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There was a cool article I read a while ago tracing the elements and influence of blackness in Sci Fi from minstrel show-like elements in '60s and '70s Sci Fi (including the PROTEINS FROM THE SEA robot in Logan's Run) to Darth Vader to Ruby Rod and beyond. My google-fu is weak and I can't seem to find it. This thread seems like the place.
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Nov 7, 2021 07:51
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Speaking of the thread topic, I watched Westworld earlier this week. Pretty good even if the early pacing could've been better and it's far too focused on antics at times than hinting at things being off in the park. The worst part is probably the ending and climax being pretty much nothing.
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Nov 7, 2021 15:20
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Cooked Auto posted:The worst part is probably the ending and climax being pretty much nothing. That's pretty much the problem with all pre-Star Wars sci-fi. George Lucas (or more specifically his wife Marcia) showed the world how to properly pace a sci-fi film for modern main stream audiences. Which is part of what makes these films fun in retrospect, filmmakers were still experimenting with the format and figuring things out, so you get these super weird psychedelic endings or lingering epilogs well after the actual resolution of the story.
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Nov 7, 2021 16:08
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OnlyBans posted:There was a cool article I read a while ago tracing the elements and influence of blackness in Sci Fi from minstrel show-like elements in '60s and '70s Sci Fi (including the PROTEINS FROM THE SEA robot in Logan's Run) to Darth Vader to Ruby Rod and beyond. My google-fu is weak and I can't seem to find it. This thread seems like the place. the correct takeaway is that "Time is a Flat Circle" and "If you don't run herd on writers, producers, and directors, they'll just waste talented black actors on minstrel type roles like a 90's Christ Tucker or Wayans Bros. character."
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Nov 7, 2021 17:11
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Cooked Auto posted:The only thing I know about the Rollerball remake, other than its garbage, is that there's a hilariously cartoony sound effect being used when a fence or something is being run over. A goofy thing about that movie is that for the theatrical release they decided that they wanted it to be PG-13 instead of R so they edited Rebecca Romijn to remove nudity.
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Nov 10, 2021 02:09
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The end of the original Rollerball is one of my favorite movie endings of all time. Spoilering just in case. All the other players are dead or incapacitated, and the crowd is silent, and Jonathan picks up the ball and slowly clambers up to the goal and slams it in. Clang! Crowd starts chanting. Jonathan! Jonathan! John Houseman's character tries to gtfo. Freeze frame on James Caan. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Credits. Great stuff.
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Dec 11, 2021 18:46
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It's a very 70's ending, but a step above the one from Westworld.
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Dec 12, 2021 15:41
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Recently watched Phase IV, a slow-burn sci-fi from 1974 about ants in the Arizona desert that are uplifted by cosmic rays and begin to build complex geometric structures and stage attacks on local residents. Two scientists come to the desert to study the hive mind ant colony but they experience all sorts of hosed up super ant-related issues and slowly go insane. The film's ending is trippy and semi-incoherent but the close-up photography of the ants is amazing and woven into the movie really successfully. Definitely one of the best, most underappreciated sci-fi films of the decade.
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Dec 17, 2021 18:27
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Thanks for reminding me of Logan's Run. I always laugh when the robot pulls a pair of guns on them. For the longest time in my head I equated Logans Run with The Prisoner. Weirdo British science fiction, I tell you.
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Dec 18, 2021 18:17
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Rental Sting posted:Recently watched Phase IV, a slow-burn sci-fi from 1974 about ants in the Arizona desert that are uplifted by cosmic rays and begin to build complex geometric structures and stage attacks on local residents. Two scientists come to the desert to study the hive mind ant colony but they experience all sorts of hosed up super ant-related issues and slowly go insane. The film's ending is trippy and semi-incoherent but the close-up photography of the ants is amazing and woven into the movie really successfully. Definitely one of the best, most underappreciated sci-fi films of the decade. Hell ya, never even HEARD of this one, then watched it one night, it’s worth it.
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Dec 25, 2021 04:41
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Everything in the 70s future was covered in starkly white surfaces OR mirrored AND/OR full of like old silver british antiques and also there is almost certainly gonna be a dude w/a moustache wearing maybe like a clear vinyl vest, maybe some kind of bandolier that he never uses besides as a cool accessory. And the dude is definitely balding and hes always gonna be squinting because everything is white or mirrored And at some point that dudes gonna get in some kind of futuristic motorcycle pursuit where hes probably gonna ride some kind of motorcycle covered in a very fragile looking plastic body that looks like, i dunno, a giant stapler or an esoteric sex toy that when it fires its laser, makes a sound that would sound absolutely fire on a disco track. And when the laser inevitably misses and strikes some random patch of, i dunno some Italian desert (where all future motorcycle chases happen), you can bet your rear end there is gonna be a huge rear end explosion that is like one frame out of sync and also full of whatever chemical they put in sparklers as well as an unsightly and shot ruining dust cloud that they kept in because lets be honest they had enough film for one shot and a little extra for second unit poo poo Dont get me started on how shiny those robots were, lens flaring the gently caress out of u, but you can definitely see like a thousand fingerprints all over them You know im right too, dont deny
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Dec 25, 2021 08:10
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ilikedirt posted:Everything in the 70s future was covered in starkly white surfaces OR mirrored AND/OR full of like old silver british antiques You are right, I will not deny. I enjoyed this for what it's worth!
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Dec 25, 2021 11:23
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Did I dream it or was there a feature length Battlestar Galactica film made in the late 70's? I distinctly remember seing it in a theatre, and that it was remarkably dark compared to Star Wars, what with the little kid losing his dog in a firefight (he gets a robot replacement later), battleship commander losing his son in a space battle against Cylons, and what looked like people used as live food for alien pupaes in semi translucent pods.. I know for a fact that I have never seen the original TV series, I wonder if a theatrical cut was made, maybe just for the European market? Also Disney 's The Black Hole scared my young mind with its malevolent robot and zombified crew, at least I didn't have to struggle to stay awake as when we watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Good times!
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Dec 28, 2021 01:12
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Yeah, it's weird, they intended to make a series of 2-hour movies, but then it turned into a series, but they still released the first two episodes as a stand alone film. The history of the production of original BSG is pretty convoluted. The 70's buck rodgers show had the same thing.
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Dec 28, 2021 01:23
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ilikedirt posted:And at some point that dudes gonna get in some kind of futuristic motorcycle pursuit where hes probably gonna ride some kind of motorcycle covered in a very fragile looking plastic body that looks like, i dunno, a giant stapler or an esoteric sex toy that when it fires its laser, makes a sound that would sound absolutely fire on a disco track. Hang on a minute 
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Dec 28, 2021 13:21
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Rental Sting posted:Recently watched Phase IV, a slow-burn sci-fi from 1974 about ants in the Arizona desert that are uplifted by cosmic rays and begin to build complex geometric structures and stage attacks on local residents. Two scientists come to the desert to study the hive mind ant colony but they experience all sorts of hosed up super ant-related issues and slowly go insane. The film's ending is trippy and semi-incoherent but the close-up photography of the ants is amazing and woven into the movie really successfully. Definitely one of the best, most underappreciated sci-fi films of the decade. One of the few 70s Sci fi flicks that I hadn't seen. Watched it yesterday and it is really good. Strongly recommended. The ending really needed a weird Moog chord.
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Dec 30, 2021 17:37
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Tonight I watched The Last Chase, and although it's not technically a 70's film (released in 1981) it feels like one. This was on cable constantly when I was a kid and I saw the ending at least a dozen times but never saw it from the beginning, so i decided to rectify that. 20 years after a plague wipes out most of the population and for some reason causes oil production to cease the United States is an authoritative surveillance state where cars (and planes) are outlawed and everyone travels by mass transit. Lee Majors plays an old race car driver who flees across the country in the last race car and Burgess Meredith is the old fighter alcoholic pilot who they get to chase him down in a hastily restored Saberjet. The bad guys oversee everything from an impractically large and inconveniently arranged control center with lots of blinking light computers. It even has a goofy sounding laser gun that makes things blow up. It's also one of those movies where the hero and villain never meet.
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Jan 3, 2022 05:47
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I read the plot synopsis and it literally is gently caress the planet, I want to drive a car instead of take the bus. I think we've hit peak boomer ideology in scifi
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Jan 3, 2022 06:55
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Barudak posted:I read the plot synopsis and it literally is gently caress the planet, I want to drive a car instead of take the bus. I think we've hit peak boomer ideology in scifi Yeah, there’s no mention of environmentalism, they just say “the gas stopped pumping” there was a real common fear in the 70s that we would just run out of oil. That was the reason for the apocalypse in Mad Max. If this was made today it would totally be right wing pro-oil-freedom propaganda, and instead of Lee Majors fleeing to Free California in a (kit car) Porsche it would be Kevin Sorbo racing to Texas in a rolling coal monster truck.
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Jan 3, 2022 15:35
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Bucnasti posted:Yeah, there’s no mention of environmentalism, they just say “the gas stopped pumping” there was a real common fear in the 70s that we would just run out of oil. That was the reason for the apocalypse in Mad Max. In the plot synopsis on wikipedia, there is a government lie that they're running out of gas so to save the remaining resources they had to stop. Im gonna assume Wikipedia is as ever wrong
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Jan 3, 2022 18:11
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Barudak posted:In the plot synopsis on wikipedia, there is a government lie that they're running out of gas so to save the remaining resources they had to stop. It's never really stated in the film except one line "When they stopped pumping gas, if that's even true" They don't do much to sell the dystopian future honestly, at one point one of the bad guys rants about how they need control to maintain their perfect system and that the car is a symbol of personal freedom so they need to stop this one guy. But like there's no real indication that anyone except the controllers and the people in Free California know about the chase (and all of 10 people are waiting for him when he arrives). Like there's something there that could have been fleshed out but really it was just about a cool looking car racing across the country and Burgess Meredith drunkenly meandering while flying a kite.
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Jan 3, 2022 18:43
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Slipstream is from 1989, but I feel it should count as honorary 70s Sci-fi.
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Jan 12, 2022 23:43
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Bucnasti posted:Like a lot of 70's movies Rollerball is super prescient of 21st century America. Corporatized sports, and media manipulation of the masses were both in their infancy at the time. You might want to sit down for this, but the Rollerball remake was twenty years ago.
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Jan 14, 2022 17:27
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SidneyIsTheKiller posted:You might want to sit down for this, but the Rollerball remake was twenty years ago. LIES! It was like 3 years ago tops, that American Pie kid is only like what, 25-26 these days right? Seriously though, i guess it's been almost as long since the remake as the remake was from the original. So somebody get Hollywood on the line and have them remake that summabitch. Edit: Hannibal Rex posted:Slipstream is from 1989, but I feel it should count as honorary 70s Sci-fi. Any movie with Bill Paxton in it is automatically an 80's movie. Bucnasti fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Jan 14, 2022 |
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Jan 14, 2022 17:43
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Bucnasti posted:That's pretty much the problem with all pre-Star Wars sci-fi. George Lucas (or more specifically his wife Marcia) showed the world how to properly pace a sci-fi film for modern main stream audiences. Which is part of what makes these films fun in retrospect, filmmakers were still experimenting with the format and figuring things out, so you get these super weird psychedelic endings or lingering epilogs well after the actual resolution of the story. It's really striking (and amusing) to read some contemporary reviews of Star Wars and Alien that complain they move too fast! "What made The Duellists so impressive was that the film allowed the plot to develop at a realistic, sometimes even leisurely, pace. With Alien [Ridley Scott] has regressed to the rapid, unvarying pace of television. Although the tactic works on young viewers who have syncronized their inner stop watches to the quick editing of the small screen, it comes off as cliched to experienced filmgoers. The suspense never builds to an unbearable point as it should, and every anxious moment resembles the previous one with too much visual information in rapid sequence being shot at the viewer. Overall, Alien resembles a 30-second “Coke Adds Life” commercial— slick, bloated, and unnecessarily busy." https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/movies/alien-review-laura-sanden/
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Jan 15, 2022 05:30
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I'm sorry there's too much action in these sci-fi special effects show cases
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Jan 15, 2022 16:44
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Yeah, Star Trek and Doctor Who back in the day went at an absolute snail's pace that I like for putting something on in the background but it's a pain when I try to make it into my only focus and there's just not much going on. It does make me wonder when I see a modern movie that I feel is too fast, do I just have the tastes of an old, old man and everything is gonna be this speed in the future?
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Jan 15, 2022 17:49
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Yes. Sorry.
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Jan 15, 2022 22:19
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I had not heard of this one before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9YEQGKNVzQ And of course, since George Pal had Matt Jeffries available, he got to use Jeffries' design for the Leif Ericsson starship--a model a lot of us had, back in the day, which incidentally formed the inspiration for the ship in Niven and Purnelle's The Mote In God's Eye.
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Jul 8, 2022 00:30
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Can't have a thread about '70s Sci-fi without The Omega Man   It has the most funkadelic soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YODhFATedsI And one of the greatest opening scenes that hits you with a level of wtf?!? that I don't think any other '70s movie ever did. It's just great. Plus, Charlton is chewing the scenery up since it's the movie he was born to play: the good guy with a gun against a world of photosensitive mutants. The sheer awesomeness of this movie is perfectly encompassed by this one scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4sPM8ugSWc
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Jul 8, 2022 12:17
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I should probably watch that one at some point and in hindsight feel silly for skipping it during my bout of sci-fi/fantasy movies. Will gladly skip the Will Smith version tbh. Iron Savior did do a pretty good song about the book/movie. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdBPx_nxzyQ
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Jul 8, 2022 15:03
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Cooked Auto posted:I should probably watch that one at some point and in hindsight feel silly for skipping it during my bout of sci-fi/fantasy movies. I started watching it as a lark and did a double-take at the opening, started laughing, and decided that this would be the movie I'd make my parents watch for Thanksgiving. It's so good.
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Jul 8, 2022 15:17
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Cooked Auto posted:I should probably watch that one at some point and in hindsight feel silly for skipping it during my bout of sci-fi/fantasy movies. The "Will Smith version" isn't actually a thing, it's a completely unrelated movie that has nothing to do with the original Omega Man other then it for some reason has the same movie title. It confused the hell out of me too until I looked it up.
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Jul 9, 2022 09:29
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Twenty Four posted:The "Will Smith version" isn't actually a thing, it's a completely unrelated movie that has nothing to do with the original Omega Man other then it for some reason has the same movie title. It confused the hell out of me too until I looked it up. The Will Smith Film wasn't named Omega Man, it was I Am Legend. They're both based off of the same novel which was called I Am Legend. Unless the name was different in some regions.
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Jul 9, 2022 14:11
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Poor phrasing on my part, my bad. But it was called I am Legend around here as well.
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Jul 9, 2022 14:25
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All 3 versions (Vincent Price, Charlton Heston, and Will Smith) are wildly different.
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Jul 9, 2022 15:25
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They alao all have different names: Price: The Last Man on Earth Heston: The Omega Man Smith: I am Legend
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Jul 9, 2022 15:44
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None of them are particularly close adaptations of the original book. Although the Vincent Price one is closest.
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Jul 9, 2022 18:35
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Dammit I was thinking of another 70s Sci-Fi show (I guess on topic and that's what I focused on at the time I made the post) that I admittedly have never seen, Gemini Man (not Omega Man). My mistake, I had a few drinks at the time, sorry. It was also a Will Smith movie so that's what I was thinking of, but the original of the same name had nothing to do with the more recent movie. The 70's original series... https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073994/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3 And the completely unrelated Will Smith Movie... https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1025100/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0 It has nothing to do with the original series, despite having the same name, which threw me for a loop and caused me to look it up back when it came out as I barely remembered a show called that from before I was born, which also has a pretty similar name to what was brought up. No real need to click on the links, just showing what confused me, apologies!
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Jul 9, 2022 22:35
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Twenty Four posted:Dammit I was thinking of another 70s Sci-Fi show (I guess on topic and that's what I focused on at the time I made the post) that I admittedly have never seen, Gemini Man (not Omega Man). My mistake, I had a few drinks at the time, sorry. It was also a Will Smith movie so that's what I was thinking of, but the original of the same name had nothing to do with the more recent movie. Ah, Ben Murphy's series/movie is indeed the superior one because it earned a MST3K nod. Riding With Death is a nice mellow MST3K episode.
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Jul 10, 2022 04:27
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