A friend of mine who's really into science fiction, particularly Star Trek and shows like that, asked me once what my favorite work or type of sci fi was. At the time I fumbled with the answer. Though Children of Men is up there as my favorite movie, it holds that spot not because it's science fiction, but because of how it uses a premise from that genre to craft a human story that also manages to comment on our society and our interaction with technology and progress.
Of course, that's not what I told her. What I said was "Children of Men, I guess. I don't know, I'm not big into sci fi that's all about spaceships." Or words to that effect.
But I've been thinking about the question again recently and realized what a crap answer that was. One of my roommates this summer has been watching Battlestar Galactica, and though I still didn't want to sit down and watch the whole thing with him, every now and then I'd glance up at the TV and become a little bit engrossed by what was happening onscreeen. I still didn't start straight up watching the show, both because he was nearing the end and also because of the time commitment (I've repeatedly stated that the only show I'll be willing to at some point sit down and watch in one of those ever popular "TV binge" sessions is The Wire, and damn it, I'm a man of my word). It took a lot of effort to resist, though, especially with the episode about the increasing social stratification of the residents of the fleet or the two-parter near the end where a mutiny occurs. I found these episodes especially engrossing because they seemed reflective of the themes that made the show so interesting in the first place.
A couple of years ago Jason Reitman came to my college to screen Up In the Air, the movie he directed where George Clooney flies around the country firing people. Reitman was then kind enough to host a Q&A after the screening, and one of the things he said struck me. He told a story about his dad calling him up one day and enthusiastically inviting him over to watch the first season of 24. At first Jason was skeptical, but once he started watching he really got into it. He said he asked his dad how he could be so invested in a story that's about a guy fighting terrorists. His dad (who just happens to be the director of Ghostbusters) responded by saying "The show isn't about terrorism. The show is about a man trying to keep his family together. The setting is terrorism."
This for me has proven to be a really useful and interesting lens which I sometimes use to think about stories. I realized the reason I got into these episodes of BSG in particular, despite not having seen much of the rest of the show at all, was because the setting was this elaborate space opera. The stories themselves were about what people will do to survive when placed in an incredibly dire situation and pitted against an unthinkable foe. This is also why the ending comes off as so weird, because it has practically nothing to do with this theme, but that's a whole other can of worms, and I probably lack the context to really appreciate it, but that's just my take.
That means I can come up with a much better answer to the question of what science fiction I like more (and it only took me what, two years?). At first, when I was much younger, I liked sci fi because I found lasers and spaceships more entertaining than swords and dragons. And make no mistake, I LOVE Star Wars. But those movies almost work better as fantasy than sci fi, don't they? As I've matured, I've come to like science fiction more and more for the types of messages the genre can convey. How the genre can shine a light not just on our current society, but where we might be going and if we want to go there at all. For me, it's that thematic resonance that matters a lot more than how cool the technology on display is. I remember reading Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 and finding it a lot more enjoyable than Heinlein's young adult books, which to that point had been the bulk of my experience with science fiction books. And Clarke's fiction struck me because it didn't bother spending that much time talking about how the ships worked or what the laser rifles used for ammo, instead offering a tale about man's place in the universe as he starts to expand out into it.
I've already talked a bunch about why I think the sci fi elements in Children of Men work as well as they do, but going back to that lens, I guess it works because the setting is this dystopian vision of the future where everyone's infertile, but it's about a man trying to rediscover purpose in his life by escorting a vulnerable girl through this landscape. And the more I thought about this movie, the more for some reason I was reminded of another movie that I only recently realized is probably one of my other favorite works of science fiction: Steven Spielberg's Minority Report. And I'd argue that, in contrast to CoM, Spielberg's film is more of a straight up science fiction story.
The entire plot revolves around the use of this groundbreaking new technology that lets the police predict murders and stop them from happening. The central moral dilemma of the plot revolves around whether the use of this new technology is ethical. While Battlestar and Children of Men effectively highlight issues we're facing today, Minority Report asks about what we could do if we had the potential. What's more, the various pieces of set dressing and incidental details scattered throughout the movie raise their own questions about where we're going, particularly the use of ubiquitous surveillance equipment and invasive advertising tailored to each individual (coughGooglecough). Minority Report is a lot more upfront about its science fiction elements, but that's because the plot revolves around them.
At the end of the day, I guess the reason I keep gravitating towards science fiction, and particularly near future settings, is just because I find it more relatable and really suited for asking questions about where we are and where we're headed. Sci fi on ships or other planets can do this too, but it's rare to find a show or movie that does it as well, like Battlestar does. You could easily go to the root of this statement and expand it to stories in general to explain, as Film Crit Hulk does, why James Cameron's Avatar resonated with people so much better than Transformers. Both movies had ridiculously expensive and cool looking effects, but Avatar was the film that actually tried for emotional and thematic resonance. Sure, it was super ham handed and wrapped up in a super dumb story, but at least it made an effort. It's the emotions behind the story that keep people invested, not (or at least not just) the super flashy visual stuff, or in the case of video games the myriad of guns or magical powers you can use to crush your foes. At the end of the day, that's what's going to get people to remember your stories.
