Why Can't Hollywood Make Good Science Fiction Movies?

Since I was a young boy, I've liked science fiction in both its written and screen varieties. Still, in all those years I've only seen a few movies which have even come close in quality to the really good written stuff, at least insofar as these movies are science fiction.

What I'm about to write really doesn't apply to any film that came out before the late 1960s. I've seen few of those, and of the ones I've seen most have been very bad. Nevertheless, I'll admit the possibility that there are some good ones. I just haven't seen enough of what is out there to make a fair judgment.

I'm not going to write about the science fiction that's been on television over the last forty years or so. Perhaps I'll do so in a later piece.

Also, I'll be using the terms film and movie interchangeably, in the usual sense of both words, i.e. motion picture.

About definitions: there are probably as many definitions of what qualifies as "science fiction" as there are readers and writers of it. I'll give you my definition. Science fiction is any fiction in which science plays a central role in the story, which is to say that the story could not be told without the scientific element. If a movie is bad as a movie or as science fiction, then it falls into the category of "bad science fiction movie." Here are a few examples to clarify what I mean. The Godfather is clearly not science fiction, whereas 2001: A Space Odyssey clearly is. This is because in the first film, no scientific element is necessary to the story, as opposed to the second example, in which a variety of scientific elements are necessary. When I was in high school, I asked a teacher of mine whether he liked The Lord of the Rings. He told me that he wasn't fond of science fiction. He and I did not share the same definition of science fiction.

I had a professor in college who once asked me why I "wasted so much time reading that science fiction trash," but that's another story.

Furthermore, I would add that in order for a movie to be good science fiction, the scientific element must be at least fairly plausible. As I mentioned above, if any given movie fails to be good fiction or to have good science, then as a science fiction movie it's a failure. Two examples come to mind. The central scientific premise of Jurassic Park (the idea that if dinosaur DNA could be recovered, dinosaurs could be made to live again) is fairly plausible, but as a story it's a failure for a number of reasons. The acting is mediocre, it relies very heavily on special effects, the dialogue is stilted, and so on. As a story Star Wars (the original one, from 1977) is pretty good. Granted, the acting isn't so hot, the dialogue is kind of phony sounding if you really pay attention to it, but there's a princess, a good wizard (sorry, jedi knight), a bad one, lots of danger and excitement, comical robots, not to mention a very suspensful endgame. But the science is all over the place, sometimes even bordering on the ridiculous (look up the definition of the word parsec, then watch the movie and see how it's used).

Now I'll give a few more examples so that you'll have a clearer idea of my point of view, and then I'll answer my original question.

The Matrix has a pretty good story, some compelling dialogue, and good acting for the most part (I'm looking at you, Laurence Fishburne). One of the central scientific ideas of the movie, however, is completely idiotic. The idea that you can use human beings as a source of electrical energy without a net energy loss, is, and I'm trying to be fair, so bad that it doesn't even qualify as wrong. So that's one bad science fiction movie there.

Blade Runner, on the other hand, has (in my admittedly subjective opinion) a good story, good acting by some good actors (Harrison Ford, Edward James Olmos, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer et al.), and fairly plausible science. Genetically engineered human beings are definitely possible, just to give one example, and while flying cars seem less likely, at least they're not flat-out impossible. So I would put this one in the "good science fiction" category.

All of the Star Wars and Star Trek movies, as much as I enjoyed some of them, have very questionable science. The writers and directors know that the audiences for these movies either don't know enough science to know how bad what they're seeing is, or they're willing to put it aside because they enjoy the characters and the stories. Still, though, that's bad science fiction.

2001: A Space Odyssey has some decent acting, a good though somewhat obtuse story, and pretty solid though highly speculative scientific elements. So I think it qualifies as good science fiction (as much as some people hate it).

I don't even want to talk about Starship Troopers.

So, back to my question. Why can't Hollywood make good science fiction movies? I think the answer is that they have no real motivation to do so, and lots of motivation not to do so. The studio executives know that when they throw out another Star Trek movie, lots of people will show up for it (myself included) some of them wearing Starfleet uniforms or dressed up as Klingons.

If, on the other hand, they made a halfway decent effort of adapting The Moon is a Harsh Mistress or The Left Hand of Darkness to film, they have no idea what would happen. Maybe a lot of people would show up. Maybe nobody would show up. It would be a big gamble for them, and one thing that's certain is that they don't want to make movies that lose money.

Hans Bricker