John Scalzi is an award-winning science fiction writer.It's been a few weeks since I did a mailbag column, and some e-mails are piling up about recent movies and columns. So ... hey! Let's do a mailbag column! First question:
My friend and I are having a philosophical disagreement about whether Contagion qualifies as science fiction or not. I say it does because the virus is fictional and it's an end-of-the-world scenario. He says no, mostly because it takes place in present day. Who's right?
Well, just because something takes place in "present day" doesn't mean it can't be science fiction. Look at Source Code or the latest Transformers film, or E.T., or two of the four Terminator films, or the Men in Black films, or so on. Science fiction can take place in the future, but it doesn't have to.That said, when science fiction films take place in the present day, it's useful for them to have some technological or story element that's generally considered to be out of the ordinary experience: Time travel in the case of Source Code or the Terminator films; aliens in the case of E.T or Men in Black; talking robots in the case of Transformers. Those are the elements that kick it into science fiction land.
The virus in Contagion is fictional, but it's still a pretty commonplace variety of virus; it doesn't turn people into vampires (Ultraviolet) or zombies (28 Days Later), it just kills them. Likewise, the way people in the film combat the virus is with modern technology. And yes, there's something of an apocalyptic scenario in the film, but not every possible apocalypse is science fiction.
So my vote is: No, Contagion is not science fiction. It just makes you want to coat every possible surface with hand sanitizer.
Next question:
A couple of weeks ago you wrote about women in science fiction films, but you didn't go into why women in science fiction films are poorly written. Why do you think it is?
My opinion: Because science fiction filmmakers don't think they have to bother. There are two reasons for that: One, I think science fiction films are assumed to have a generally young, male audience, which is not an audience assumed to particularly value strong female characters outside the "spinny killbot" variety. Two, it's a shibboleth of Hollywood that women will go see films with men as the primary characters more readily than men will go see films with women as the primary characters.
Both of these assumptions are highly arguable and become something of a "chicken and egg" problem, in that if you don't write strong female science fiction characters, how do you know guys won't watch them? They seemed to watch Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor just fine. But when it costs you $100 million to make a film, you end up being conservative in your thinking and going with what you think you know works rather than taking one more risk in the film production.
I think it's a little silly to still be worried in 2011 that science fiction fans won't watch females characters who can't gyrate wildly and behead at the same time, but I also admit I'm an optimist about human nature. Perhaps filmmakers feel they can't afford to be.
Last question:
Come on, Scalzi. Do you really believe that without George Lucas, modern films would be that different? Someone else would have come up with most of the technological advances that Lucas did, sooner or later. Probably Spielberg.
Well, to be clear, I do agree that even without Lucas, the technological state of the art in the film industry would have advanced, and that the 2011 film-going experience would be closer to what it is today than to what it was in 1977. But I don't think it would have advanced as systematically.
Whatever else George Lucas is, he was, is, and always will be a huge film nerd, and because of that he has a very deep focus on the quality of film presentation. His film company didn't just advance visual and sound effects and presentation because there was a market for it -- it did it because at the end of the day, Lucas wanted as much control over every aspect of the process as possible so he could make exactly the film he wanted (and when he couldn't, he worked the tech until it could fix what he saw as a flaw -- and in the process drive the fans nuts with his "improvements").
Would these things have happened without Lucas? Probably; he's not the only hyper-exacting film nerd in Hollywood by a long shot. But it would have been all over the place -- and very possibly less well done -- than it was with Lucas calling the shots. The cinematic world of today would be different enough to be noticeable, at the very least.
Visual Effects supervisor John Dykstra comments on George Lucas tweaking Star War on Blu-rayVisual Effects Supervisor John Dykstra is a legend in the business who has worked on such timeless classics as Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, Spider-Man, and Inglourious Basterds. His latest handiwork can be seen in the exceptional summer superhero adventure X-Men: First Class, arriving on Blu-ray and DVD this Frist Class Friday, September 9th. While discussing this Marvel Mutant prequel, we asked John what he thought about George Lucas tweaking three of the six movies included in Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray, including his own work in A New Hope.