It’s a slightly click-baity title, but as we’re still generating more content for our magazines, this one included, why not?

My Sci-fi unpopular opinion is that 2001: A Space Odyssey is nothing but pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. I’ve tried watching it multiple times and each time I have absolutely no patience for the pointless little scenes which contain little to no depth or meaningful plot, all coalescing towards that 15 minute “journey” through space and series of hallucinations or whatever that are supposed to be deep, shake you to your foundations, and make you re-think the whole human condition.

But it doesn’t. Because it’s just pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. Planet of the Apes was released in the same year and is, on every level, a better Sci-fi movie. It offers mystery, a consistent and engaging plot, relatable characters you actually care about, and asks a lot more questions about the world and our place in it.

It insists upon itself, Lois.

      •  Adama   ( @Adama@kbin.social ) 
        16•1 year ago

        The books are great. Show does a good job moving the intrigue and conflicts to a screen but man if Avasarala and Amos aren’t the absolute best portrayal of those characters.

        Avasarala has a heart of gold and a fist of iron in equal measures.

        This means she’ll do horrible things (even at her own expense) for what she believes is right and she doesn’t put up with any kind of nonsense.

        And yet she plays the political game so well all while pretending she’s above it.

        And the Shohreh Aghdashloo knocks the character out of the park. Every move and word both foul and sweet personifies the character in the book that it’s impossible to convey how absolutely masterful the performance is.

        And Wes Chatham as Amos is a close second. A man whose moral code is simple because he’s broken, knows it, and so he defaults to “who is the most likely good person I can use as a guide.” Chatham portrays the violence is necessary like doing the laundry.

        Turns it on, does the job, goes back as if nothing happened. Oh, I should do this instead? You got it boss.

        Or how he conveys in the simple things how Amos feels there is a moral right but having grown up as he did it’s hard to know what that is and who has the authority to enforce it it just chefs kiss

        What? Stop beating this guy? Ok. Sorry fella, buy you a drink?

        •  TIN   ( @TIN@feddit.uk ) 
          1•1 year ago

          And the Shohreh Aghdashloo knocks the character out of the park. Every move and word both foul and sweet personifies the character in the book that it’s impossible to convey how absolutely masterful the performance is.

          I loved every moment she was on screen, totally captivating. Great costume design, script writing and acting all together.

    •  Ni   ( @Ni@kbin.social ) 
      4•1 year ago

      All I can do is apologise, I really tried, so I’m going to chalk it up to a me problem. Desperate for a good Sci fi series as well, that’s the most annoying part!

          •  MudMan   ( @MudMan@kbin.social ) 
            8•1 year ago

            Oh, oh, I have an unpopular one right here.

            Battlestar Galactica’s ending is worse than Game of Thrones, by quite some margin, and it absolutely ruins everything that came before.

            •  funnyletter   ( @funnyletter@kbin.social ) 
              5•1 year ago

              I dunno that I’d rank it worse than GoT myself but I did really hate that ending.

              Honestly between Lost, BSG, and GoT I’m kinda burned on endings generally. I can’t really think of a show that isn’t a super short limited series that I’m like, that ending was great!

              •  Ni   ( @Ni@kbin.social ) 
                1•1 year ago

                It’s so tricky isn’t it, so I watched bsg and lost way past their initial airing and the hype and I found I didn’t love either of the endings but I didn’t mind them either. And overall I still loved the series and the characters.

                I think in terms of long series endings maybe breaking bad?

                •  dcheesi   ( @dcheesi@kbin.social ) 
                  2•1 year ago

                  Yeah, part of the problem for fans was that part of the slogan for BSG was “…and they have a plan”. So when it became clear that no one had a “plan” for the plot arc, including the showrunners …it was quite a disappointment.

            •  Ni   ( @Ni@kbin.social ) 
              1•1 year ago

              Honestly bsg’s ending wasn’t amazing, it didn’t end anywhere near as strongly as it started. But I didn’t hate it and I was invested enough in the characters that I wanted to see what happened to them all. I also found the overall series, world building, characters etc. far out weighed the ending itself for me.

              I often find endings to series, like got, are lacklustre. Finding a beautifully crafted series from beginning to end is so rare.

              •  MudMan   ( @MudMan@kbin.social ) 
                2•1 year ago

                I guess that depends a lot on your perspective on narrative and the world in general

                [SPOILERS], I guess, I don’t see a content warning tool in this editor, but someone let me know if I’m missing something and I’ll edit this.

                I happen to be an atheist. Non-beligerent, definitely not an “internet atheist” type, but I just don’t believe in a supreme power, so it’s always jarring when a narrative thing ends on a note where they assume that of course in this years-long debate between mysticism and reason the figure matching the Christian deity is the right answer.

                It’s not even annoyance at there being religious people or anything like that. It’s just in my world when somebody raises “well, it could be God intervening in our lives”, that is obviously the wrong answer unless you’re in a show where Christian mythos is explicitly established as a fantasy trope (say, Supernatural or Buffy or whatever). If you just spring that stuff on me in the finale you’re already losing me, even before you use it as a plot device to deus ex machina all the garbage and loose ends you couldn’t figure out during the show’s run.

                So yeah, I’ll take “we’ll make the omniscient hemiplegic kid kid and the cool dragon lady a nazi because the outline says so and we have better stuff to do than wrap this up” over “God hates robots and that’s why all this happened, I dunno”.

                •  joonazan   ( @joonazan@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
                  0•1 year ago

                  I am an atheist as well and I liked the ending. It isn’t supernatural, it just matches old cylon legends.

                  I’m currently rewatching and what actually bothers me is how the tomb of Athena works and all the plot holes and poor episodes. For example there is an episode where is a lack of metal just after they disable hundreds of cylon raiders. Also, the heavy raider taken back from Caprica is never used again.

                  •  MudMan   ( @MudMan@kbin.social ) 
                    1•1 year ago

                    Wait, how is it not supernatural? The show literally ends on a debate between two supernatural beings about whether the do-over current-Earth version will avoid repeating the cycle when their technology gets advanced enough. There is zero question that they’re supernatural. The text says it outright. And it’s not a hallucination or a fakeout or a technological artifact, we get an omniscient POV showing us this, it’s not filtered by the views of a character.

                    Hey, I also wanted it not to suck, but the text is what it is.