I just last night saw that episode(?) of star wars that George didn't want anyone to see - y'know the one where we meet Chewbacca's family! Sheesh, it makes me shudder just to think of it............anyway, it started me thinking why there hasn't been a decent attempt at a Sci-Fi animated film/short recently? .......as i'm typing, Steve Page from Barenaked Ladies is screaming down my ear 'Its all been done'! Maybe my answer is right there..........
That's a good question, actually. So much sci-fi stuff is in anime these days. (Although personally, giant mechs controlled by high school girls/boys have never really done it for me ...)
I guess the last two mainstream attempts at sci-fi, Titan A.E. and Treasure Planet, didn't garner as much acclaim as their creators had hoped which is why they prefer to leave that kind of topic to anime at the moment ... (Speaking of giant mechs controlled by highschool girls/boys, I never really liked Titan A.E. that much, either ...)
....and not even Star Wars has any star wars in it anymore....
yeah, i mean i think most of us enjoyed The Iron Giant, but i'm not really thinking about that as SciFi. Titan AE was a ground breaker as far as it's use of mediums was concerned and i actually quite enjoyed it - certainly don't think it deserved a lot of the crap it got from the critics. At least it was trying to do something different, something that, Hollywood certainly, seems terified of doing. Anime is doing some good stuff and have been for a while but i would like to see something come out of the west that can break the mould.
Hey Kev!
Very good point. More lasers and spaceships in Ep3 please!!
hi gav,
i recently bought an anime title called' "voices of a distant star". admittedly it has the whole schoolchildren and robots thing going on, but i have to say that it's one of the nicest anime short films i've seen. it's only half an hour long, but there's some real emotional depth there (plus it's really stunning to look at)....
my jaw dropped when i found out that it was done by ONE guy....
if you can watch region one NTSC, BUY BUY BUY!
looky here:
http://www.advfilms.com/favorites/voices/
When I have infinite money I'll make movies out of all Stefan Wul's books. Fantastic Planet is still one of my favorite movies, and one of the main reasons is because 60's french sci-fi is really something else.
I've been thinking of some sci-fi projects, I'll promess to give them some more attention...
Could we count "Sky Capitain and the World of Tomorrow" as sci-fi?
danielpoeira.org
Sci fi has usually been inspired by actual science for its "feel" and politics for its stories. Lately, our enemies havent been too, uh, high tech, and science is getting VERY specific, so much so that its pretty specialized and dull. what unique technological advances have come about recently? Maybe a sci fi movie about a computer with terabytes of RAM and a 50GHZ processor would be interesting ;)
Science Fiction used to have a heavy stress on future technology. That's not as exciting now that we have things envisioned in the past.
It will always be around but the stress is philosophical; who we are or who we could be.
And don't forget Science Fantasies Like Star Wars. That will always be here. The setting is alien, futuristic but is almost inconsequential; could be a medieval story with princes and princesses.
IMO in Science Fiction the setting and technology play a part and are about our universe.