Marooned in the Undying Lands

Not too long ago, we lived at Francis Fukayama’s “End of History.”

It’s difficult to convey to younger SFF fans —
say those under the age of 40 — the degree to
which fears of Soviet domination once preoccupied
the public imagination, or the degree to which many
were convinced that democracy had
triumphed once and for all. 
(Image via CNN)

As risible or foolish as the idea seems now, in the early 1990s there was a near-consensus within the chattering classes that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union had ushered in the final triumph of American-style liberal democracy. According to those who subscribed to this theory, the Last Great Battle had been fought — and won. Social evolution had completed its mission; we had arrived at its pinnacle. The story of history had reached its resolution and now all that was left was to sail into the west.

With the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, it seems redundant to say that the Cold War was no Last Great Battle, and of course there was no White Ship and no Undying Lands.

There’s an obvious malaise to the idea that we have nothing left to achieve, or evolve into. If history is over, all that’s left is stagnation and of stasis. If the Last Great Battle has been fought, there are no more stories left to tell.

This idea of finality is ingrained into much of now-mainstream popular culture. Over the past few years, too many major SFF media franchises are stagnating in a post-eschatological malaise, seemingly afraid to venture into truly new territories. With little narrative momentum left, they seem marooned in the Undying Lands. They want their Last Great Battle, but don't have the integrity to accept the implied End of History.

It’s easy to think of examples: Star Wars, The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Babylon 5, and more. In each, the evil empire has been defeated, good has triumphed, and history has ended.

Franchises with some degree of narrative integrity allow the story to be over in a dignified manner, and to avoid attempts to monetize the goodwill and nostalgia of fans. However, some are compelled by the mandates of corporate profit-seeking to endlessly create new instalments in their narrative universe — and have all struggled to define what’s next.

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings may have been
released after 9/11, but principal filming on all
three movies had all occurred from 1999 to 2000.
It is the product of an End-Of-History mindset.
(Image via Entertainment Weekly)

One approach that several franchises have taken to avoid the End of History hurting revenues is to plumb the mythologies of their narrative universe through a series of prequels. Unsurprisingly, the relevance of these works diminishes over time and can even dilute the original narrative. For example, the Last Great Battle of Westeros in the television series Game of Thrones neither lived up to the hype nor left room for grand adventures afterwards. This has left HBO with little more than prequels on its production roster.

This is not a new phenomenon. John Christopher returned to his Tripods Trilogy — which ends with a Last Great Battle — to write a prequel in 1988. Once Katniss Everdeen had won her Last Great Battle, all that was left was a Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Battlestar Galactica went back to Caprica. And of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, the less said the better.

Possibly the apotheosis of this trend has been Amazon Prime’s How Galadriel Got Her Groove Back The Rings of Power, a prequel of little interest to anyone other than the most hard-core fans.

But prequelization isn’t the only way that franchises attempt to deal with the End of History problem. The early years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are generally regarded as creatively their most successful — in large part because they were building up to a universe-shaping showdown with their ultimate foe Thanos in Avengers: Endgame. To their credit, the decision makers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe have largely avoided the siren’s call of nostalgic prequelization, instead trying to continue as if the Last Great Battle hasn’t changed anything. The results have been mixed.

In the 1990s, no popular narrative embraced Francis Fukuyama’s ideas as wholeheartedly as Star Trek did; The Next Generation presented the American-analogue United Federation of Planets as the pinnacle of civilization; want had been conquered, social problems resolved, and now Jean-Luc and friends would act as emissaries of an idealized human society. But in a post-End-of-History world, this vision of Star Trek no longer makes sense. Since then with the possible exception of Deep Space Nine, the franchise has struggled to advance a coherent vision of what comes next; between stuck-in-the-past prequels (Enterprise, Strange New Worlds) nostalgic revisiting of past lore (Picard, Lower Decks) the franchise has often been treading water. 

The theory of an “End of History” has an obvious appeal; people tend to understand the world through a framework of narrative … and that all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Perhaps it’s time to allow some of these franchises a dignified ending.

A Big Year In Small-Budget Cinema

Part 2 of 2 on Best Dramatic Presentation 2019. Part 1 is at this link. 

With only a quarter of 2018 ahead of us, we feel confident with the claim that this year has been quietly terrific for dramatic presentations. 

While run-of-the-mill sci-fi action-adventures like Avengers, Jurassic Park and Ready Player One

Sorry To Bother You is exactly the type
of science fiction movie that the world
needs right now. Smart, relevant,
irreverent and timely.
(Image via SorryToBotherYou.movie) 

may have topped the box office charts, there have been many spectacular smaller releases that have shown how smart scripts and thoughtful directing mean more than massive budgets.

Worth The Bother

Almost certainly at the top of our ballots this year will be Boots Riley’s directorial debut Sorry To Bother You. The movie is a richly comedic fantasy about labour organizing, capital overreach, systemic racism, code switching, and the silent complicity society forces on well-intentioned individuals.

While the science fiction and fantasy elements of Sorry To Bother You are not front-and-centre in the movie’s advertising campaigns, they are integral to the plot and are part of what makes the movie work so well. Interestingly, most reviews of the movie have honoured Riley’s request to abstain from spoiling the – completely bonkers – third act in which the science fictional elements come to a head (literally and figuratively).

There’s so much to love in this movie – superb casting, smart set decoration, believable relationship tensions, laugh-out-loud humour. Balanced on a razor’s edge of surrealism and believability for much of the movie, there are details in the background and subtexts to explore on repeat viewings. Riley even works in a delicious subversion of Kylie Jenner’s infamous Pepsi-at-a-protest commercial.

Sorry To Bother You offers an intellectual richness that is worth mining. But don’t take our word for it. This film received significant praise from relatively prominent writers and critics including Evan Narcisse, Tanaritive Due, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden. We hope that Hugo nominators will take the time to see it at least once, despite the fact that is was only ever released on 1,050 screens across North America (fewer than a quarter the number of screens that movies like MI:6 and The Meg were released on), and earned a modest $16 million (less than half as much as Sherlock Gnomes did).

Area X

Another excellent sci-fi movie that largely flew under the radar was Annihilation, based on Jeff

Annihilation is visually arresting, moody
and evocative.
(Image via revisionista.net)

VanderMeer’s book of the same name. Although it was a flop in the box office in April, earning back just $43 million of its $45 million production budget, Annihilation is an elegant and movingly weird movie about loss, both of loved ones and one’s self.

With deep intellectual debts to Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic, Annihilation concerns a scouting party sent into a ‘zone’ that has been rendered uninhabitable through unknowable alien forces. As the protagonists delve deeper into this zone – known as the Shimmer – they are confronted by their own unreliable memories as well as visually arresting mutated biology.

Moody and evocative, Annihilation makes the most of its desolate setting, allowing tensions to rise gradually as the Shimmer takes its toll on the psyches of the protagonists. Special effects, while omnipresent in this movie, are well thought out and rarely over-the top.

While Annihilation did not connect with mainstream audiences, neither did director Alex Garland’s previous film Ex Machina, which did make it onto the Hugo shortlist. We hope this bodes well for Annihilation – especially considering the number of people who nominated Vandermeer’s last novel for a Hugo.

Endlessly Entertaining

The most obscure movie that is likely to make our Hugo nomination ballots is Justin Benson’s indie

How did a movie as good as The Endless
get made on such a small budget?
Turns out the trick is to start with
a really good script.
(Image via Digitalspy.com)

horror flick The Endless. It’s understandable if you haven’t seen it, given that it was released on a total of 20 screens in April. Despite the fact that it earned a paltry $272,020 at the box office, it has been consistently praised by critics for effective storytelling, gripping drama, and artistic sensibility.

The film tells a story about a pair of brothers who decide to revisit the compound of a cult they fled from ten years earlier. While one of the brothers is drawn in by the positive elements of the community, the other recognizes that there is something dark and foreboding under the surface.

The supernatural elements — and allusions to Lovecraftian mythology — are introduced slowly and subtly and effectively, offering an interesting paralel for the lives the brothers had led since escaping to the ‘real world.’ Writer-director Justin Benson also alludes to the nearly universal human drive to avoid self-destructive patterns and build a better life.

Lovecraft is notoriously difficult to bring to the cinema, but Benson has a deft touch and never overplays his hand. It might even be that the low budget allowed him to build tension instead of relying on special effects.

Giant Heart

Based on Joe Kelly’s award-winning comic book of the same name, I Kill Giants had all the makings

I Kill Giants has an all-star pedigree
but ended up on Netflix before you
ever heard about it.
(Image via IMDB.com)

of a blockbuster movie: big-name movie star Zoe Saldana, an Academy Award-winner in the director’s chair, flashy special effects. But somehow, it was released with almost no promotion on a handful of screens, earned a measly $183,754, and ended up in the Netflix back catalogue before anyone noticed.

That’s possibly because nobody understood quite what to make of this ponderous and surreal movie about children’s imaginations, about how we deal with trauma, about dealing with bullies, and about asserting one’s place in the world.

I Kill Giants is the sort of movie that will appeal more to Worldcon attendees than it would to the general public, as it is generally fannish in a way that mainstream science fiction films are not. The main character — a withdrawn kid with a big imagination who struggles to fit in — seems like the sort of person who would seek out fandom. Conveying this character’s rich inner life would be a challenge for any actor, but 14-year-old Madison Wolfe pulls it off admirably.

Although slow, the movie is compelling. The visuals are stunning and the meticulous planning of some of the shots will make cinephiles pause the movie to revel in the framing, the design, and the special effects.

Top Prospect

For its sheer science fictional scope and vision, Prospect belongs on our Hugo nominating ballots, even if few people have heard of it.

The movie — based on a short film from 2014 — offers viewers an engaging parable about greed and survival.

Directors Chris Caldwell and Zeek Earl use a forest moon as a backdrop for a story about a prospector and his daughter trying to strike it rich. The pacing is excellent, the dialogue is taut, and the tension builds as you realize that one man’s foolishness and greed might spell disaster for everyone.

It’s a character-driven movie that is held together by a terrific performance by Sophie Thatcher,

A critical darling of the festival circuit,
Prospect might be getting a wider
release this November. Make a point
of seeing it — you won't be disappointed.
(Image via shepfilms.com/prospect)

playing the prospector’s daughter. The subtropical rainforests of the pacific northwest have never looked as alien to me as they did in Prospect.

Given how difficult it will be for most Hugo nominators to see Prospect this year, I hope that its eligibility might be held over an additional year, as they did for Predestination a few years back. This is a movie that deserves a wider audience.

In most other years, we might have considered nominating ultraviolent cyborg revenge-fantasy Upgrade, but we just don’t have room on the ballot this year.

The movie hit cinemas this summer, and grossed slightly less than $16 million. It’s a linear narrative about a mechanic who is paralyzed during an attack that claims the life of his wife. When new technology gives him the ability to walk again, he goes on a bloody rampage in pursuit of the people who killed his wife.

Such a premise could easily have produced banal Death Wish-style trash, somehow Upgrade ends up being something smarter and more engaging. Director Leigh Wannell, who’s mostly known for writing several installments of the Saw and Insidious franchizes, uses her knowledge of gore and blood effectively. There’s a sense of body horror about what has happened to the protagonist, and some interesting surveillance aspects to the future the movie depicts.

Looking back over the past 20 years of science fiction movies, there have been few as fecund as 2018. There are only a limited number of spots on a Hugo nominating ballot, and this is a year where it will be very difficult to winnow the movie choices down to just five.

We would urge Hugo voters to seek out some of the less obvious choices, and join us in celebrating works that could use more exposure.

In Thrall Of The Blockbuster

Part 1 of 2 on Best Dramatic Presentation 2019. Part 2 is at this link.

Infinity War is emblematic of a trend
 in which mediocre movies with big
budgets get a lot of attention from
Hugo nominators. Please don't include
it on your ballot.
(Image via DigitalSpy.com) 

We have started to think of the last decade as the “Marvel-movie era” of science fiction filmmaking, partly because the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation - Long Form shortlist has shown a significant bias towards high-budget, effects-driven productions… aka blockbusters.

Over the past ten years or so, the average budget of a movie that makes the Hugo shortlist is in excess of $140 million — and during that time, only three movies with budgets smaller than $20 million have been on the Best Dramatic Presentation - Long Form ballot.1

Coming in with a relatively minuscule budget of $4.5 million, Get Out is the cheapest Hugo-shortlisted film since before the Dramatic Presentation category was split into short-form and long-form. It would be hard, however, to describe Get Out as anything other than a blockbuster, as it was produced by Universal Studios, was released on 2,713 screens, and grossed of more than $175 million.

Year over year, the average budget of Hugo-shortlisted movies has been trending upwards, outpacing inflation by about 10 per cent over the past decade. That may have to do in part with the blockbusterization of movies in general, but it might also indicate that when it comes to the Dramatic Presentation - Long Form category, Hugo voters are trend followers not trend leaders.

The Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form ballot in 2014 is a case in point, with the average production cost amongst the finalists at $107 million. This may be the lowest-average of the decade, but the smallest-budgeted movie to make the shortlist was the winning movie Looper, a $30-million film starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt.

That same year, the $180-million budget The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey — which Slate

Would you like an insufferable
number of dwarves? The Hobbit:
An Unexpected Journey will give
you that.
(Image via DenOfGeek.com)

Magazine praised as an “exercise in deliberately inflicted tedium” — was also on the Dramatic Presentation Long Form shortlist. It would be hard to argue that The Hobbit stands the test of time better or was more worthy of inclusion on the Hugo shortlist than contemporaneous lower-budget movies like Robot and Frank (budget $2.5 million), Chronicle (budget $12 million), or Dredd (budget $30 million). This was a wasted opportunity, in that even shortlisting any one of those excellent movies might have helped it reach the wider audience it deserved, while putting The Hobbit on the shortlist made Hugo members look like followers.

Over the past decade, there have of course been many excellent big-budget blockbuster movies that have been included on the ballot — Fury Road and Interstellar come to mind. But in general, it seems that there is a overly strong correlation between the size of a marketing campaign and a presence on the Hugo ballot.

This bias towards the big-budget wide releases is understandable — these are the movies that are most accessible to the average Hugo Award voter. Robot and Frank was released in 2012, but unless you attended a festival screening or an arthouse cinema, you wouldn’t have been able to see it until the middle of 2013 when it became available for digital download. In short, the movie became easily available to Hugo nominators after the deadline to nominate had passed.

But despite accessibility obstacles, I would argue that we (as Hugo nominators) should attempt to explore genre movies more widely than simply what is being advertised at the multiplex. Last night, a few members of this book club watched the new independent horror-fantasy movie Mandy, and while it is unlikely to make our 2019 ballots, it was worth the effort. Thanks to the Internet, it is actually easier than ever before to watch smaller-budget movies with more diverse voices.

Those who attend the Hugo Awards ceremonies will know that the award for Best Dramatic

The team from Edge of Tomorrow were
at the 2015 Hugo Awards, and they were
totally awesome.
(Image via Olav Rokne)   

Presentation - Long Form is usually presented to an empty podium. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that the production team behind Edge Of Tomorrow cared enough about being on the 2015 Hugo shortlist to actually attended the ceremony. If you care about the award you will make an effort to attend the ceremony (note earlier comments about the size of movie budgets).

We would argue that the three most deserving Hugo Award finalists in this category during the Marvel-movie era have been the ones with the smallest budgets — Looper, Moon, Ex Machina and Arrival. These are the ‘real’ science fiction movies, made for people who think about, love, and appreciate the genre.

The tendency of Hugo Award nominators to seemingly shortlist works because they are already financially successful might be an unfortunate reality for a passive society of consumers, but we like to think that Hugo members can do better. Get Out there and find innovative, interesting science fiction cinema.

Next week, we’ll share our thoughts about some of the sci-fi cinema gems we’d love to see on the Hugo ballot in 2019.

1. This calculation does not include METAtropolis, since it is not a movie. Likewise, the calculation does not include any TV series. 

The Hugo For Best Graphic Story (Part 2) – The ballot in 2017

This is part two of a two-part blog post. The first part, discussing the history of the category, is found here. 

Given the problematic history of this category, the shortlist this year for Best Graphic Story is mostly of a surprisingly consistent professional calibre. Some are only marginally worth being on a Hugo ballot, but none of them are completely risible as nominees.

The only real outlier — Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther — is an understandable nomination given the highly anticipated series had such potential, started off promisingly, and received a fair amount of media attention. One can understand why it received a nomination, despite its deep flaws.

Second servings not as good

Previous winners from high-profile publishers, Ms. Marvel and Saga, are back with new volumes.

Too many crossovers
spoil a great series.
(Image via Marvel.com)

Saga has started to get into a bit of a rut, with the same notes being replayed. The first volume of the series is one of the most worthy winners of the Hugo for Best Graphic Story … but volume six does not offer the same sense of wonder as its predecessor.

Ms. Marvel’s fifth volume definitely offers more narrative progress, but it’s also closely tied into and influenced by a massive multi-comic-book crossover that makes it more impenetrable to new readers.

It’s hard to count either of them out, because this category has often returned to the well for nominees and winners. However, these two books should definitely not win.

Under the radar but delightful

Paper Girls — which is written by Saga creator Bryan K. Vaughn — is a real treat to see on the ballot. It’s a kick-ass, inventive little book that follows a group of young girls who deal with the consequences of an alien invasion. It will be difficult to keep this story going as an ongoing series, but for now it’s just a delight.

Image via
marjoriemliu.com

The least well-known of the nominees, Monstress by Majorie Liu and Sana Takeda, is also one of the most worthy. The creative team uses the medium with skill and nuance to create a well-realized and inventive fantasy world. The feminist subtext helps make this a definite contender.

The Vision: Little Worse Than A Man is more of a science fiction comic than anything that Marvel has published in a decade, despite featuring a lead character who is a regular of the mainstream Avengers. The garish ‘50s-style colour palette, and the goofy backstory of the character, are completely subverted as Tom King has crafted something moody and thoughtful that is more informed by Asimov’s robot stories than by 50 years of Marvel continuity.

This is a solid Hugo ballot with three completely reasonable choices.  We are likely to cast our ballots for Monstress and for Paper Girls. For once in this category, “No Award" is unlikely to be on our ballot.