, or rather doesn't man and machine. That's a film from 31 years ago and it was better done.

This whole psuedoscience thing I find even more irritating than the overuse of CGI because it's an even bigger immersion killer. Least CGI is to address costs, logical fallacies cover plot problems. Simply put they mean the movie shouldn't be released as it stands.

E.g. in Elysium aside from flimsy characters the whole notion of what appeared to be a simple bash script being irreversible was laughable.

In Transcendence, aside from the psychological / physiological problems do they understand basic networking, interoperability, AI? Doesn't appear so, the film looks to be so ludicrous and any tension is neutered by its lack of credibility.