Science Fiction and Magic Fans . . .

Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC

Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC

When you go to see a Science Fiction and / or Magic movie, what are your expectations before you see the movie?

Let's brainstorm.

This thread will hopefully help to develop a good pitch.
 
Okay, some real techies, IT people I work with saw the same clips I showed in the post area. And they made the following observations.

Science Fiction, like Magic, differs from action movies in that Science Fiction and Magic have distinct looks and fans expect to see good special effects. Also, the action is geared to character specific action. The action must represent the extraordinary abilities of the characters.

Example, in a Hercules movie, fans expect to seee Hercules do extraordinary super human feats of strength. This genre is Magic. But, try to sell Hercules without super human strength and you will have a lot of disappointed fans hating and trashing your production.

Also, we expect to see a lightening wielding Zeus, father of Hercules with great magical powers.

There, at least, hopefully, I got the conversation started.
 
Yes I agree with what Modern day myth has said. Most people got to see films with pre conceived ideas of what a genre film will have, hi tech sfx and extraordinary worlds for sci fi, strong heroes and heroines and old or mythical lands for fantasy/magic films. They have their place of course and I love them as much as anyone else but I do like it when a director strays from the norm. One of my favourite sci fi films is `The man from earth`from a story by Jerome Bixby. That has no sfx or fantastical worlds and the whole film is set in 2 locations, the outside of a cabin and the inside.

In regards to fantasy, I love Lord of the rings and Conan but my all time fav fantasy book is `Mythago Wood` and that doesnt follow nornal guidelines. I wish someone would make a film of it. I had heard that Terry Gilliam had a script but nothing came of it.
 
There is a broad range of sci fi and magic films out there. It is pretty hard to give an ansewer to this.

In general the things I like in sci fi would be

I like there to be A human connection to real life with a sci fi or magic element to it. Not too fake. It would be more based on real life with a touch of sci fi or magic. I think Terminator 2 did a good job with this. While Terminator 3 went over board with unbelieveable cars diving their self via the terminator girl. I think Avatar did a good job too. Spiderman was a good example of this since it is based on a average teenager that gets super powers. I think Smallville did excellent too.

I loved Xfiles. The conspiracy theories. The aliens and monsters. The characters were interesting too. Fox Mulder was really cool.

I like Time travel movies.
I like Robots like Terminator or Battlestar Galactica.

Other things I like are worm hole adventures like Stargate and Sliders.

I like also Jumper for his ability to jump from one place to another. I also like Hiro Nakamura from the tv show Heroes. His ablity is to travel in time and space.

The flying ability is pretty cool for Clark Kent among others like Iron Man, Johnny from Fantastic 4, etc...

Gadgets are cool like the ones Batman has. Also, cool cars like Batman.

Anyways, as far as magic goes I think Harry Potter did a great job. Also, Lord of the Rings was cool.

I am a fan of Highlander the series. I really liked it and it is based on Magic more than sci fi I think.
 
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The most important thing for me is it has to have an interesting story. If it's just an action movie with flying cars and lasers, then that's boring because it's no different really.

I love the Philip K Dick short stories and they're ripe for great movie making...
 
If I was to do a SF/Fantasy movie, I would listen VERY closely to the fanboy forums - they panned the Green Lantern movie, so everyone knew it would flop. I would also go to the SF/Fantasy conventions, to get a feel for what they want. Like it or not, they're the bellweather of what would sell.

That said, the Star Wars prequels were panned, and they did very well. That said, if you-know-who had continued with his franchise, his gross would probably fall, just as Star Trek's TV series eventually withered away to nothing.

As for the substantive issue of what makes a good SF story, I'd say that it has to be more than mindless adventure in space - the best SF is that which deals with social issues of the day or which are thought-provoking.
 
For Science Fiction I either expect a cgi, vfx laden action fest with little plot and generic characters.

What I like is something with a solid story and the Science Fiction and vfx elements used to advance the world/story.


For Magic/fantasy I expect a cgi, vfx laden mess with recycled Tolkien/DnD plots. What I like is something where the characters are well developed and hte magic/fantasy aspects aid in the story telling.
 
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