SciFi Fantasy Fans What Are Your Gripes That You Just Cannot Let Go

[Yavin4]

I want to compile a list of the biggest beefs that SciFi/Fantasy fans have. So far, I have:

1. Will Wheaton's Wesly Crusher on Star Trek, The Next Generation.

2. Joel Schumacher's Batman

3. The Star Wars Prequel

4. Jar Jar Binks

[bluedigger]

1. Orson Scott Card.

[TheMadMonk]

2. The term SciFi. It's SF. Science Fiction or if you must Speculative Fiction. /nt

[MiddleFingerMom]

5. It's also SciFi. Who died and left YOU Galactic Overlord?

.
.
.

.
.
.

[TheMadMonk]

6. Hazel Stone. And she's not dead. /nt

[Aristus]

22. Harlan Ellison, who is still alive.

He has decreed 'SciFi' an abominable neologism. So let it not be written; so let it not be done. Here endeth the lesson...

[Chan790]

23. Ellison's a bit too much of a cantankerous ass to be taken seriously on most subjects.

I mean I could say more but the statement stands on its' own regarding the great sci-fi writer.

[Orsino]

31. Coined by Forry himself before the beginning of the Space Age.

It's not neo-anything anymore.

[Orrex]

25. I don't get why that bothers people. It smacks of genre snobbery

The term was coined by no less a titan than Forest Ackerman, after all, and even if it was later used as an unflattering label, it has sufficient history that it should at least get a seat at the table.

The term Sci-Fi has been in use for longer than "science fiction" was around before that. If we're aiming for original coinage, we should stick to Gernsback and call it scientifiction.

[4th law of robotics]

28. What about syfy?

/ducks

[nolabear]

3. The Original Battlestar Galactica.

Pia Zadora

[baldguy]

4. David Lynch's Dune.

Ornithopters fly by flapping their wings, dammit!

[pscot]

7. Anything be George RR Martin

who seems to be documenting the history of an alternate universe in real time. It reminds me of the serials that movie theaters used to run at saturday matinees. In a more discerning age, books like Martin's were called potboilers.

[HopeHoops]

8. 60's Batman TV series - car compactor - pumps air from Batmobile tires into utility belt (remotely).

I mean, COME ON!

[gratuitous]

9. Beware! Heresy follows

Isaac Asimov's relentlessly linear story-telling.

[siligut]

10. The puerile portrayal of women

Not really

[sakabatou]

13. How about nicknames?

[siligut]

15. Slab Squat-thrust . . . Rawhide . . . Rawhide

[sakabatou]

16. Big McLargeHuge

Which I think there's a DUer by that name.

[Bertha Venation]

46. There is. Although i haven't seen him

in a long time

[sakabatou]

11. Does "The Last Airbender" count as sci-fi?

Because that was BS! It was nothing compared to the animated series! It totally screwed it over!

[irisblue]

12. fringe is on friday night

john noble does not have 3 emmys. anna torv should have at least one and the writers have none.

[DerekG]

14. Frank Miller rendering Batman a psychotic

There's a balance to be had with the Dark Knight, but Miller pushed him to the extreme.

He's a brooding hero, not a complete asshole.

[Ikonoklast]

21. But Frank Miller is.

[Orrex]

26. Very true

All the more disappointing because Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One were so well-controlled, compared to his later crap.

[KG]

17. Dan Simmons wastes his time writing horror and detective novels.

[harmonicon]

18. Yeah, fake Star Wars is the worst.

I welcome you to embrace the title of "Star Wars Jew" - it's because we only consider the old testament to be canon. Unfortunately, Jar Jar Binks is pretty far down the list of everything that is terrible about those films.

However, what I think is even worse is Lucas destroying the original films so many times over. He'll keep tinkering until they're as terrible as his newer films.

Along similar lines, I thought that making a new Star Trek film was complete sacrilege.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

35. +1,000,000

Agree with everything you said

[Bucky]

19. Any time travel story that involves changing the past.

Sorry, but
1- if you are going to change the past, you've already accomplished it, and thus...
2- you have no motivation for even trying to change the past, and thus...
3- you won't actually try to go into the past, thus...
4- not changing anything.

Unless a story specifically works around this core paradox (which, unlike the grandfather paradox, is a real problem), the story just doesn't work for me. That said, I'm always a sucker for a well spun yarn, despite its surface implausibilities. This, LOST works and Star Trek: First Contact does not.

[Iggo]

43. "I guess I DID take my dad's keys!"

-- Ted Theodore Logan.

[Chan790]

20. The inability of my peers to see that Joss Whedon is a hack.

I mean the guy's work is pretty consistently-terrible.

He belongs in that "my work is entirely dependent from one writing to the next on the exact same formula and narrative-progression" camp as M. Night S. is always accused of. He has no second act, no follow-up, no other tricks in his bag. It's a sign of a lazy writer that doesn't understand why they have success and thus has to go back to the same well over and over because they have no new ideas and are unwilling to explore uncomfortable new terrain or take risks that their new work may not be well-received by their old audience or might even flop. Failure to grow as an artist is failure.

He doesn't know how to write about anything but misfits (singular or in groups) that overcome...with bad deaths thrown into the "happy" moments. All of his narrative-progressions from Buffy (over the series arc and over every single season) to Firefly (over the one season and in Serenity) to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog are exactly the same.

I literally knew halfway into the first part of Dr. Horrible how it was going to end and what the character arcs were for Nathan Fillion's character (every heroic character in Whedon's work becomes either an outcast by choice (Buffy) or is revealed to have been a villainous asshole all-along.) and Felicia Day's character. (I knew at-once she was going to die in Dr. H's moment of triumph.)

He might have commercial success but his work leaves me flat. I genuinely find I think less of people when they admit liking his work.

[harmonicon]

36. You are so right about this.

Or, at least I assume you're completely correct. I think his work is so bad that I can't tolerate more than a few minutes of it. I'd had to hear so many people go on and on about firefly for so long, that I once attempted to watch Serenity when it was on tv... oh, man, I was committed to that, but after some time I just had to turn it off. It was - like the Buffy show - bad to the point of unwatchable.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

47. Probably a bad weekend to make this argument

He pretty deftly managed a film that could/should have been a complete cluster****.

But if you're going to say he keeps going back to a formula and hasn't grown, than you must be willing to admit that initially there was something good about his work. As far as only writing about "misfits", I think you'll find that the nature of the genre lends itself to misfits and outsiders being the focal point of the most successful fantasy stories.

And most of Whedon's harshest critics.....are his own fans. But you contradict yourself when you say he "doesn't understand why they have success and go back to the well...."....ok, is the goal something other than to be successful?

[Kaleva]

24. The inability of all powerful evil wizards to defeat a group of no names

[DerekG]

27. People who give me shit for enjoying the Star Wars Prequels

I enjoy a debate, but folks, even the originals were just goddamn movies.

[Baitball Blogger]

29. I'm at a major disadvantage here, because I even like crappy Sci Fi.

[GaYellowDawg]

30. Oh, I've got some for this.

1. Star Trek: Insurrection. I could not believe that this bilge was a follow-up to Star Trek: First Contact, which I really enjoyed. Riker controlling the whole starship with a joystick? Data as a flotation device? The movie was awful. Purely awful. In fact, the only thing I think I hated worse was:

2. Star Trek: Nemesis. Okay, the "evil clone" thing has been done to friggin' death in science fiction. This was even worse than Star Trek: Insurrection because Data got killed off, which meant that the Next Generation was going to end - not with a bang, but with a terribly flatulent noise. I got rid of all of the Star Trek paraphernalia I'd collected after this mind-blowingly awful movie.

3. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. I still remember how bad the "space disco" and the "space vampires" episodes were. But the worst thing was how Princess Ardala got all hot and bothered over fat-assed Gil Gerard. Even for bad science fiction, that was unrealistic.

4. The 1979 Battlestar Galactica. The special effects were phenomenal for the day. The acting and writing was inversely proportional. The 2000's reboot kicked its ass so severely that I can't even find a sufficient metaphor for it.

5. L. Ron Hubbard. The man really was a miracle worker, because no other science fiction writer ever wrote such long, crappy books. Bad, thin books at least would have been over quickly.

Now I'm so annoyed I can't even continue.

[hedgehog]

32. I agree about Nemisis - it practically killed the franchise -

all of a sudden there's a second group of Romulens? Like no one could think of a possible story involving the existing Star Trek universe?

[Auggie]

33. Alexander Rozhenko

1,000,000 times more annoying than Wesley Crusher

[WhoIsNumberNone]

34. The new Star Trek movie(s)

Also the new Star Trek movie(s)
Aliens vs Predator
The Hollywood Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Did I mention the new Star Trek movie(s)?
And Starship Troopers
Also the new Star trek movie(s)

[harmonicon]

37. Starship Troopers?! It was awesome!! (nt)

[WhoIsNumberNone]

38. Did you read the book?

[harmonicon]

39. No. I don't know how to read. (nt)

[WhoIsNumberNone]

42. The movie bears very little resemblance to the book

I think if they'd released the same movie under a different title and renamed all the characters I would have liked it much better. Then I could just say 'This movie isn't bad, but it's really derivative of Starship Troopers'...

[harmonicon]

45. I understand your point.

I'm not one who really cares when films differ from books though. For instance, I really love Blade Runner, but it's based on only a small percentage of a book, and some important details are changed within that small part of the book that it is derived from. I actually think the film is a better story than the book as both stand. However, they did change the title, so I guess it's a bit of a unique case.

[derby378]

40. Working on the book right now

The movie version has pluses and minuses. I do appreciate how the "Federal Network" is like a cross between FOX News and the Discovery Channel with a little Mussolini thrown in for good measure.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

44. To me the Federal Network was the best part of the movie

The irony that my favorite part of the movie wasn't in the book isn't lost on me either...

[Kaleva]

41. The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 had to hold it for their 7 year mission.