The demise of good old-fashioned sci-fi is more serious than I thought
It’s that inevitable moment that most science fiction movies seem to reach nowadays, where the hero, tear rolling slowly down his manly cheek, says: “I love you, dad.” I couldn’t suppress a huge yawn. If the virus puts us all in quarantine for weeks, there could be a lot more of this. At least the movie in question, Ad Astra, has increased the portion of time I will spend reading over watching.
I love a good, escapist sci-fi. But lately, the genre has been wholly taken over by Hollywood psychodramas, usually involving some dysfunctional relationship with a parent or spouse (Ad Astra, Annihilation, Interstellar, even Star Wars) or loss of a child (Gravity, Arrival) and very often encompassing a Heart of Darkness-style evil genius who has decided to destroy the world (Sunshine, Ad Astra). It’s not that space travel isn’t a good vehicle for exploring age-old human problems, if it’s done creatively. But I can’t be alone in pining for the days when a space flick didn’t inevitably involve plumbing the dullest hours of Brad Pitt’s therapy sessions.
Back in the day, science fiction was all about gallivanting around the universe, saving it from evil. That approach had its flaws too, not least the often very thin efforts at characterisation. Still, I wonder what it says about Western civilisation that so many of our escapist space fantasies keep leading us back into the troubled, domestic space of our own minds.
Friedrich Nietzsche thought that creativity borne of such neurosis was a sure sign of decadence
It was all about gallivanting around the universe, saving it from evil
and civilisational decay. So not only do I have to sit through another scene in which a hero floating around in the ether struggles metaphorically and physically to hold onto his space-walking companion before travelling 1,000km through a ring of space rocks with only a dustbin lid for cover; it also means that our way of life is doomed. I eagerly await the release of a Chinese Star Wars.