SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
I think we can use some positive emotions in our lives and this 3:50-minute SF movie created by Erik Wernquist certainly delivers a positive view of our future in this solar system that seems to rather lack in stories coming out of Hollywood recently. Made my day again, same as movie shot by Juno probe at Jupiter. This really is a masterpiece and it must have taken tremendous amount of CGI work. Narration is by Carl Sagan reading the first chapter ("The Wanderers") from his 1994 book "The Pale Blue Dot." I wanted to describe the locations displayed in the movie, but it was too spoilery and you can easily guess most of them anyway.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH3c1QZzRK4
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/108650530
Erik has a website with more films at http://www.erikwernquist.com/
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 19 2017, @05:12PM (6 children)
Let's say I'm aware that books exist and I read fairly often, and I was purposefully remaining topical to movies. Can we do that?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday June 19 2017, @05:48PM (1 child)
Ohhhh-kay. Science fiction in movies. How about TV series? Have you watched 'The Expanse'? It leaves some things lacking, but it does give a hell of a lot of realistic stuff too. http://www.the-expanse.com/ [the-expanse.com]
This is one time when I was so impressed with the screenplay, that I went to find the books on which the shows were based. The only thing that isn't explained very well at all, is the Epstein Drive, what allows us to move about the solar system at a (small) fraction of the speed of light. It's as awesome as anything I've looked at, and the science part of it is pretty accurate. Except for that mysterious drive, of course.
The "what if" that underscores the whole story is, "What if we aren't alone?"
The series is as good as Firefly was.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday June 19 2017, @06:59PM
Sure, I'll acknowledge that we're in the golden age of TV, and there's some excellent serial material out there.
(Score: 2) by Weasley on Monday June 19 2017, @07:21PM
You said: "sci-fi has been failing". Can we stop being condescending and admit that you're post sounded like your definition of sci-fi didn't go beyond the silver screen?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @07:46PM (2 children)
To me Moon, Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow are sci-fi movies that ask "what if something was different". You might not count Moon as Hollywood but the other two are.
The Planet of the Apes reboot also counts for "what if something was different". Same for District 9.
As for Elysium, it might have been interesting if they'd made the "healing tech" cost a huge amount in energy and resources. Then as the poor overload those machines they find that the harsh reality is even if the social barriers are dropped, you still can't heal everyone or even feed everyone great food. Then many of the poor start behaving just like the "0.001%" elite and try to keep things for themselves. However it probably wouldn't have been as popular a movie that way ;).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @08:24PM
Yep which is why the movie can basically be summed up as "Occupy Space Station".
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday June 20 2017, @11:04AM
However, at least they're entertaining things to munch popcorn to. Cinemas need peanut galleries.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves