James Cameron, famed director of everything from The Terminator and Aliens to The Abyss and Titanic, has just announced that production on his now 11-year-old script for Avatar, which focuses on a human miner who fuses with an alien intelligence amidst an intergalactic war, is finally underway. In addition, Cameron is also at work on Battle Angel, an adaptation of the Japanese cyberpunk graphic novel titled abroad as GUNNM but locally as Battle Angel Alita, which follows the exploits of a female cyborg martial artist trying to learn the truth about her past.
And, when I read this, I suddenly remembered that it was only a scant three years ago that Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King cleaned out the Oscars with eleven nominations and wins, tying it with Ben Hur and Titanic for the highest Oscar wins of all time.
What was groundbreaking about this was that the fantasy and sci-fi genres have never had an easy time making it at, not only recognized award ceremonies, but box offices in general. Our interest in the genre itself simply isn’t engaged. Sure, we will go out and see the next Star Wars or the next summer blockbuster from Marvel Studios, but what we won’t do is give the genre an honest shot.
Why haven’t you seen any Star Trek films recently? Because after First Contact, the films simply didn’t pull in the number of tickets they were accustomed to, and this can even be felt across all mediums, as the latest Star Trek series — Enterprise — was cancelled with barely four seasons under its belt, whereas the previous three series carried out seven seasons. Take Serenity, for example, it had sharp humor, rich characters, strong score and the dark, fascinating universe in which the film was set. However, the film that had such a strong following for its short stint in television could barely squeeze out five million over what it had cost to make it — in Hollywood is code for “flop.”
It’s not that we don’t care about sci-fi/fantasy films anymore. It’s that we never did. Right, we’ve had a torrid interest with the genre, and we even have a few artsy films we like to motion at when talking about the medium, such as Kubrick’s 2001, Tarkovsky’s Solaris, or Lang’s Metropolis, but ultimately the fact is we indulge because we feel like it, not out of any intrinsic love or longing.
Where’s the revolution that Lord of the Rings should have heralded? Where are the droves of films that should have been spawned by the Academy’s recognition of what the genre is capable of? Yes, each year sees new sci-fi/fantasy films, but even the prolific in the genre are not wholly bonded to it. The last time Cameron helmed a science fiction film was more than 15 years ago, Lucas no longer takes on artsy social pieces like THX 1138, and Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are supporters of films as an institution, holding to no genre exclusively.
Nowadays, one even has to be clever to hide the fact that they’re a member of the genre. Children of Men is not science fiction, it is a “dystopian thriller,” Shyamalan movies like Lady in the Water and The Sixth Sense are not fantasy, they are “psychological horror.” If anything, the horror genre has become what sci-fi/fantasy should have been, an easily accessible genre that always has a fighting chance at the box office and has a fan base that follows them to any showing from any director. Sci-fi has become piece-mealed out to other genres to make thrillers and horror flicks.
When you put an alien or an orc in your movie, you’re rolling the dice at the box office, and that genre is slowly swallowed by the numbers game.