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So, I found this article today.
And I really agree. What happened to our darker side of space operas? What happened to sci-fi in general? We haven't really been seeing a lot of it lately. Besides those mentioned in the article the only other things coming out are Mass Effect 3, Transformers Fall of Cybertron, and maybe a handful of others there isn't much in the sci-fi market for entertainment. Is it disappearing?
Whenever anything along those lines comes out, it gets swarmed by b%&%%ers and moaners maybe? All competing to see who can be the coolest, most smug, most jaded b@$%!er and moaner?
The comic book guy and his 100,000 clones ate your space opera, and said "werrst moovie evurrr," and went to read Archie: Zombies of Riverdale? Because it doesn't pay to sink 150 million on a flick that's going to get torn to shreds on fbook before it can make 1/10th of that back, when zombie makeup and explosions are so damn cheap?
or, to put it simply....$.
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classic board game gone sci fi?
To be honest has there ever really been "Gritty" space opera? Closest thing I can think of is Lexx.
At the bottom of the article is a related article entitled, "Why Mass Effect is the Most Important Science Fiction Universe of Our Generation"
Video games have been doing excellent and gritty sci-fi for a good while now.
I may be a weird minority, but I prefer interactive media like pen and paper RPGs, or video games to TV or movies. I'd rather run around as Commander Sheppard, Issac Clarke, The Lone Wanderer form Vault 101, or any of the plethora of other characters than watch the vast majority of shows.
Another thing the article doesn't mention is how gritty sci-fi, in addition to being fairly popular, is monstrously expensive to produce. Often the cost to make a show is more than the revenue generated by the show.
Lexx is not what I would call gritty... Lexx was emo space opera.
To be honest has there ever really been "Gritty" space opera? Closest thing I can think of is Lexx.
Pan Blake's 7 and both BSG's would be gritty space operas.
Madclaw, Space 2099 will be comming out later this year and a possible TV version of Cowboys vs Aliens.
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Whenever anything along those lines comes out, it gets swarmed by b~!@#ers and moaners maybe? All competing to see who can be the coolest, most smug, most jaded b+*$!er and moaner?
The comic book guy and his 100,000 clones ate your space opera, and said "werrst moovie evurrr," and went to read Archie: Zombies of Riverdale? Because it doesn't pay to sink 150 million on a flick that's going to get torn to shreds on fbook before it can make 1/10th of that back, when zombie makeup and explosions are so damn cheap?
True but people whine and complain about anything. That's just how some people are. Just saying that they aren't making them because people are complaining doesn't work. I mean go over to the Mass Effect 3 forums on the Bioware Social Network and look at the amount of b^#$&(!$ is going on over there. It's non-stop and yet sales in the US on the 360 alone have netted over $1 million.
I'm sure there's a market for it and they make money.
If you're looking for gritty space opera you really need to check out the works of Ian Banks. His novel 'Use of Weapons' is probably one of the darkest things you'll ever read and is unequivocally space opera.
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Simple: nobody watched it.
FIREFLY bombed. Neo-BATTLESTAR GALACTICA sort-of bombed, but was held up by good wishes and healthy DVD sales. CAPRICA then bombed (but wasn't gritty space opera anyway). STARGATE UNIVERSE bombed as well.
The last successful 'gritty' space operas we had were STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (which has been over for 13 years) and BABYLON 5 (which has been over for 14 years). And arguably neither were consistently 'gritty' in the same way that Neo-BSG was.
There is hope, though. Bear McCreary - the BSG composer - revealed literally yesterday that he's just completed the soundtrack to the new BSG pilot, BLOOD AND CHROME, so SyFy are now free to show that whenever they want (this summer or September are possible, apparently). Given that series takes place right in the middle of the First Cylon War with multiple pile-ups between battlestars and basestars and tons of Vipers, it should have lots of potential to be gritty.
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Simple: nobody watched it.
FIREFLY bombed. Neo-BATTLESTAR GALACTICA sort-of bombed, but was held up by good wishes and healthy DVD sales. CAPRICA then bombed (but wasn't gritty space opera anyway). STARGATE UNIVERSE bombed as well.
The last successful 'gritty' space operas we had were STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (which has been over for 13 years) and BABYLON 5 (which has been over for 14 years). And arguably neither were consistently 'gritty' in the same way that Neo-BSG was.
There is hope, though. Bear McCreary - the BSG composer - revealed literally yesterday that he's just completed the soundtrack to the new BSG pilot, BLOOD AND CHROME, so SyFy are now free to show that whenever they want (this summer or September are possible, apparently). Given that series takes place right in the middle of the First Cylon War with multiple pile-ups between battlestars and basestars and tons of Vipers, it should have lots of potential to be gritty.
Firefly bombed because of the shenanigans that Fox pulled. Had they kept it at a consistent time slot and advertised it more it would have done a lot better.
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The last successful 'gritty' space operas we had were STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (which has been over for 13 years) and BABYLON 5 (which has been over for 14 years). And arguably neither were consistently 'gritty' in the same way that Neo-BSG was.
Speaking as a huge fan of B5, I'm not sure that "successful" is really a good way to describe it. More like "barely hanging on by the skin of it's teeth above the chasm of cancellation for five years straight".
The biggest difference between Firefly and Babylon 5: Firefly had to contend with FOX. That and it's first (and only) 14 episodes were a LOT more consistant.
Successful retrospectively. Compared to today's ratings, B5 did excellently, often matching or beating DS9 despite having less than half the budget. According to Warner Brothers, they have made more than half a billion dollars in profit from the B5 franchise, or five times what they invested in it. They were even talking about a possible new series (or remake) last year with Straczynski.
Going back to the original question, I think we are due a full-on, proper SF series from HBO. They've done their vampire series and now they've done their big epic fantasy series, so I think a gritty, HBO-ified space opera is something they'd consider.
I could see them doing a great remake of BLAKE'S 7 (the original, quintessential gritty space opera) or perhaps, if they were feeling a bit more ambitious, an adaptation of Peter F. Hamilton's NIGHT'S DAWN TRILOGY. That would be interesting.
Look at firefly air dates. They gave it the death slot, aired it out of order, and skipped weeks for sports games. It bombed soley because Fox was dumb. And its viewship numbers were not even that bad, and followed a growth curve. They killed it before its exponential growth kicked in.
BSG was a huge success. Its spinoff failed because it was poorly thought out and tried to do something different that didn't appeal to the core audience. They tried selling a Sci-fi war movie audience a sappy drama, and they didn't bite.
Stargate Universe failed because none of the stargate spinoffs have what the orrinal show had: a fresh story with engaging characters. People not into the universe don't want to feel like they are missing stuff by not having watched 9 seasons of the orriginal series, so they are limiting their target audience to existing fans. Existing fans have moved on to other fandoms.
Sci-Fi now has to compete with supernatural shows and crime dramas for the same audience. The slew of vampire shows grab one portion of the audience, while Dr. Who, Sherlock, Burn Notice and Castle grab a huge section from the other dirrection. Combine this with the fact that a lot of the target audience, people in the 20s, have abandoned traditional tv outlets in favor of secondary markets like netflix or DVDs, these shows have disproportionately low ratings to their actual demand and revenue.
True but people whine and complain about anything. That's just how some people are. Just saying that they aren't making them because people are complaining doesn't work.
George Lucas pretty much said that's why he's not making any more Star Wars movies.
star wars doesn't qualify as gritty sci fi no matter how you look at it, it's a far more hopeful even in it's darkest moments there's always hope, i think the op's original question was aimed at the absence of high quality series based on dystopic visions of the future there are some like Firefly (i don't count the new BSG here because it's really an alternate past, otherwise i would count it as an excelent example), but even Firefly had more moments of brevity than a truly gritty story would allow. as to the notion that there is in fact a glut of good sci fi movies in recent years is severly misguided (also the term space opera originated with the original star trek last i checked, and was a reference to the soap opera like nature of the show) as most of the sci fi movies/series produced in recent years have been sub standard to say the least, with only a very small handful of shining examples of quality story telling interspersed within. as a final note i just want to say it's a tragedy that Asimov's Empire series has never seen an attempt at being interpretted into either a movie or series, you want gritty, that would deliver in spades.
Never said Star Wars was grimdark. Just said he's not making any more because of complainers.
So, you gotta figure: you're a producer. In Hollywood.
You have some guy who wants to make Bleak Wars: Grimdark Void Blerg for $250 million, and yet......THE sci fi franchise of sci fi franchise is done because everybody whinges too much about s!+% on fbook.
The right answer?
Riiiiiight. Make The Help and make a bunch of cash.
The fans killed sci fi.
to blame the fans is really the wrong direction to go, the fault really lies at the feet of Hollywood producers who pour money into poorly written scripts, then hire directors who very publicly state how little regard they have for the fans (thus alienating the target audience), after all this the producers act surprised when these films bomb. this is similar to how fox executives treated Firefly (a show they fully expected, and wanted to bomb) randomly pre-empting episodes, changing time slots regularly, and playing the episodes out of order all so they could blame flagging interest in the genre (ie: blaming the fans) for the show failing. these people have a habit of handling things this way, tired of making films in a particular genre, make substandard garbage, let it bomb, then use this as evidence that no ones interested anymore. it may seem counter-intuitive to those on the outside, but there is a perfectly sound point of logic to it from a business standpoint, it's just far to involved to go into here and i'm not particularly good at simplifying things sorry.
edit: the simplest i way i can condense this is to say it like this - sometimes people involved in high stakes industries stand to gain more by taking a temporary loss, than they do by making an imediate profit.
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If you say so;
my experience, though, is money talks and b**%%##~ walks.
If they were making money, they'd be making the damn things, and not following some inexplicable self fulfilling prophecy just to prove that sci fi sucks, because they're weird rich people who like losing millions of dollars to prove some weird point.
Look on the bright side.....we have umpteen iterations of Batman and Spiderman, and an Avengers movie; at least super heroes sell.
And there's a Hobbit movie coming out; there's no way they could f&~! that up, right?
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Chronicles of Riddick:
105 million to produce.
115 million worldwide gross.
The Help:
25 million to produce.
206 million worldwide gross.
The lesson learned?
Money talks, and b%$&%!*$ walks.
these people don't lose anywhere near as much money as you'd think as there are many hundreds of ways that they recoup their losses. it's not about them being weird or enjoying losing money either, it's about the simple fact that businesses spend billions of dollars a year on efforts to control peoples spending habits, Hollywood just has realitively easier methods at their disposal than other industries do. if you had a greater understanding of business and economics you'd know where i was going with this (and please don't take that in any sort of derogatory way, im simply accepting that i probably spend more time with my nose buried in books on random subjects than other people do)
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Yeah; I guess my BSBA in Finance was a long time ago.
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if you had a greater understanding of business and economics you'd know where i was going with this (and please don't take that in any sort of derogatory way
Please don't take my completely baseless assumption of your ignorance and my own superiority in any sort of derogatory way? Hmmmm
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I know next to nothing about economics, but I know that at the end of the day movies only get made and TV shows only stay on air if the people who stand to make money from them have a reasonable assumption that they will make money.
I’m not as sure about movies, I really don’t know the figures, but we seem to have a situation for whatever reason (people not watching, scheduling / programming issues, poor scripts, low budgets, whatever) where space opera type tv shows (gritty or otherwise) fairly consistently rate less well than ‘present day’ type Sci Fi (like Lost or Fringe or whatever the cool kids are watching these days) and definitely less well than non sci-fi drama and comedy ... which makes it a lot less likely that they will get made.
If they DO get made, the people that make them will probably not want to spend too much on them for fear of failure, which leads, potentially to poor scripts, less sfx ... the sort of things that lead to a reduced audience. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Add to that that network execs will be watching the ratings on these type of shows like hawks, because they know that historically they don’t rate well ... and ‘because’ they don’t rate well are far more likely to shove them into ratings ghetto timeslots and mess with the schedules ... they have trouble finding a loyal audience, don’t rate well (surprise!) and get pulled. Once again, self fulfilling prophecy.
Not so gritty but definitely a space opera: 25 years later and Robotech: The Macross Saga is still very awesome.
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Chronicles of Riddick:
105 million to produce.
115 million worldwide gross.The Help:
25 million to produce.
206 million worldwide gross.The lesson learned?
Money talks, and b~&+@@+% walks.
I loved Pitch Black. Chronicles of Riddick was a stinky turd. I saw it in the theaters. This is the first time I have ever mentioned it on the internets. Am I still to blame?
I think another good comparison is the Twlight movies. Those were cheap, at least in the beginning, and brought home the bacon. I think its further proof the bank is the super natural these days.
Fox killed FIREFLY before it's time, no doubt, but I also think it's not the case that without that the show would have become a massive mega-success. I think it'd have done better, but ultimately it was a difficult concept to sell to a mass audience. It may have trucked along with okay ratings and survived 5 or more seasons (like BUFFY or ANGEL) or it may have only made it to the end of the first or second season and been cancelled (FIREFLY had a bigger budget than either of those shows, so had to deliver more).
I think it would have been more like DOLLHOUSE, which Fox actually gave quite a fair run to considering its ratings performance but ultimately still had to cancel it after two seasons.
BSG was a huge success.
No, it really wasn't. It was a cult success. Its audience figures were pretty poor throughout its run and got more and more abysmal towards the end. It was talked about a huge amount by the press, the critics loved it and it got great reviews, but it was never a popular success. It's DVD and foreign sales were decent, and helped keep it on the air (along with its relatively modest production requirements), but not much more than that. You can't even blame it being on SyFy, as both SG-1 and STARGATE ATLANTIS were getting much stronger ratings at the same time.
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Fox killed FIREFLY before it's time, no doubt, but I also think it's not the case that without that the show would have become a massive mega-success. I think it'd have done better, but ultimately it was a difficult concept to sell to a mass audience. It may have trucked along with okay ratings and survived 5 or more seasons (like BUFFY or ANGEL) or it may have only made it to the end of the first or second season and been cancelled (FIREFLY had a bigger budget than either of those shows, so had to deliver more).
I think it would have been more like DOLLHOUSE, which Fox actually gave quite a fair run to considering its ratings performance but ultimately still had to cancel it after two seasons.
BSG was a huge success.No, it really wasn't. It was a cult success. Its audience figures were pretty poor throughout its run and got more and more abysmal towards the end. It was talked about a huge amount by the press, the critics loved it and it got great reviews, but it was never a popular success. It's DVD and foreign sales were decent, and helped keep it on the air (along with its relatively modest production requirements), but not much more than that. You can't even blame it being on SyFy, as both SG-1 and STARGATE ATLANTIS were getting much stronger ratings at the same time.
What was the problem with Stargate Universe? It was the only Stargate show I got into and it was also the shortest lived. Yet 13th warehouse is on its 4th or something season and is awful. Budget?
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Chronicles of Riddick:
105 million to produce.
115 million worldwide gross.The Help:
25 million to produce.
206 million worldwide gross.The lesson learned?
Money talks, and b!!&+@~* walks.
Of course, that comparison is a bit screwed up by the fact that Chronicles of Riddick was crap, and The Help was a pretty good movie.
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Everything cycles. Interest will build, an IP will develop... these kind of things tend to come and go repeatedly. We're just in a dip (just before the storm, likely, with the Mass Effect movie, etc.).
Or perhaps I should say, "What has happened before will happen again."
Though for the next big space opera, I'd actually really like to see something new. NOT connected to known series like Star Trek or Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica or what have you. And I really don't want to see any more freaking remakes. I guess it's all part of the "everything cycles" bit but I'd like to see a new take and a new direction.
Of course, that comparison is a bit screwed up by the fact that Chronicles of Riddick was crap, and The Help was a pretty good movie.Chronicles of Riddick:
105 million to produce.
115 million worldwide gross.The Help:
25 million to produce.
206 million worldwide gross.The lesson learned?
Money talks, and b!!&+@~* walks.
zzzzzzzzzzziiiiiinnnnggggggg
George Lucas pretty much said that's why he's not making any more Star Wars movies.
True but people whine and complain about anything. That's just how some people are. Just saying that they aren't making them because people are complaining doesn't work.
George is a Wanker. His best film was the one that he didn't direct. He's got tons of great material from the extended universe, but he has flatly chosen to ignore that stuff. He'd rather re-release old stuff and cash in yet again.
Original Topic - wasn't Firefly a space opera of sorts? Didn't it fail miserably?
/Jane was the best.
George Lucas pretty much said that's why he's not making any more Star Wars movies.
True but people whine and complain about anything. That's just how some people are. Just saying that they aren't making them because people are complaining doesn't work.
Considering the new trilogy, that is actually an example of "every dark cloud has a silver line"
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I want a series of Warhammer 40K television series. They could cover many genres....
grimdark investigation drama - the Inquisition
grimdark action thriller - the Imperial Guard
grimdark action blockbuster - the Space Marines
grimdark action/adventure - the rogue traders
grimdark slapstick comedy - da Orkz!
Chronicles of Riddick:
105 million to produce.
115 million worldwide gross.The Help:
25 million to produce.
206 million worldwide gross.The lesson learned?
Money talks, and b~&+@@+% walks.I loved Pitch Black. Chronicles of Riddick was a stinky turd. I saw it in the theaters. This is the first time I have ever mentioned it on the internets. Am I still to blame?
I think another good comparison is the Twlight movies. Those were cheap, at least in the beginning, and brought home the bacon. I think its further proof the bank is the super natural these days.
The Twilight movies were given a crap budget because everyone in Hollywood thought they would fail. Meanwhile, Librarians had been predicting the next Harry Potter franchise. I am convinced Hollywood has no idea of how to gauge target audiences or market non-standard genres.
Also, I agree. Chronicles of Riddick was being called crap when the previews came out, and lived up to those expectations. It still produced enough money for them to produce sequels.
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Anyone remember 'Space: Above and Beyond'?
Well, if Hollywood takes an ok computer game like Escape from Butcher bay and make a movie from it, the movie will stink. :)
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Anyone remember 'Space: Above and Beyond'?
Loved it. Own it on DVD.
I loved B5 and what I saw of Crusade (the show had a lot of potential). Of all the Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine is my favorite (I even think Sisko was the better captain... which annoys alot of Picard/Kirk fanboys). I liked Firefly, but loved Serenity. Loved the first season and the first half of season two of Andromeda (but once Robert Hewitt Wolfe left, the show just limped along for three and a half seasons). The original BSG was space opera and at times dark, but it wasn't gritty. The new BSG, however, had enough grit for both shows. I remember Blake's 7 (between that, Star Trek: TOS, and Dr. Who, I came up loving sci-fi).
What we need is an adaptation of Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series. That's gritty space opera just begging to made into either a proper HBO series or film. What we don't need is some drek like the Wing Commander movie. I still shudder at the thought of hairless Kilrathi.
But I hold on to hope: after years of talk and development, Ender's Game is coming out in theaters November 1 of next year.
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'Ender's game' was not bad. I am looking forward to the movie, but if it is hollywoodfied too much, say like 'Starship troopers' was hacked, well lets just say I don't have much hope for movies right now.
also Blood and Chrome seems to have been cancelled in march.
I wouldn't be so quick to blame fox for that one. I loved the show, but the storyline and pacing were off.
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By itself, Ender's Game wasn't bad. Taken with Ender's Shadow and the whole thing improves. Since the movie will be incorporating both books into itself, I'm hoping for the best. Check out this blog.
I also hope they don't do to it what was done with Starship Troopers. Played straight, the movie could've been much better than it was.
Sucks to see what's going on with Blood and Chrome. I was really looking forward to watching that series. I like fantasy. I like superheroes. Done right, I can even watch supernatural shows (no tweeny new age Twilight angst for me). But the studios can't seem to deliver on the one thing I crave the most: a good space opera.