At the end of Summer budgets begin to drop. Comedies begin to be romantic. Dramas begin to creep back into the line up and claim their rightful promotional time. So far the season has brought massive comedies and a couple insane action fests. Sequels and remakes have been order of the day. The stable of upcoming sci fi movies doesn’t completely break that mold, but injects some ideas in the special effects plodder.
One advantage of science fiction is it’s reliance on a central idea. There isn’t a need for big name, big budget actors all of the time. Most of the money can be spent on lovely special effects, which get cheaper and cheaper every year. This ability to draw big action and money with a reduced budget places genre fare in the lead for the end of Summer.
It looks as if the studios are determined to cover all their bases when it comes to sub-genre as well. There’s a Western mash up, a couple of thinkers and some horrific entries as well. We can look forward to a prequel, a remake and even a Pixar live action project.
Super hero movies continue their popularity as well. The strictest fans won’t acknowledge comic book films, but most have a fictional science element at the core of the story or main character. Hulk and Captain America are both science experiments and Green Lantern shoots through space in pursuit of aliens.
It’s gratifying to see the iconography of Westerns expand into other genres. The classics from the past were based mostly on samurai films. The legends of their environment pulled and stretched them, and now those archetypal shapes are being stretched further into the stars.
This is where science fiction shines. It places the familiar tropes of our stories and pieces of our world into a strange world. We can see how these elements react to the weird situations. By extension we can gauge our own reactions.
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