10 Science Fiction Movies I Hate... And Why!

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talks movies Eric Blair a journalist in

the first half of the 20th century gave

us an interesting concept of the

two-minute hate it was in a novel he

wrote Under the student name of George

Orwell I think called 1984 and people

got out collectively hated something for

two minutes so consider this video my

two minute hate against science fiction

movies that are horrible now before I

get started if you like some of the

movies I'm going to mention that's okay

it's really really fine we can do

greatly disagree but undoubtedly if

you're a science fiction fan there are

science fiction movies that you have

little time for or actively have a rage

against

and for me this is going to be my one we

will start with one of the easy ones in

the year 2000 John Travolta had a vanity

project called Battlefield Earth

based on one of a whole bunch of

incredibly thick novels and I mean thick

in two senses of the word both fell like

that and they were stupid they were

probably good selling because they sold

to two kinds of people first one was

people that didn't know what good size

fishing was and the second one was a

whole bunch of scientologists bought

tons and tons of them gave them away uh

they gave them away science fiction

conventions I was at to try to get

people to admit what they knew to be

fact they want they gave away because

they wanted people to realize that

elrond Hubbard was one of the great

science fiction writers of history

he wasn't he was a shyster he was a con

artist he was a sociopath he was

everything bad about being a man in the

20th century and if people disagree with

that I'm fine with that now Battlefield

Earth I watched about 10 minutes off and

couldn't watch anymore you got like

giant John travolters with little tubes

up his nose you've got Barry Pepper a

fine actor being totally wasted you've

got the director Roger Christian doing

all sorts of weird things with Dutch

angles and it's a tedious and turgid and

really painful to watch movie I don't

own a copy of it I did watch some of it

on the streaming service back in the day

but I didn't get through the whole lot a

I consider the original author to be a

repugnant human being in so many ways

and his legacy of conning vulnerable

people lives to this day with the

organization he instigated some people

may like it some people may be able to

watch it ironically or comically or

while self-medicating but for me it's a

repugnant film that I don't want to

waste any of my lifespan on Beyond

talking about it right now number two

any Disney science fiction films that

were made before Disney brought up a

whole bunch of other Studios so it could

make a science fiction films out of that

Studios intellectual property if you

want a list of the bad Disney science

fiction movies there are a lot of them

there's Moon pilot from 1962 there's the

absent model Professor there's the

computer World tennis shoes there's a

world greatest athlete there's the black

hole which is crazily bad it kind of

wrote on the coattails of Star Wars and

in order to do so it kind of

cannibalized 20 000 leagues out of the

sea where the bit where Yvette mimus

says they were searching for habitable

life does get a bit of a chuckle but for

the most part it's a total waste of good

character actors like Anthony Perkins

and Robert Forster and David mimio and

Maxwell and shelf for that matter I mean

you see him in judgment in Nuremberg you

wonder about his life choices that led

him to the black hole and also it wastes

a really nice little bit of a soundtrack

by John Barry by overusing it to the

extreme it's a piece of basically I

saw the cinemas with a whole bunch of

science fiction fans and we spent dinner

after we went to the cinema

carry it apart and explaining to each

other just how bad it was it was a

useful autopsy and it helped me

understand the difference between a good

science fiction movie and a bad science

fiction movie and the black hole for me

will ever remain a bad science fiction

movie made by a studio with a crappy

track record number three this is the

one that's going to get the comments

2001 A Space Odyssey Based On A Story by

Arthur C Clarke also helped the

screenplay directed by Stanley Kubrick

both of them have done good work

and the technological innovations in

telling this story on the screen I am

not going to criticize

breakthrough science fiction special

effects really interesting production

design but the story is really dull

Stanley Kubrick and even after see Clark

didn't understand one important aspect

of Science Fiction storytelling

interesting characters they didn't have

any in this

you've got the two asteroids played by

Gary Lockwood and Kia Julie you've got

William Sylvester playing Hayward Floyd

you've got Leonard rossetta being boring

as one of the people on the space

station and the story itself is as thin

as hell Alien Devices kick-starting

evolution of intelligent life starts out

in the Stone Age of course with

pre-humans

then in 2001 one of these Alien Devices

on the moon starts sending signals out

people go to the Moon they they then

find out there's another one of Jupiter

they go to Jupiter the AI on the ship

kills everybody except one of the

astronauts and that asteroid encounters

the alien artifact moves his life there

and becomes a giant space baby that's it

that's all the story there is there it's

thing as hell and yeah I mean it

probably was wonderful to watch if you

were self-medicating even though the

special effects as I said as I said

design Productions aside all that kind

of stuff is groundbreaking it's like

having a beautiful Faberge egg and then

when you open the egg there's a little

tiny dog to it in the middle that's the

problem with 2001 as far as I'm

concerned

1968 when it came out science fiction

writers and science fiction fans kind of

knew that even though a lot of them were

after see Clark fans there was some

criticism of how thin the story was and

there's been one of the ongoing problems

with science fiction over the years the

pretty visuals obscure the fact that the

characters are thin and the storytelling

is rude Elementary at best movie right

along I talked about this one last time

around proximity from 2020. this is the

kind of science fiction movie I hate and

then the kind of movie I hate because

it's essentially dishonest there's an

implicit contract between Movie Makers

and audiences the audiences will pay

money and invest part of their lifespan

to watch what the movie maker makes and

the other part of that contract is the

movie makers got to give them what they

said they're going to give them and

movies like proximity

don't do that because it starts out of

the science fiction movie it's about

alien abduction and Men In Black and

then suddenly we find out that the

aliens are looking for Jesus Christ

voila it's a piece of evangelism by a

fundamental Christians here in Australia

maybe 25 percent of people go to church

if that on a regular basis a lot of

people are of other belief systems a lot

of people don't have any belief and for

a small group of people to decide that

they're going to jam their belief system

into the faces of audiences who came for

one thing and received another is

incredibly dishonest that brings me to

number five which is the same kind of

movie basically but it happened 70 years

earlier in 1952 there was a movie called

red planet Mars where people on Earth

get signals from an alien Intelligence

on Mars voice from Mars explain things

and then it turns out that it's got

yeah

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he was throughout his life endangered by

termites it's a black and white film

it's kind of low budget

and it's one of those ideas that people

who don't know science fiction think is

mind-blowing but is actually crazily

dumb and prosaic it's like you know two

people crash land on an alien planet and

they survive and they somehow get their

together there's a male and a

female they turned out to be Adam and

Eve it's that level of ploty and that

level of what the hell

is happening in this movie kind of movie

making it's a red planet Mars it turned

up a lot on the late night television

when I was a kid and I watched it a few

years ago and it's bad it's like leaving

the door of the fridge open for two

weeks bad

and I will never watch it again for that

reason it's a waste of your lifespan

next watch for 2005 had potential Story

by Bray Bradbury pretty good idea it was

at the time when dinosaurs were really

hot and it's a movie from 2005 called A

Sound of Thunder basically people go

back to prehistoric times and Hunt

Dinosaurs and they've got to do it at a

time and place when it's not going to

affect the future if they do that so the

dinosaurs are about to be destroyed as a

volcano erupts in a pyroclastic flow and

the dinosaurs are going to be roasted at

900 degrees Centigrade within a few

minutes so people kill the dinosaurs

happy little Hunters putting their Marga

hats on and and that's basically the

story except that one person

accidentally crushes a butterfly and

that butterfly causes a chain of changes

when they go back to their own time and

the world is constantly changing and

there's all these threads to that kind

of thing here's the problem the plot

doesn't hold up in the movie holds up in

the story because Brett bring you what

he's doing but in the movie the way it's

set up is there's no way that butterfly

had it not been crushed by the person

who crushed it was going to outrun the

pyroclastic flow so there would have

been no change to the timeline it

doesn't take a scriptwriter on the level

of William Goldman to know that

it's and it's it's one of those movies

where everything falls apart because one

piece is missing

I wasn't particularly a good movie

anyway the special effects were very

rudimentary the actor was no better than

it needed to be

but they had an intellectual property by

Ray Bradbury that thought they could

monetize it didn't make a lot of money

and the reason I hate the movie is that

plot hole was fixable there would have

been a way to do it

but they chose not to and that is the

issue lazy script writing leading to

Lazy movie making leading to a piss-poor

experience for an audience number seven

the Atlas Shrug Trilogy based on the

very very very

fat novel by Iron Rand this is the

interesting theory about this one in

around 2010 a whole bunch of tea parties

remember the Tea Party types in America

whole bunch of tea party types decided

they were going to be Fanboys and aim

randstands and make a Trilogy of movies

based on her novel Atlas Shrugged now

Ella Shrugged is a weird novel it's

about a woman called Dagny tagus who

runs a railway line and she gets

involved with a guy called John Galt and

a group of individuals

who are inventors and creators and they

decide that they're going to go on

strike so this is kind of her hip

version of instead of the workers going

on strike the great minds of the 20th

century as it was in the novel go on

strike and anything collapses and they

all go to hide in a high-tech Wonderland

run by a guy called John Galt this is

all part of that great man theory of

History rubbish

which a lot of people who are fans of

Elon Musk subscribe to even to this very

day

and also a whole bunch of men's right

Advocates it's a it's a cesspool of

people who need more help than they're

getting now the interesting thing is

three movies were made in 2011 2012 and

2014 and they had crazy low budget so

there's a lot of green screen work not

done very well in these movies

there's a whole bunch of bad acting not

done very well and in each of the three

movies a lot of the major characters are

played by three different actors because

they couldn't get the anchors to return

for the second and third films and

that's kind of hilarious they they do

get some name actors who are well known

to be on the right side of politics

let's say they come in and do some stuff

and the whole plot basically about Dagny

Taggart running train lines and having a

special kind of steal for the rails and

all that kind of thing here's a plot

line from the middle part of the 20th

century which they try to update to the

21st century even though a lot of

essential Freight Travels by air now or

buy trucks and the trains are kind of a

secondary to a lot of those modes of

getting things around

uh you can watch these movies on tube if

you choose to I'd suggest you might not

want to but the three at the Shrugged

movies are a whole bunch of people who

aren't movie people but are ideal logs

from a certain political viewpoint

who decided to make three films because

they really loved a novel in the same

way John Travolta wanted to make

Battlefield Earth because he really

loved the novel not always the best

thing to do particularly when the novels

aren't that great now that isn't to say

there isn't a good movie out of it and I

in Rand novel if you watch The Fountain

Head

from 1949 I think it was with Gary

Cooper and Patricia Neal

that's got some wonderful bits that are

the Freudian symbolism and that is next

level fun and it's one of those movies

that is has incredibly good actors and

it has incredibly good production design

but is also laughably bad but the atlas

rug Trilogy is definitely not that it is

atrocious and has no redeeming features

except for the fact that eventually it

ends next one's pretty obvious

um from 2016 passengers

that movie that has Jennifer Lawrence

and it also has

um Chris Pratt

where they're traveling to another solar

system in a generation ship everybody's

in cryogenic stasis while the ship

travels the distance to this other star

this other planet

and one guy wakes up and that guy is

played by Chris Pratt an actor who seems

to have practiced all of his best acting

moves in front of a mirror so he's awake

everybody else is asleep nobody's going

to be awake until after he dies

so he wanders around the spaceship for a

couple years and then he decides he's

going to wake up the cute chick he sees

in one of the cryogenic capsules played

by Jennifer Lawrence

and she's conned by him and gaslit by

him into thinking that her capsule open

at random as well until she finds out it

didn't and he is supposed to be the hero

of the piece and in the end of the movie

that kind of make peace with each other

and save the whole ship from a disaster

that was unpredictable and that the

computer running the ship couldn't

handle no this guy made choices about

the rest of a woman's life without her

permission just for his own satisfaction

that shouldn't happen in this Century in

a movie I think it's crazily dishonest

and to have him ultimately

gotta kiss the girl at the end and they

they build a little garden and it all

goes nicely in the end

is repugnant the movie makers shouldn't

have made this movie they should have

looked at the scripting on no there's a

big problem with this and the problem

isn't going to go away nonetheless the

movie was made it had two high-profile

stars in it I hate it because there's a

Redemption art for a character who does

something that for me is unforgivable

number nine we're up to number nine

already the Stepford was 1975 and 2004.

based on a satirical little Story by R11

the step of wives is about a Connecticut

suburb of Stamford where basically all

of the women are being slowly replaced

by robots because surprise they have

minds of their own you know they have

one have lives of their own they have

their own aspirations that don't

necessarily in tune with those of their

spouses there's a kind of course retail

in the original story but there's a

really great chunk

of William Goldman's Avengers in the

screen trade which tells you all the

things went wrong when director Brian

Forbes was making this movie he wanted

his wife Newman the star in it and she

didn't want to wear short skirts because

she didn't have the legs for short

skirts so the kind of sexiness of the

female robot characters which is

definitely a part of the satire in this

didn't happen because everybody will

long flow of skirts instead there were

other problems with the production it's

one of those situations where the

filmmakers get an intellectual property

which could make a good film and they

size everything that's useful in that

story because they want to make a movie

a certain way they want to leave their

mark on it they want to do it their way

and uh William Goblin's adventures in

the screen track gives us a real reason

why there needs to be some kind of

control particularly on a film's

director it is a course retail there is

a creepy ending to it as well I hate

what Brian Forbes did to the movie just

so his missus could get a gig I think

that's is that nepotism when you give

your wife a job as well as your kids you

shouldn't do that you're playing with

other people's money you're also playing

with an audience who expects certain

things out of a film

and you're choosing to ruin it because

of your own ego and your own domestic

Harmony that then brings me to number 10

which is the Avatar films now again like

2001 the Avatar films are breakthrough

as far as filmmaking Technologies

concerned and the instrumentalities used

to create a film full credit to James

camera for that

they are exceptional but what he did

with them is essentially made an anime

both of the Avatar films are motion

capture animes and the stories are not

stories that are new they are stories

we've heard before a lot of times

and it's just told in a different format

on a different planet

using breakthrough computer Technologies

but not telling us anything new the

ideas of colonization and the

disenfranchising indigenous cultures is

one that's been told a number of

different times a number of different

ways and it's been told by better

storytellers than James Cameron even

Dances with Wolves tools are pretty well

we have a whole new genre of Australian

films where indigenous people are

talking about

the effects of colonization and

disenfranchisement of indigenous

cultures in their Railways and they're

doing it in a bunch of different genres

as well but James Cameron's Avatar films

they're ordinary at the core of them yes

they look spectacular yes they look

wonderful we get Brendan Carroll an

Australian actor playing an Australian

character who is the one of the worst

depictions of an Australian character

since Paul Hogan stopped making movies

success disguises the thinness of a plot

so a movie that looks really good is

going to get a lot of audience in and

they're all going to go wow and love it

the way that a baby loves the toy hung

over a cradle and the other time movies

are incredibly successful from a

corporate point of view but as far as

moving human culture along and as far as

moving movie making along in an

important storytelling sense they don't

they simply look pretty and even though

they do have Sigourney Weaver in them

and some other good character actors

yeah I'm reluctant to say this about an

Australian actor but anything Sam

worthington's got the grunt to hold a

movie together

I think that he's good in certain kinds

of roles but I don't think that his

skills at this stage of his life in his

career are sufficient for a Viewpoint

character in movies that are making

billions of dollars then there's the

other problem of a cultural

appropriation you know white guys who go

into big blue aliens with dreadlocks in

an African style and facial makeup

that imitates First Nations cultures

from around the world there's a bit of

cultural appropriation there as well but

just to summarize on science fiction

movies I hate there are any number of

science fiction movies I love

and I could talk about them in the

future if you want me to

but I think that calling out the

is as important as calling out

the cool stuff and these movies all are

less than their potential and that's I

think it's a problem those Disney

science fiction movies of the 60s and

the 70s

had a kind of white middle American

world view which is of course part of

the juicy brand at the time which really

irks me as somebody from a different

culture most of those Disney movies were

the exception of things like the black

hole are comedies but they are

incredibly bad comedies they don't have

the survival spark that is a proper

screwball comedy has

they're kind of low brow low Target dumb

movers and yes they would have appealed

to a certain audience and wasn't

particularly sophisticated old or

educated

but if you watch them from a modern

viewpoint

they have not aged well they have aged

like cheese left in the Sun and I think

that's the issue that I have for the

most of all anyway that's it for this

time around thank you very much for

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next time around I should have some

things coming in the mailbox I've been

delayed it's taken about two weeks for

mail to get from one city to the other

here in Australia and that's delaying

some of the stuff that I really want to

show you and really want to talk about

movies on

but I'm hoping that they arrive next

week and they can open the packages and

enjoy them so in the meantime

watch some good movies don't watch some

bad movies treat yourself this week

watch only good movies

and I'll catch you next time

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