Read More Greg Egan - Pt. I
Was perusing the net and ran across Greg Egan's No Intelligence Required - a brilliant criticism of modern science fiction movies.
I think I agree with everything he said but I would like to mention a couple of other films he didn't discuss.
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Europa Report (2013) is perhaps the best and most realistic space movie since 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is another example of a low budget movie being able to take the time to develop a realistic plot. Also the astronauts act like mature, educated professionals. The movie's plot is not perfect with a couple of conceits and one or two minor contrivances but overall an excellent film.
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Timecrimes (2007) is another good one. It is, I think, the best example thus far of how messing with causality means that just about anything could happen. Egan mentions Predestination which does a pretty good job of creating a completely self-contained causal loop; I think Timecrimes expresses the same sort of idea (self-contained causal loops) but in a more believable story.
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In contrast, Gravity (2013) is an example of a high budget movie that purports to be realistic but repeatedly fails in that regard. It's as if the producers of Gravity wanted the images to look real but they did not want the plot (or the characters) to be in any way realistic. Neil DeGrasse Tyson tweeted about some of the film's inconsistencies. I don't think he caught all of them, however. (Like the contrivance that all ground communication was cut off except for one non-English speaking short wave radio operator.)
(BTW: Greg Egan is one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time. I will no doubt be writing about his stories, his ideas, his books, etc. many times on this blog. Each time I will title the post Read More Greg Egan which is why this is a "part one".)