Read Online The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois - Free Book Online
Authors: Gardner Dozois
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movie of all time.
According to Box Office Mojo (www.boxofficemojo.com), eight out of ten of the year’s top-earning movies were genre films of one sort or another (the two exceptions were The Hangover , a slob comedy, and The Blind Side , a sports drama). By my count, and arbitrarily omitting horror movies, thirty-eight out of the hundred top-earning movies were genre films – if you count Inglourious Basterds as an alternate history movie, as some critics have argued, and Sherlock Holmes as a steampunk movie (it certainly has some minor fantastic elements), then the total rises to forty out of the top-earning movies being genre movies, as long as your definition of ‘genre’ is wide enough to include fantasy movies and animated films.
That’s not really so different from last year, or the year before that. What makes this year somewhat unusual is that there were several actual SF films, as opposed to fantasy films (last year, there were almost no SF films at all, and none among the top ten), with a couple of them among the top-ten grossers. Also unusual, there were no superhero movies among the top ten; the nearest one was X-Men Origins: Wolverine in eleventh place; the much-heralded Watchmen finished disappointingly in thirtieth place.
The two-billion-pound gorilla in the room, of course, was Avatar , which so far has earned $598,453,037 domestically, plus $1,446,989,293 in foreign grosses, bringing its worldwide total to an incredible $2,045,442,330 (and that doesn’t even count future income from DVD sales, action figures, and the inevitable computer game). All of which makes Avatar the highest-grossing film of all time (although it’s worth keeping in mind that it was also the most expensive movie to make of all time, with a production bud get rumored to be somewhere in the $500 million range).
As a piece of filmmaking, it’s a breathtaking technical achievement, one of those movies, like 2001 in its day and Star Wars in its day, that pushes the edge of the envelope and hugely broadens what is possible to show on the screen. Visually, it’s absolutely stunning. As a movie , a piece of storytelling, it’s less impressive, with its bad dialogue, cardboard characters, weak science, heavy-handed New Age polemics, and clichéd plot-elements making it mediocre at best, although director James Cameron does keep it moving along at a brisk action-movie pace throughout.
None of that matters. Nobody really cares. It’s the biggest spectacle you can get on the screen at the moment for the price of a ticket, and (visually at least) a movie experience unlike any other – and that’s what’s bringing them through the door. On that level, Avatar totally deserves its success.
Although the most common critical reaction is to compare Avatar to Disney’s Pocahontas , and snide critics have taken to calling it ‘Dancing with Smurfs,’ as a science fiction story it most resembles a mash-up of Poul Anderson’s ‘Call Me Joe,’ Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest,’ and Alan Dean Foster’s Midworld , which at least makes it a legitimate science fiction film (it has weak science, of course, rather blatantly signaled by the fact that the wonder mineral they’re searching for is called ‘unobtainium’ – but so do many print SF stories and novels that are accepted by all as a legitimate part of the genre), which makes it by far the most successful SF movie since Star Wars. After years of all the top-grossing genre films being fantasy, at least three of the top-ten box-office champs this year were science fiction, and I can’t remember the last time that happened. One or two of them even got some degree of critical respect, although there was no real critical darling among the year’s genre films, critics dividing in opinion on almost all of them.
In at second place, earning a still-staggering $835,274,255 worldwide, is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen , another SF film (bad SF, perhaps junk SF,
According to Box Office Mojo (www.boxofficemojo.com), eight out of ten of the year’s top-earning movies were genre films of one sort or another (the two exceptions were The Hangover , a slob comedy, and The Blind Side , a sports drama). By my count, and arbitrarily omitting horror movies, thirty-eight out of the hundred top-earning movies were genre films – if you count Inglourious Basterds as an alternate history movie, as some critics have argued, and Sherlock Holmes as a steampunk movie (it certainly has some minor fantastic elements), then the total rises to forty out of the top-earning movies being genre movies, as long as your definition of ‘genre’ is wide enough to include fantasy movies and animated films.
That’s not really so different from last year, or the year before that. What makes this year somewhat unusual is that there were several actual SF films, as opposed to fantasy films (last year, there were almost no SF films at all, and none among the top ten), with a couple of them among the top-ten grossers. Also unusual, there were no superhero movies among the top ten; the nearest one was X-Men Origins: Wolverine in eleventh place; the much-heralded Watchmen finished disappointingly in thirtieth place.
The two-billion-pound gorilla in the room, of course, was Avatar , which so far has earned $598,453,037 domestically, plus $1,446,989,293 in foreign grosses, bringing its worldwide total to an incredible $2,045,442,330 (and that doesn’t even count future income from DVD sales, action figures, and the inevitable computer game). All of which makes Avatar the highest-grossing film of all time (although it’s worth keeping in mind that it was also the most expensive movie to make of all time, with a production bud get rumored to be somewhere in the $500 million range).
As a piece of filmmaking, it’s a breathtaking technical achievement, one of those movies, like 2001 in its day and Star Wars in its day, that pushes the edge of the envelope and hugely broadens what is possible to show on the screen. Visually, it’s absolutely stunning. As a movie , a piece of storytelling, it’s less impressive, with its bad dialogue, cardboard characters, weak science, heavy-handed New Age polemics, and clichéd plot-elements making it mediocre at best, although director James Cameron does keep it moving along at a brisk action-movie pace throughout.
None of that matters. Nobody really cares. It’s the biggest spectacle you can get on the screen at the moment for the price of a ticket, and (visually at least) a movie experience unlike any other – and that’s what’s bringing them through the door. On that level, Avatar totally deserves its success.
Although the most common critical reaction is to compare Avatar to Disney’s Pocahontas , and snide critics have taken to calling it ‘Dancing with Smurfs,’ as a science fiction story it most resembles a mash-up of Poul Anderson’s ‘Call Me Joe,’ Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest,’ and Alan Dean Foster’s Midworld , which at least makes it a legitimate science fiction film (it has weak science, of course, rather blatantly signaled by the fact that the wonder mineral they’re searching for is called ‘unobtainium’ – but so do many print SF stories and novels that are accepted by all as a legitimate part of the genre), which makes it by far the most successful SF movie since Star Wars. After years of all the top-grossing genre films being fantasy, at least three of the top-ten box-office champs this year were science fiction, and I can’t remember the last time that happened. One or two of them even got some degree of critical respect, although there was no real critical darling among the year’s genre films, critics dividing in opinion on almost all of them.
In at second place, earning a still-staggering $835,274,255 worldwide, is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen , another SF film (bad SF, perhaps junk SF,
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