How Sci-Fi and Action Genres Have Changed Over the Years

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How Sci-Fi and Action Genres Have Changed Over the Years
By Michael Lee
Published: September 28, 2010 @ 2:35 pm

Mr. Plinkett over at Red Letter Media has a great review of JJ Abrams' "Star Trek" or as he calls it “Star Trek the Star Trek.” And while his review is full of snark and serial killer humor, one of the points he makes really stands out.

In Plinkett’s view, the "Next Generation" movies were failures because they tried over and over again to make action movies with “a cast that was not suited for action movies AT ALL.” And that is really telling in how sci fi television shows have changed in the last few years.

That’s because "Star Trek the Next Generation" was a classic sci fi TV show. It was geared towards the small screen. The stories were intimate and often were centered around ideas. Action and suspense were built more through plot twists and less through violent confrontation. And the cast excelled at that kind of a show.

But just a few short years later things started to change. Sci-fi movies which had become primarily action adventures after "Star Wars" began to assert more and more influence. Sci-fi television started to become more action oriented. While shows like "Heroes," "Firefly," "Fringe," "Battlestar Galactica," and even "Warehouse 13" weren’t exactly the "Power Rangers," they still put higher physical demands on their actors than the "Trek" franchise. These shows are still about ideas, but now those ideas usually lead to a fistfight or a chase.

Compare the "Star Trek Next Gen" movies to "Serenity." The "Firefly" cast looked right at home with all the gun play and explosions. In fact many of the sequences that the Nathan Fillion and Summer Glau nailed are the same kinds of sequences Plinkett railed against in the "Trek" movies. He ragged on "Insurrection" for having Picard go mano e mano with the head bad guy at the end. With "Serenity," it’d be out of character if Mal Reynolds DIDN’T take on The Operative at the end. And it has nothing to do with the age difference. If by chance Nathan Fillion is playing Mal Reynolds again 20 years from now in a "Firefly" movie (there’s always hope) we’d still expect him to get his hands dirty. That’s who his character is. Picard is a starship captain, a scientist, and a brilliant strategist and tactician, not a special forces commando. And sci fi shows today are featuring characters more like Mal Reynolds than Capt. Picard.

Meanwhile over in the “regular” action universe the exact opposite is happening. Popular TV shows are influencing the movies. As any fan of '80s action movies can tell you, the authorities in those pictures are always idiots. Some of this is due to the politics of the era but it was mostly a dramatic necessity. There wouldn’t be any need for John McClane to take matters into his own hands if the cops in "Die Hard" could simply do their jobs competently.

But try pulling off something like that nowadays and audiences would march out. What changed? "Law and Order" and "CSI" became the biggest hits on TV. The most popular scripted shows are almost all procedurals. What does that mean for action movies? Let’s put it this way, when was the last time you saw a SWAT team as grossly incompetent as the one in "Die Hard"? Or when was the last time you had criminal masterminds acting so blatantly obvious as in "Lethal Weapon"? Sure you occasionally see this level of dumb in minor films like "The Marine" but rarely in anything with a real budget.

Action films today either take place entirely on the wrong side of the law like the "Crank" series or they go the "Bourne" route. The "Bourne" series shows how complicated and difficult it is to come up with an action thriller that savvy procedural fans will enjoy. The series has been a success but it required a lot of effort. That’s why we see superhero movies and fantasy films eat up more and more of the action audience.

Things are really going to get interesting in the near future. TV networks are becoming less and less fearful of airing fantasy shows. The procedural is entrenched right now, but will that last? HBO has already gone from "The Sopranos" to "True Blood." AMC is getting ready to unleash "The Walking Dead." Is there a sci fi show out there that can go head to head with the "CSI" and "Law and Orders"? And what will that do to the face of entertainment?

http://www.thewrap.com/movies/blog-...ction-television-has-changed-over-years-21263


I found this interesting. Explains a few things about where movies and TV have gone in the recent past.
 
Only starting at the 1980's is cutting out a lot of tropes of trends. A comprehensive study should go back to the age of black and while serials like the original Flash Gordon.
 
Watch season 1 of Stargate SG-1 then watch season 1 of Stargate Universe.

You'll see how things have changed.
 
This is absolutely true. Action scenes in star trek were awkward at best and most times downight embarrassing. Babylon 5 wasn't much better either.
Action shows also try to come aross as more "realistic" with people actually getting hurt and spilling blood in contrast to the silly A-Team brawls where nobody seriously got injured.
There's also one important bit the article left out: characters and motivation. There was usually less character development than there's now and villains and heroes used to be more one-dimensional. The flipside is that moral ambiguity sometimes looks tacked on and actions that are supposed to make a character look more complex can seem like they are shoe-horned in and actually out of character. It also often looks somewhat formulaic and predictable when we find out that the macchiavellian schemer/traitor/general prick has a human side/became this way because his wife/child/dog died of cancer/in an accident or got raped/murdered/seduced by the dark side.
 
Only starting at the 1980's is cutting out a lot of tropes of trends. A comprehensive study should go back to the age of black and while serials like the original Flash Gordon.

This was exactly my first thought. The original Flash Gordon is nothing but absurd action sequences (made with admirable ambition given what they had to work with).

It seems to me that the major trends in action films since the mid-80s has been, first, to ridiculously improbable set-ups, and then back to more believable ones. Die hard was incredibly influential because it simply did not stop. Every action sequence was followed by another one, and it got more and more over-the-top. Every other film of the era had to do the same thing; look at Licence to kill, for example, which came out the following year. This got toned down in the 1990s as it could only go so far, but still you got an emphasis on bigger and more impressive stuff - look at all the Brosnan Bond films, with their ever more improbable opening gags.

The Bourne identity changed this by having low-tech, believable sequences. The climax consists of Bourne falling down a stairwell on a mattress. That's the kind of thing Bruce Willis would have done standing on his head in the opening five minutes. But by lowering the absurdity level, of course, it made it far more effective, because the hero was not an indestructible superman but a believable person in situations of genuine peril. And so we had Batman begins, Casino Royale, and so on following the same trend.
 
But while some movies have calmed down the over the top crap, others clearly have not. The Star Trek reboot comes immediately to mind. As do the Star Wars prequils. And the terrible Charlies Angels sequel. If this is calmed down, maybe I can start watching movies again. I largely gave up watching movies because it had become so bad. With ever more unbelievable crap where the star could not possibly have been human and gone through that.
 
None of those is an action film though, exactly.

Charlies Angels Full Throttle can only really be described as an action film. It didn't really have other elements.

But even with the scifi films I mentioned, the same elements of going overboard were present.
 
But even with the scifi films I mentioned, the same elements of going overboard were present.
Certainly true of the Star Wars prequels. I can't be the only one who felt that the tense, patient samurai-style duels of the originals were rather more effective than the bargain basement Wuxia of the prequels.

Eh, not really. Today's audiences eat up all sorts of crap. Just look at the top 10 grossing movies of last year.
Aw, c'mon, Up was great. And Avatar was... Acceptable. And I hear Sherlock Holmes was maybe alright? Um.
 
Let’s put it this way, when was the last time you saw a SWAT team as grossly incompetent as the one in "Die Hard"?
The Dark Knight.
And I hear Sherlock Holmes was maybe alright? Um.
Involved a lot of over-the-top action sequences though

and apparently those are a no-no
 
Sherlock Holmes wasn't that bad. A bit overdone to be sure, but I like the way they portrayed Holmes.
 
I liked it, too. I especially appreciated the rehabilitation of Real Watson, as opposed to Stupid/Fat Watson.
 
Kate Beaton is pretty awesome yes
 
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