Should old SciFi be judged by today's standards?

[LavarosVA]

Really any kind of fiction could apply here but I'm focusing on SciFi because this is the place for it. So bring things back to the question. Do you judge a work based on the standards of today or should it only be looked at in the context of what was being done when it came out. Especially when it comes to writing and effects works of those older films? Because I find that I try to judge it by the standards of its time, but cannot manage to keep that going for very long. It's why I can't really get into TOS or pre-Davies Doctor Who, even though I can respect what they paved the way for.

[Karha of Honor]

Really any kind of fiction could apply here but I'm focusing on SciFi because this is the place for it. So bring things back to the question. Do you judge a work based on the standards of today or should it only be looked at in the context of what was being done when it came out. Especially when it comes to writing and effects works of those older films? Because I find that I try to judge it by the standards of its time, but cannot manage to keep that going for very long. It's why I can't really get into TOS or pre-Davies Doctor Who, even though I can respect what they paved the way for.

I see plenty of the mainstream of today as astroturf.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Personally I like accounting for context in my ulterior judgement of something. I feel my opinion is otherwise lacking if I don't consider stuff like that. I'm not sure if that's any different than what you're saying.

A key aspect is dissociating personally subjective feelings from the work, which becomes a bit oxymoronic considering it is entertainment, and perhaps a bit at odds with how a lot of people will judge anything tied pretty closely to their subjective experience anyway.

So, yeah, I do feel like TOS kinda can be lacking compared to TNG, but that's of course looking at it backwards when considering context, I feel.

[Mecha82]

It really depends from quality of other aspects of the work. For example TOS still holds up even if it's effects are outdated because of it's stories and characters as well as time to time taking on social issues while old American giant monster movies don't really hold up even compared to what Japanese were making at same time because everything about those are bad and not just effects. And from what I have seen classic Doctor Who is in same category as TOS with other aspects helping it to hold up even today.

[Madner Kami]

Everything, not just SciFi, should be primarily judged by the context of it's time. Comparisons are fine to relate how things changed, improved or sometimes declined, but you can not ever understand the impact the WalkMan had, if you compare it to a modern iPhone. Of course the later is superior in every way, because not only is it smaller, lighter, can store more music, has better battery endurance and allows you to phone other people, text messages and give you access to the internet at pretty much any time and place, while the former allows you to listen to music for 90 minutes and weighing 400g.

Judging without context means incarcerating a starving person for a year, because he stole a loaf of bread that he could not afford. Why that is stupid and doesn't lead to a good result, should be self-evident.

[CmdrKing]

Depends really. Are you just talking about it as an individual work you just saw, or digging into it as a serious piece of analysis.

At a surface level "hey, did I enjoy this, what did I get out of it" level, you're going to default to whatever your usual standards are. And honestly if you've got a good piece in front of you it'll do just fine.
Granted, this tends to be more true for foundational works than for stuff that came a little bit later and tried to up the ante. Frankenstein holds up better than the bulk of early sci-fi novels for example.

But if you want to really dig into something, even just for its own sake, the society it came from, the circumstances of its author, and what works influenced it are all important to understanding what people would have heard in its day or why a work has endured.

And if you want to understand how something fits into a larger canon of the genre, you need to be able to effectively compare the two. What elements resonate with a modern audience? Are they the same, or was the work multi-faceted and endured that way? Are there bits that stick out and make it harder to justify today?

Heck, do those bits help explain why the work is effective at all. The go-to example here is Lovecraft: even for his time, Lovecraft was suuuuuper racist. But if you dig down through his work, that racism informed it in a way that's inseparable... because his racism stemmed from, or manifested as, a crippling fear of the world around him and things he couldn't understand scientifically. That fear is the entire underpinning of cosmic horror fiction... but that form of fear can manifest in all sorts of ways and thus finds resonance with a lot of the same people Lovecraft himself was so afraid of.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

No, for the reason people have already mentioned- context is always important.

Innovation and what was accomplished with the tools available should always be considered when judging a work. Citizen Kane isn't regarded by many as the best movie ever because no movie since then has done the same things, it's because of the trailblazing and ingenious work by Orson Welles and Gregg Toland and the fact that it was being done for the first time influencing scores of future films.

Take The Day the Earth Stood Still. I haven't seen the 2008 remake, but the original is kind of hokey with some questionable acting and poor sfx. I'm guessing the 2008 remake is "better" in some of those respects. Does it deserve equal or greater credit than the original, then? Hardly, because having better sfx in this era of filmmaking is a small accomplishment compared to the accomplishments of the original film.


One other reason is because fiction/art isn't like technology or medicine, in that there's no clear line of development. There are aspects of newer stuff that is objectively superior (or as close to "objectively" as you can get with art and entertainment)- films/shows generally have better set design, effects, film is protected/stored better. Sci-fi is at a bit of a disadvantage here compared to other genres since it typically has some futuristic element and has to convince the audience to entertain their sci-fi world/premise.

But the way stories are crafted, told, and presented are not necessarily better, people just mistake them as being better because those stories are being told in a way that suits the tastes of people today. Looking at context doesn't just let you give old stuff a fair shake, it's a way to avoid being held as a prisoner of the moment. There are films and shows being produced today that will be looked at as overrated in its time or even laughable by whatever the "modern standards of the future" might be. Sometimes older films are making a sophisticated point that's basically ignored because general audiences just don't get it. Great stories, all the way back to Gilgamesh, are timeless, and it's pure arrogance to assume that current ideas on theme, pacing, and characters are obviously and as a rule better.

[Zargon]

The answer must really be ''NO".

After all, exactly what ''Standards" do you use other then your own?

Things like plots or stories or acting don't change much. So if your standard is ''must be 5G super computer generated 3-D Effects", are you ''Judging" all Sci Fi up untill like 2018?

And it's not like modern standards are so ''great"....just look at The Last Jedi.....a five year old could have written a better opening battle. The ''lets fly our slow and easy to target bommer over..AND ABOVE the bag guy ships...so we can..er..''drop bombs on them"....er....in space."

[clearspira]

The answer must really be ''NO".

After all, exactly what ''Standards" do you use other then your own?

Things like plots or stories or acting don't change much. So if your standard is ''must be 5G super computer generated 3-D Effects", are you ''Judging" all Sci Fi up untill like 2018?

And it's not like modern standards are so ''great"....just look at The Last Jedi.....a five year old could have written a better opening battle. The ''lets fly our slow and easy to target bommer over..AND ABOVE the bag guy ships...so we can..er..''drop bombs on them"....er....in space."

You raise a good point. What are ''modern standards'' and why are they so awesome I would want to judge all things by them?

[CmdrKing]

And it's not like modern standards are so ''great"....just look at The Last Jedi.....a five year old could have written a better opening battle. The ''lets fly our slow and easy to target bommer over..AND ABOVE the bag guy ships...so we can..er..''drop bombs on them"....er....in space."

This is a good lead-in to clarifying what "Modern Standards" means.

So just to establish that we're on the same page.

Star Wars has always based space battle on World War II military stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdb03H ... espacetime
(Side-by-side comparison of New Hope with one of its direct WWII inspirations, The Dam Busters)

And the space bombers in Last Jedi are continuing that tradition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYgXtQL ... Path%C3%A9
(Stock reel about about the Flying Fortress, footage of it dropping bombs around midway)

So when we cite this as a failure to depict space combat, this is because we're assuming that understanding how objects interact in low-gravity vacuum is standard knowledge a 2010s audience would possess.
The arguments becomes the (deliberate) throwback to the standards of an earlier time decreases audience investment because the standards of the modern audience render it ineffective: we know enough about the topic being depicted that the inaccuracies violate suspension of disbelief.

The issue isn't that earlier works are judged bad because they adhere to some outmoded standard of craft or moral failings, but because the inherent "fakeness" of the story is harder to ignore because things that were previously assumed true are now known to be false, or things that previously were unexpected and otherworldly have been depicted so much more fluidly and with more detail that the lack of those things may make them harder to believe in for the duration of the story.