Should old SciFi be judged by today's standards?

[Elderdog]

I would say yes and no to the question because, if we judged old Science Fiction movies based on SFX or
the acting that was involved in those movies it is important to understand that those aspects where products of their time and that Science Fiction was not as well regarded as it is today. However, I believe that their are examples of old Science Fiction that truly deserved to be judged based on modern standards such as Forbidden Planet, Gojirra, and even Metropolis in spite of them them being products of their time. In other words, sometimes the themes of older Science Fiction is still relevant in a modern context when we have to question our relationship with the modern world.

[Elderdog]

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.

I also helps that the bombers themselves have artificial gravity.

[Mecha82]

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.

If I may add to that Star Wars has never been realistic and it was never meant to be realistic. It's science fantasy after all with space wizards, all that fantastic technology, all those alien races and story taking place in far away galaxy long time ago. It does bring question is that space battle in TLJ judged with today's standards and demands of realism or based on that fact that those judging it based on those standards just hate TLJ as movie and don't want to admit that original trilogy had similar things going for it and wasn't realistic either.

[Zargon]

I think your going by the wrong standard. Even by World War Two standards the battle is horriable.

Just look at the things like....er, well, why did none of the other escort ships with the Drednaught do anything? Escort ships are a well established WW2 thing. Why did the Dreadnaught not have a CSP(a Combat Space Patrol)? Again WW2 thing.

WW2 bombers used to hide in clouds....how about having your space bombers hide in space clouds?

What about Hyperspace? The bombers DO them right? Y-wing bombers did. So.....how about a nice ''jump bombing run"? See target...jump to hyperspace directly ''over" them, ''drop" your bombs and jump away. Again...that would be like a five year olds understanding of Star Wars reality.

So really, the problem is the standard must make sense.

The Star Wars Battle of Yavin Four is very much a WW2 battle....but it works. Ships zip around, you get 'radio' chatter, lasers fire, things blow up....and yea it's just a re fluff of an old ''Dam Buster" movie.

[CmdrKing]

If we're actually going to talk about the Last Jedi as a movie, rather than building on the example and reasoning you provided originally... the entire bombing run was a fuckup made from desperation and a failure to recognize that keeping people and material was more important than blowing up First Order dreadnaughts. Like, Poe was demoted for it. That was The Point.

But if you found the space logistics of the battle lacking, because you have a solid grasp of the mechanics of space battle due to reading up on science and the many works of science fiction that DO attempt to treat it realistically made between 1977 and 2017 then you're distracted and not terribly well invested in the movie. Which might be why you missed the point of the scene.

That's what I'm getting at. You don't just casually set aside your modern sensibilities when watching a movie. It's something you have to do consciously, to one degree or another. I mean, your followup comment is a good example: it's bad tactics judged by 1940s warfare standards! but it's something you brought up once you got into a specific 1940s Warfare mindset.
And if someone's a WWII buff (so their brain defaults to thinking about it) they probably immediately recognized the parallel and the bad tactics, so probably got something very different out of the scene that the sci-fi buff who knows space combat doesn't work that way. And both would get something different from someone who just watches popular movies so their biggest exposure to science fiction IS Star Wars and Marvel.

Modern Standards is basically a way of referring to "what tropes has our audience been marinating in". And each member probably has a profession or hobby that means they pick up slightly different things, but you can kinda look at how education standards, migration patterns, international communication and so on change over time and make some reasonable guesses.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I'd say very few hate TLJ based off failing to adhere to a certain standard of realism, the movie is simply disliked by many and doesn't get the same pass.

It does feel like pure sci-fi is in a bit of a slump to me, which does put the "today's standards" idea into question (although I did take the question to refer to pre-1977 sci-fi).

With superhero movies, 95% of the popular movies within the genre have been made in the past 15 years or less. With sci-fi, The Expanse has a dedicated (small) fandom, Bladerunner 2049 was great, but generally speaking the big sci-fi movies and shows are clearly living in the shadow of their predecessors. If you look at original properties, there's very little of note.

[Zargon]

I guess it depends on what ''standard" or ''standards" you want to judge by:

Plot, Story and acting does not change with time. The Thing and Alien are both well made sci fi monster movies as far as plot and story goes. 2001: A Space Odyssey often gets the vote for best Sci Fi movie ever...but it's not for everyone. Blade Runner is a sci fi classic...but it's not ''mainstream".

The only two Standards that might matter I can think of are:

1.Social. Anything, including Sci Fi, made before...oh 1980 or so...is very bad in a social view point. This can make them ''hard" to watch for some people.

2.Special Effects. For Sci Fi this is a big one.....for some people. If something ''looks bad" they ''can't watch it". You really get this from the folks that only like super advanced computer animation. Anything before 2000 or so...has ''bad" animation, at best...to some. And get back past 1990 or so, and there is no ''computer'' animation

Of course, just as you have millions in super computer animation does not just make a great movie. All the Transformers movies have millions in effects....and yet waste like 2/3 of the movie with goofy human stuff. Independence Day Resurgence spent millions and came up with ''wow, way cool we will have the giant alien try and stomp a school bus!"

[Fianna]

But if you found the space logistics of the battle lacking, because you have a solid grasp of the mechanics of space battle due to reading up on science and the many works of science fiction that DO attempt to treat it realistically made between 1977 and 2017 then you're distracted and not terribly well invested in the movie. Which might be why you missed the point of the scene.

Dude, people in 1977 knew that there's no gravity in space (well, technically there is, but that's not important right now). They also knew that you can't hear explosions or have ships catch on fire in space, but no one seemed to mind that happening in the original Star Wars.

As for the general idea of effects looking fake, you know what else looks fake? Animation. No one's ever going to look at the characters in Frozen and mistake them for real human beings. Yet people still love that movie and its characters.

What's important isn't that a movie looks realistic. What's important is that it has (preferably pleasing) aesthetic that fits the story being told, and is consistent enough so that, even if something doesn't look that much like the thing it's supposed to represent, we make that mental translation with no noticeable effort.

That's why I hate that someone went through old TOS episodes and replaced the model-in-front-of-a-background Enterprise with a CGI enterprise. Neither version looks realistic, but the original would be in keeping with the design aesthetics of the rest of the series and blend in seamlessly, while the CGI addition draws attention to its fakeness because of how out of place it is.

[CmdrKing]

people in 1977 knew that there's no gravity in space (well, technically there is, but that's not important right now). They also knew that you can't hear explosions or have ships catch on fire in space, but no one seemed to mind that happening in the original Star Wars.

*shrug* Define know. Sure people had seen footage of astronauts floating in the capsules, but... that's not the same thing as understanding the ramifications of space battles. In the intervening 40 years there's been a lot more science and science fiction that's played around with the actual physics of space combat, so insofar as people have an expectation for how space battles look, the Star Wars "WWII in Space" model is more likely to seem off or wrong now than in 1977.

(Honestly I disagree in the other direction: I think most people DON'T think about how space battles would actually work and in fact DON'T find the bomber run in Last Jedi particularly distracting. But I'm willing to buy for the sake of argument that there's a somewhat larger audience of people who are invested in the mechanics and are taken out of the action by it in 2017 compared to 1977.)

[Zargon]

Unless your a Geek or Science or Sci Fi fan......most people are Clueless. And I mean way, way, way, way beyond Clueless. The average person does not have the time, energy or desire to know anything about gravity other then ''things fall down".

And really movies/TV shows in general either don't know the real facts....or simply don't care.

My point was not nit picking science or space physics.....it's more just it's a bad battle sceen.

Really my point is the ''standard" of modern Sci Fi is not so high.

Except for social stuff and special effects.