Even a really bad science fiction movie can have something to say, stumbling on critical issues as it strains for coherence.
I love old school science fiction films for this reason. Sometimes they’re a guilty pleasure (think Invaders from Mars). Other times not so guilty — The Thing from Another World, Them! or War of the Worlds. At their worst, they’re funny as hell. At their best, they make clever commentary on the cold war, suburban living, the American family, etc. The phenomenon extends to recent sci fi movies, as well. I found it with, I kid you not, The Invasion, which I rented on a quasi-academic lark. This latest in a series of remakes of the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a gross, uneven, blandly acted film. It also, somehow, taps into the contemporary woman’s struggle juggling career, romantic love and motherhood. Spoilers and completely unbiased feminist analysis follow.
[This blog posting was born on Tor.com]
1 comments:
Hi,
saw you were a regular reader of Nicola's blog and so took a look at yours; you may be too kind to a truly awaful movie, but I like your comments. Otherwise I mainly wanted to congratulate you; when I once wanted to do my thesis on sf, my professor told me that I had misconstrued the subject – "this is a department of literature, and science fiction is not literature". And in fact, as far as I know, you still cannot do a dissertation on sf at any university in Sweden, unless you cheat and switch to the sub-subject of sociology of literature, where it is allowed. So I envy you; write a great thesis!
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