27 thoughts on “Epic Fail”

  1. The thing is, Star Wars isn’t really a “science fiction” movie — it’s a fantasy adventure, with light sabers in place of swords, star ships in place of sailing ships, aliens and robots in place of dragons and dwarves and other fanciful creatures. It has an evil supervillain as prescribed by the standard formula, a beautiful princess in need of rescuing, a handsome princeling-in-hiding (on a farm, being raised by relatives — also a standard fantasy setup), a mysterious wizard mentor, magic (“the Force”), and so on. Complaining that it sucks as a scifi universe merely seems churlish, like complaining that a fairy tale doesn’t follow the same rules as a short story by John Cheever.

  2. I forgot to add — now, if you accuse Star Wars, or at least the “prequels,” of failing at the rules of storytelling or moviemaking, you might have something.

  3. If you base your line between fantasy and science fiction on what “standard character roles” are filled, or upon whether everything is precisely plausible, you end up with nothing in the box labeled “Science Fiction” other than extremely short-term alternative futures. Like: “What would happen if we actually funded Ares?” But even the masters of “Hard Science Fiction” have run afoul of the laws of physics on a regular basis.

    If you instead drop half of the fluff items, you can boil Star Wars down to the questions: “What might happen if we had rampant cloning?” and “What might happen if we have widespread autonomous robots?”

    Of course, Star Wars sucks at exploring those too. But at least the definition is wide enough to allow things like Friday or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein to be considered science fiction.

  4. As Scalzi notes in his comments, the failure mode of science fiction isn’t fantasy, it’s bad science fiction.

    Star Wars is bad science fiction.

  5. (Those aren’t the only plausible questions SW could be boiled down to, just hard to care since the prequel’s thrust was revealed in interviews to be: “Just how much does Lucas hate George W. Bush.” )

  6. The “cloning” in Star Wars is nothing more than a version of the magical black cauldron from that the evil wizard uses to produce armies of warriors. It’s nothing to do with science. Star Wars isn’t science fiction just because people are whizzing around in starships instead of on flying dragons, anymore than a fairy tale with a magical talking horse is a “horse story” like My Friend Flicka.

    Another hint that the Star Wars movies aren’t science fiction: what big new cultural phenomenon followed hard upon the first movie in the lives of geeks? Dungeons and Dragons. What didn’t follow? Us getting back into space flight, unless you count the space shuttle and I don’t anymore. That’s just a big orbiting airplane.

    I think there is something to most if not all science fiction actually being fantasy. But I’m not arguing that — I’m arguing that the Star Wars movies follow standard fantasy adventure story guidelines, which have nothing to do with discussing scientific issues or advancing the cause of space exploration. Fantasy adventures are for reinforcing society’s base moral codes in an entertaining way. They aren’t supposed to be ground-breaking or controversial or “thought-provoking” as in provoking thought about new concepts — though the state to which our society has fallen probably means plenty of people see the moral precepts as presented by movies like Star Wars (be honorable, fight for justice, resist evil, etc.) as strange and astounding.

  7. I take issue with the unstated premise that Sci-Fi must be realistic. I reserve that kind of scrutiny for the speculative sub-genre, of which SW is not a member.

    The failure modes of Star Wars (and by that I mean the pre-quels) are in the directing (sorry, Lucas isn’t a good director of people and requires A-list actors who can direct themselves) and screenplay (inane dialogue FTL).

  8. Star Wars isn’t science fiction just because people are whizzing around in starships instead of on flying dragons, anymore than a fairy tale with a magical talking horse is a “horse story” like My Friend Flicka.

    There’s a good point here, but I think it conflates theme with setting. Realistic sci-fi that’s relevant to contemporary culture is laudable, but it’s only one species of Sci-Fi. SW is pulp fiction.

  9. “Fantasy adventures are for reinforcing society’s base moral codes in an entertaining way.”

    The fantasy genre is currently very far from that orientation Andrea.

    The fair chunk of fantasy books on the shelves at the moment have one or more of the following at the core: Erotica, supernatural creatures struggling for acceptance, or slapstick.

    There’s a small sliver of classic epic fantasy, another small sliver devoted directly to overtly retelling fairy tales.

    Not “reinforcing” so much as “pushing gently and not-so-gently” on society’s mores.

  10. I don’t think I’ve read any fantasy that was published after 1980. I can’t get into the new “gritty” “anti-Tolkien” fantasy. Oh wait — I did read the Pullman books. Let’s just say they fell short. Of everything.

  13. “I’m just a poor misunderstood blood-sucking parasite with inherent date-rape powers that can’t be turned off, woah is me” is the current running meme.

  14. “Fantasy adventures are for reinforcing society’s base moral codes in an entertaining way.”

    The fantasy genre is currently very far from that orientation Andrea.

    The fair chunk of fantasy books on the shelves at the moment have one or more of the following at the core: Erotica, supernatural creatures struggling for acceptance, or slapstick.

    That’s actually pretty revealing. What does that tell us about our society’s core values? The valorization of sex, the evils of discrimination, or frivolity because there are no core values. Sounds pretty accurate to me.

  15. Whatever happened to the old genre of “space opera”? Star Wars, IMNSHO, falls easily into the pop culture side of that category.

  17. It’s pretty darn difficult to keep your mythical world straight, even Tolkien did not succeed completely. It works better if you try to look at it through the eyes of someone living in the Middle Ages, but even then it is not completely consistent and logical.

    Star Wars however is embarrassingly bad as I found out when I first watched it as an adult. One childhood memory shattered.

  19. I’m with Ms. Harris. David Eddings has a good thoughts on this in the Rivan Codex (a book of his pre-writing exercises for the Belgariad and Mallorean series). I had a lot more, but it was boring, so never mind. I like fantasy; I don’t like sci-fi. I guess I know the difference, such as it is in my brain.

    He’s right, though; the failure mode of bad sci-fi isn’t fantasy. But then, I like Star Wars because it’s bad sci-fi, but good fantasy.

  21. And yet, at the end of the day (END OF DAYS?) I still want Jar-Jar to die in a loud, messy and embarrassing way. Does that make me a bad person?

  22. Are we seriously discussing Star Wars as hard science? Or the lack there of?

    Movies are fiction and truth stretching at best and (now) propaganda at worst.

    Was John Wayne’s “Alamo” historically accurate? How about, “The Bird Man of Alcatraz”? Ever see any of the dozen odd movies about the Shout Out at the O.K. Corral? (there’s even a XXX Rated OK Corral)

    But wait, we were talking hard science, and the movies.

    I can’t think of even one movie, with a “science based” theme that is remotely accurate. Most movies with science content are so far off as to be shear fiction, based on a 4 year degree in film and a broad imagination. “The Andromeda Atrain”? Forbin”? Let’s throw the premiere Science Fiction movie of all time in here. “2001”. That science was ONLY 23 years away when that movie came out. How many of us thought that we’d make all those technical jumps, s the end credits rolled. What about the “Jurassic Park” franchise? And I’ not picking on Crichton, I love his stuff, but it stretches the science, to fit the story, to entertain us.

    Science content in most movies is much less sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads, and much closer to sea bass with bad attitudes. So what? There is a reason the science is bad, non-existent or openly defiant of our physical universe.

    We go to the movies to unhinge our beliefs, to get away from fact, normalcy and the ordinary. We set aside the world for 120 minutes and immerse ourselves in a different world. We want entertainment, not schooling. Star Wars is “High Noon” and “Rio Lobo” rolled into one. It has light sabers and blasters instead of Colt 45s, shot guns and skinning knives.

    I’ve never read any of Mr. Scalzi’s work. But if he’s all about the science, and not about the escape a good SciFi book or story brings, I’ll not read him any time soon either.

    May the FORCE be with you. Orb the Blob, or HAL9000.

    Nannoo Nannoo.

  23. Sorry for that spelling and all, I meant to clean that up, and instead, hit “Submit”.

  24. I guess my biggest gripe about Star Wars is that it was inspired by Frank Herbert’s Dune, but did Dune in a kind of Hollywood-formula cartoon way, and then when they (David Lynch) got around to doing Dune “for real”, that too came out kind of cheesy.

    Face it, there may have been some bleed-over between science fiction and sword-and-sorcery genres, but Herbert firmly places Medieval social structure and sword play into semi-plausible-distant-future-of-humanity science fiction. Oh, and drugs. Lots of people taking drugs. Could be why Herbert’s Dune, Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtalan, and perhaps Heinlen’s Stranger in a Strang Land were such popular reading in high school.

  25. Aside from technical criticisms and the discussions of space fantasy versus SF, the distinction I draw when comparing SW against, for example, ST, is that SW embodied the notions of “freedom”, whereas ST represented our strivings for “equality”. This, as F.A. Hayek notes in “The Road to Serfdom”, is he great distinction between individualism and socialism.

    That’s one of the reasons SW resonated with me more than ST (although I’m a big fan of both). Plus I happened to see SW (e4) at an impressionable time.

  26. And yet, at the end of the day (END OF DAYS?) I still want Jar-Jar to die in a loud, messy and embarrassing way. Does that make me a bad person?

    On the contrary, it guarantees your place in Heaven. Jar-Jar was to SW what Chris Tucker was to 5th Element.

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