The Big Questions

I've started to really contemplate what it is that makes a certain type of story work. I may have tried to do this when I was younger, but mostly from the aspect of what made it more salable, more commercially appealing.

What I'm looking at nowadays is more the core elements.

I was talking to a friend about Prometheus. I've talked to a number of people who didn't like this movie. Well, I like the Science Fiction world they've created in the Alien universe, and the special effects extravaganza.

As I keep trying to tell younger people, when I was younger, all they offered were sci-fi movies with giant ants. Lame. Of course, they immediately say that "like" that kind of campyness. I was surprised that Cameron thought the Batman T.V. series was cool. Hey, maybe as an ironic take 50 years later, but at the time I hated it.

Anyway, other than plot problems and character problems (why the hell did they make Guy Pierce an old man with lousy make-up? Couldn't they have hired an older actor?)

But the big problem, I think, is that the movie tried to deal with the Big Questions, and used a blunderbuss to do it. Most science fiction authors know better -- they approach the Big Questions with a more humble, and certainly a subtler attitude.

Because what happens, I think, when you try to deal with the Big Questions so literally in a S.F. universe is that you reduce them. Make them kind of silly.