Retrieved from Giant Freakin Robot
An article I read recently, by JoshTyler, discussed the opinion that science fiction is slowly destroying itself by overusing the same few plots. The author believed that because they had succeeded with a premise like time travel once, that every other science fiction writer around was trying to cash in on the idea as well. He thought that this had lead to time travel becoming an excuse rather than an
It’s unfair to believe, however,
that this is a practice solely reserved for genre entertainment. There are always trends that come and go in
movies and television. Disaster movies are
popular one year, while the next, the market is saturated with found-footage
films. Science fiction just seems to be
particularly susceptible to these pop culture trends. Unfortunately, this does lead to a lot of the
same types of stories. Most recently, it
began with the influx of vampire fiction with the success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, and True Blood. Massive amounts
of vampire films and television series began being produced at the height of
the popularity. Then, when The Walking Dead premiered, the trend
started to shift towards zombies and other post-apocalyptic story lines. Now that the year is 2012, the idea of the
post-apocalyptic doomed future has especially taken root in society. Fear that the world will end next month has
lead to a lot of fiction about survival after a catastrophic event.
Retrieved from Giant Freakin Robot
I don’t think it helps this feeling
of over-saturation that so many science fiction franchises continue producing sequels,
and rebooting them every decade. As much
as I loved the new Star Trek, the
sheer amount of Star Trek movies and
television shows over the years is staggering.
It’s the same with Star Wars. Even now, Lucasfilm has been sold to Disney
and new movies will be produced in the coming years. It can feel, at times, that there are no more
new ideas in science fiction or entertainment.
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