Sci-fi films gasping for breath

The serious science-fiction film genre is dead.

OK, maybe not actually deceased but definitely on cinematic life support. With exceptions that are becoming rarer and rarer as the new millennium marches forward, and an omnipresent production paradigm that substitutes spectacle for smarts, futurist filmmaking is definitely gasping for breath.

There are several villains in this creative cabal, elements and individuals that want to see the motion picture category cater to fanboys, geeks and the easily entertained. But it seems a real shame that the one literary ideal best suited for the most visual of all mediums is constantly countermanded by issues that have nothing to do with either art form's visionary nature.

When one charts the course of cinema's entire history, such bumps in the aesthetic road are really par for the commercial course. All categories of film go through phases; comedies veer wildly from sophisticated to gross as dramas emerge from a stint in suburban seriousness and into dour self-indulgent drivel. Horror can be subtle, offensive, gory and satiric , while action never ever seems to find sure footing.

But the situation with sci-fi is different. It's been dominated for decades by a single storytelling dynamic. Instead of reaching for intelligence and stretching the boundaries of imagination, it decides to take hoary old cliches, lots of narrative formula and one man's F/X-laced legacy, and completely rewrite the rules of acceptability. Where once the speculative spectacle questioned the existence of man within the cosmos, today it's all Westerns with robots.

It would be easy to lay all the blame at the feet of George Lucas. After all, his "Star Wars" saga — six films, a couple of TV stints and billions in merchandising later — often sets the current gold standard. The dollar doesn't lie. Commerciality always contradicts criticism, and indeed, if we are looking for the first reason why serious sci-fi is now a verboten motion picture variety, the lack of a real blockbuster benchmark would be a good place to start.

Then there's the reflective nature of the culture. Speculative cinema is almost always guided by the life and times we live in, and the last decade or so have provided little food for innovative thought. It all seems too unreal, anyway.

Finally, there's the real nature of the genre itself. Serious science fiction questions and speculates, not the easiest of issues to sell to a "hurry up and explain it all to me" movie demographic.