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My Sci-fi unpopular opinion is that 2001: A Space Odyssey is nothing but pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. I've tried watching it multiple times and each time I have absolutely no patience for the pointless little scenes which contain little to no depth or meaningful plot, all coalescing towards that 15 minute "journey" through space and series of hallucinations or whatever that are supposed to be deep, shake you to your foundations, and make you re-think the whole human condition.
But it doesn't. Because it's just pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. Planet of the Apes was released in the same year and is, on every level, a better Sci-fi movie. It offers mystery, a consistent and engaging plot, relatable characters you actually care about, and asks a lot more questions about the world and our place in it.
I think this might be a truly unpopular opinion, but I could not get into the expanse at all. Just never got invested in the characters enough to stick with it. I've retried watching it 4 times due to everyone recommending it, kind of given up now!
Also the latest star wars films killed any interest I had in star wars.
My sci-fi unpopular opinion is probably that I don't consider Star Wars to be sci-fi. It shares more with fantasy in that it's more character and story driven and less about philosophy and the way technology changes the human experience which imo is what defines sci-fi.
My unpopular opinion is that I don't like space operas. I'd rather read pages of explanation of technology and world building. I don't care that the star princess in exile has to assemble a rag tag bunch of fringe worlders to take back the throne from the cruel council of the galactic core. How dat engine work tho?
I think sci-fi writers constantly make their stakes far too high, stack the odds far to heavily against the protagonists, and go for a scope far to broad. I don't need 3 people to save the entire intergalactic population from a super mega back hole bomb with .002 seconds to spare. I've seen it and read it a thousand times.
Give me the guy who thinks maybe his spaceship could take on exploring one planet, tell me what he finds and why it was wise for him to run home and call for extra resources to be redirected to that planet. Tell me how the technology of your imaginary world brought 2 characters together and allowed them to build a beautiful life together.
That's why I adore The Martian and can't get excited about Star Wars.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is highly overrated!
The main characters were obnoxious, I didn't end up caring about any of them, and quite frankly, I wished the towel guy had died at the beginning along with everyone else on Earth (except the dolphins). I wasted hours of my life over those 3 books!
2001 book was great. Arthur C Clarke has always been my favorite author. I think Rendevous with Rama would’ve been a more approachable story to adapt into a movie. Full of mystery and curiosity. Creative direction could go wild on art without changing bay of the books story. Starts with a mystery, reveals bits and bobs in the middle, ends with mystery. Leaves you questioning. Chefs kiss.
Haven’t really kept up with modern sci-fi opinion. So maybe my opinions are popular maybe not.
I believe Ilium and Olympos are part of the greatest sci-fi story ever written. Far better than Dan Simmons Hyperion Cantos. It presents wild and imaginative futuristic ideas with insane scientific basis for them.
Characters were mostly bad and uninteresting - they had to bring back worf. Limited plots stuck on a station - they had to add a ship. Then start a war just to have something to do.
A lot of sci-fi (at least where TV/Films are concerned) keeps getting too bogged down in what it thinks that it should be, and doesn't actually try to explore new possibilities or expand much, which generally means that the quality of sequels progressively gets worse, and the show ends up being a sort of even mush vaguely resembling the original.
The main example I could think of is probably Star Trek. It's too fixated on everything as it is, so even things that are supposed to be radical changes just re-establish the status quo with a new coat of paint. A radical show with radical viewpoints would never take off, as newer iterations would try to emulate the success of the show, and keep to the old.
It's part of why later Star Trek shows seem to be a bit more conservative, by comparison. Sure, values have changed since the original show, but the level of radical progressiveness has also gradually wound down too. Compared to the original show, which tried to push things from all angles, something like Star Trek: Discovery would seem almost conservative. Most of its more progressive elements are fairly standard for the time period it is set in, rather than pushing the envelope like the original did.
Similarly, all the shows end up trying to emulate the same formula, and even the same rough starship design. The Enterprise was originally specially designed and built to seem future-y, but many other of their starships since them seem to just be iterative designs on the original. Even one of them set 900 in the years in the future seems to have almost identical technologies, polities, and culture as one set in the 24th century. The visuals are different, but everything seems to be effectively the same under the coat of paint.
Not having that baggage is probably why up-and-coming shows, like The Orville, tend to be able to get away with more, since there isn't a previous Orville that it keeps trying to recapture, just yet, which should mean that it gets more leeway.
From a non Star Trek standpoint, it's also rather happened to Star Wars. The newer films are just trying to recapture the older films, rather than expand into their own thing, to the detriment of the films as a whole. The latest trilogy seems like a rehash of the old ones, down to having what is basically another death star, Rebellions, Vader-ish Masked Sith Lord, and Friendpatines.
I don't really have much of a solution, besides wanting the shows to just branch out more. I think Star Trek in the 32nd century should have gone with a brand new slate, where everything was different (from both an ideological, political, and technological standpoint), and the 23rd century ship that ended up there would be woefully outdated, not just on paper, but with the technology it was fitted with.
Star Wars has a bunch of interesting things that it could run with, such as the aftermath of the major wars, where the Rebellion is now having to deal with multiple smaller wars from various factions under the splintering empire, or have to secure its place in the resulting power vacuum.
One show that hasn't succumbed to this as much is Doctor Who, but that had a major revamp in its 2005 revival which drastically changed the nature of the show itself. Still, it doesn't seem to be particularly immune to it either. Behind-the-scenes, they're suddenly going back to the old composer and old showrunners, and the main character doesn't seem to evolve too much beyond "conflicted, but brilliant and eccentric hero". It also seems to be slowly settling into its own ruts, as well, with the most recent run rather resetting a redeemed villain's character development suddenly.
As a slight tangent, I also feel like that considering the messaging of the show itself, there could be quite a bit of interesting mileage that could be achieved by having a companion who is a species that is normally an enemy. Maybe something like a Dalek.
The writing in The Three-Body Problem is so dry that I could barely keep up with the plot due to being deceased from boredom.
Totally a me problem but it just did not vibe with me. I could never bring myself to read the second book. Tho to be fair to Ken Liu I have trouble with translations in general and I've never read a translation of Chinese-language literature I did vibe with.
Not sure if this is a hot take or not, but modern Star Trek sucks arse. The magic died with voyager, everything after that has been trite and forgettable. And I’m not even talking about those god awful movies.
Deep Space 9 is and always was the greatest Star Trek series. Also I'll go one more and say that I would take Sisko over Picard or Kirk any day of the week.
In The Pale Moonlight (s6e19) sealed these opinions for me.
I don’t think the original Star Wars trilogy holds up well. It takes too long for the scenes to unfold and feels more monotonous than I remember it feeling when I watched it in my youth.
The premise was great: restart the human race after a predictable collapse by writing an encyclopedia galactica based on our collective knowledge that would help the survivors to rebuild a civilization. I was all for it and I was thinking about my own encyclopedia.....and boom the story was a boring political struggle. What a letdown.
I liked Terra Nova and wish it didnt get cancelled after one season even though it wasn't a great show. I loved the premise of humans going back in time when Dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
Shared universes between franchises are a bad idea. I don't mean commercially. They're a great idea if you want to make a billion dollars. But they're bad for storytelling.
Reason 1 is that the story being told is always in service to some other story. By which I mean, the writer has to make decisions that aren't about making this story the best it can be, but about making it make sense in context with everything that's come before it. For example, Batman can't just be a story about a smart, athletic vigilante in a costume. He has to be the smartest, most athletic human being who has ever lived, because he has to compete with, and remain relevant amongst, actual superheroes and supervillains.
Reason 2 is that it undermines the impact of each story because, again, the stories have to be considered within a massive context. In Watchmen, we can imagine the awe and horror people felt about Dr. Manhattan because, like in our world, nothing like him had ever existed. If you put him in the same universe as Superman, he's just another superhero.
Obviously I'm talking about large comic-book style shared universes with multiple authors and largely independent stories. I have nothing against franchises that use other works to expand on previously introduced concepts and do it in a coherent way.
I like the Total Recall remake with Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, and Colin Farrell more than the original with Arnold. The original is overhyped gibberish, in my opinion.
Also, perhaps a premature unpopular opinion: If - IF - it continues to present the same level of quality for the length of its run, Silo will be better than The Expanse.
I liked Prometheus. I had no issues with Covenant, enjoyed it as well.
I'd like to see more original sci-fi shows than just yet another time-travel or evil alien/AI destroys humanity scenario. I enjoy them, but I'd like to think there's a lot more to the future than just those two possibilities.
I've never seen Firefly or Serenity and have no interest in doing so.
This should make some people mad... I thought The Dispossessed was an awful book. The characters were flat and the way Le Guin explored the themes had all the nuance and subtlety of a Garfield comic. It's the only book of hers that I've read, put me off exploring the rest of her work.
I went to film school, and had to watch 2001 like five times in classes, breaking down every little element of it. And you know what? I also think it's boring and pretentious AF. The fx and production design are incredible, and parts of it are good enough, but other than that it's just Kubrick demonstrating how much smarter he thought he was than everyone else (I am not a fan of his films, if that wasn't clear enough).
I did enjoy the book a lot, though! If you haven't read it I think you'll be surprised how it tells the same story, just better.
Teleporters kill you and clone you. The person walking out of the teleporter may look like you and have your memories, but you are dead and that is a clone.
The process is likely incredibly painful, but because the memories of the clone are copied from just before the process started no one actually knows.
I didn't love The Martian. It wasn't a bad book, but I got bored in places. I was more engaged by Project Hail Mary (which is probably another unpopular opinion).
EDIT: Guess I should mention I'm referring to the books. Never saw The Martian movie.
I'd like to see season 4 of Dark Matter produced. The cliffhanger at the end of S3 was insane and I still can't believe they canceled the show and left it at that.
Enter my hot take: I dont really like the golden age of science fiction books. They are boring to read and the concepts are clunkily applied. Personally I think this is because while the authors might have been very creative, Ive since seen and read the same concepts and ideas in books and movies much better written, with a better ending and more mature thoughts on it. Those movies and books obviously stand on the shoulders of the golden age of science fiction. But that fact doesnt make me like those books more.
ST:TNG specific: Data is not sentient, there is no ghost in the machine. His code is just very good at mimicry. he doesn't understand what he is saying any more than ChatGPT does. He is just predicting the appropriate course of action to do next.
I love the entire "2001" series, and I've even watched the "2010" movie. I understand where your opinions are coming from and I will not judge you for them; but I personally disagree. Then again, I'm also someone who genuinely enjoys watching Citizen Kane, so I might just have a skewed perspective. Mind you, I also enjoy the 1995 Johnny Mnemonic movie and have watched Overdrawn at the Memory Bank without MST3K - so I'm all over in terms of sci-fi.
Here's my big hot take lately: of the "virtual world" sci-fi movies of 1999, I'm honestly upset that the Matrix was the one that won the cultural zeitgeist, rather than The Thirteenth Floor and eXistenZ. I understand that a Cronenberg movie probably wasn't going to win the public even if it did have Jennifer Jason Lee, Jude Law, and cameos from Ian Holm and Willem Dafoe; but The Thirteenth Floor had a great story, a solid cast, and really nice set designs - not to mention the moment that the covers of the home releases have always spoiled.
Space Odyssey is pretty close adaptation of book and has more dialogue than book. So there was this art approach which some like and others don't. For me book is amazing but film is boring.
New adaptation of Dune is similar but more digestible for regular viewer.
First of, let's suppose that Star Wars is sci fi. Secondly, my greatest gripe with it is that the light side and dark side make zero sense as a mechanic and only as an ideology. AND as an ideology, it also makes little sense. By establishing that there is a good side and a bad side, and establishing that you must be one of them, you necessitate that there will be bad guys. All it takes is to indoctrinate a child into thinking "I must be good, for if I am not then I am evil" to literally create more evil people. I had hoped that the sequels would address this with Luke and they only led to catastrophic disappointment
I read the entire space odyssey series before watching any of the movies and I really liked the books, they're pretty much what got me into sci-fi. But the movie was absolute garbage, I agree. And I say this as someone who's done LSD a bunch of times.
The Fast and Furious movies are science fiction movies. The complete disregard for how physics work is literally impossible visual fiction foisted into our faces against against the concept of reality.
I really cannot understand why everyone gets so excited by Rogue One. It’s a story that there was absolutely no need to tell, and I felt it only cheapens the stakes of both itself and A New Hope. Besides, the plot is barely coherent at times, with characters who are worked up into huge deals being left behind without any meaningful affect on the story. I liked the Vader scene, I’ll give it that.
I'm a big, big fan of sci fi and I get that it's a classic. I watched it once and it bored me to death. I couldn't believe it's standard movie length; it felt like it was six hours long.
Interstellar is a terrible film. It's not just bad at science (which it is); it's not just bad at storytelling (which it also is). It's an actively offensive (and racist!) movie that lionizes an emotionally abusive parent.
I even wrote a long essay about it once. The tone of the piece is humorous but I believe every word I wrote.
My unpopular opinion is that Mass Effect 1 is the best game in the series. 2 was a giant side mission, and 3 was great but, the ending (which isn't as bad to me as it was to others). I keep going back to the first one (24th playthrough now) because it's more of an RPG than a shooter and had the best story of the 3.
Came into this thread not feeling like I had any particularly spicy opinions, and maybe this is totally accepted and uncontroversial and basic but, reading these posts has just cemented my belief that sci-fi as a genre works much better in written form than it does in visual.
Did you read the novel 2001? I read it before watching the movie and I think understanding the story from that perspective is essential to giving the movie it's full credit.
I really don't get Sunshine. As much as I like Dany Boyle, this one I had a really hard time getting into: The depressed idiots, the "hey, that's the old ship we thought was lost, let's go on board to get that other bomb, and risk getting killed on that unstable wreck", the crazy dude on said ship cliché, I could go on and on...
I fully agree with you. 2001 is literally the most disappointing movie I've ever watched. Not exaggerating. I heard so much about it and was excited to finally watch it, only to be extremely let down by how boring it is. Only good thing I got out of it is memes and references. I'd name my Google Home HAL if I could (but literally no major smart device lets you set their name).
One opinion of mine that may be unpopular is that Star Wars has very amateur writing. I say this this mostly in reference to how the villains are so comically evil, yet so incompetent that the galaxy spanning villain is frequently defeated by a band of a couple hundred rebels. There's many parts of Star Wars I really enjoy (I've admittedly seen nearly every TV show and movie), but the big picture writing is pretty much never one of them.
Andor had the best writing among any of the Star Wars movies/shows I've seen, because it frequently showed the villains as terrified themselves. Plus the very first "villain" we encounter isn't actually wrong (he's a security guard investigating the murders of some people and genuinely believes he's trying to stop a murderer).
Every captain in a mainstream ST series after Sisko was casted terribly. Like down right garbage. Janeway was unbearable and Bacula?!? Really? Admittedly, Brooks was pretty wooden but you could see his growth into the role once he started to relax. Discovery exists in the same place the memory of GoT now resides.