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What happened to space opera?


NickGOT456

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But yeah, it's kind of interesting that there wasn't a wave of copycats after BSG. We haven't even had a Star Trek series for years.





There kinda was with like Stargate: Universe and such. But the air seems to have gone out of the "sci-fi in the future on a ship" balloon for the moment so we didn't get much.



I wonder if part of it is that the format of "people on ship travel the galaxy" is feeling tired after the explosion of it in the 90s and early 2000s and there's just not the money for that and anything else would cost even more. Your urban fantasy/"sci-fi on earth in near future" is alot more cost-effective.


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Does anyone else find "epic" space battles becoming tedious? Back in the day I thought the space battle at the end of Return of the Jedi to be the best thing ever but the one at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy left me unmoved. To me it was just a bunch of flashing lights that I hoped would end quickly, even though there was a lot more going on than in the one in RotJ.

It's the same thing with the epic LOTR-style battle thing. Or any type of action scene really. It's cool the first time but after that it can't sustain interest on it's own. You need good setup for it and good direction to emphasize a coherent action-based story within the battle, with real stakes and all that. It doesn't matter how much is going, what matters is if they are telling an interesting mini-story with all that shit.

The good space battles all emphasize some sort of coherent arc that matters to the overall story. Or they just montage it to set a mood or skip over it entirely.

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It's the same thing with the epic LOTR-style battle thing. Or any type of action scene really. It's cool the first time but after that it can't sustain interest on it's own. You need good setup for it and good direction to emphasize a coherent action-based story within the battle, with real stakes and all that. It doesn't matter how much is going, what matters is if they are telling an interesting mini-story with all that shit.

Totally this. One comparison which really highlighted this for me was when Revenge of the Sith came out, not too long after the Serenity movie. Both those films feature quite similar space battles, in the upper atmosphere of a planet, where the heroes must maneuver their ship/s through a hectic battle zone to reach their destination. The SW one is just a contextless weightless slab of glittery explosions that really comes out kind of dull, whereas the Serenity one (filmed on a much lower budget) works fantastically in part because it has a rhythm and a goal it's aiming for and also because the characters are acting as if something might actually go wrong.

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There kinda was with like Stargate: Universe and such. But the air seems to have gone out of the "sci-fi in the future on a ship" balloon for the moment so we didn't get much.

I wonder if part of it is that the format of "people on ship travel the galaxy" is feeling tired after the explosion of it in the 90s and early 2000s and there's just not the money for that and anything else would cost even more. Your urban fantasy/"sci-fi on earth in near future" is alot more cost-effective.

BSG's effect might have been moving scifi in general towards the "grittier", more human-focused storylines? Though that might be giving them too much credit, stuff like Lost (the first of those most cryptic shows) ran at the same time ...

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If syfy gets its shit together and does a strong adaptation of James Corey's (Daniel Abraham/Ty Frank) "the expanse", we'll be getting some space opera on screen. GRRM calls it space opera on the cover blurb.



I think Guardian's of the Galaxy is space opera so we'll get a few more of those in the remainder of the decade.


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I think Guardian's of the Galaxy is space opera so we'll get a few more of those in the remainder of the decade.

If we're talking cinema, space opera never really went away- Star Trek kept the end up if nothing else- and we're going to get absolutely flooded with it as of next year because, you know, Star Wars.

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Honestly, I would rather see something in the genre on TV anyway.

it's a shame that MGM going bust put an end to the stargate franchise. It was heading in an interesting direction with universe. Not sure if we'll ever get the franchise back now

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it's a shame that MGM going bust put an end to the stargate franchise. It was heading in an interesting direction with universe. Not sure if we'll ever get the franchise back now

Nothing is ever gone for good. If you wait long enough it will be recycled.

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Apparently the definition of space opera is substantially broader than I thought, by my own one BSG and B5 are tonally completely wrong to be considered space opera. Wiki tells me I'm wrong though.

Echoing that The Expanse will hopefully kick start things on the TV front. On the movie front there is also Jupiter Ascending on top of the already mentioned ones.

Really would like to see HBO do one, and I know Wert has put forward Nights Dawn by Hamilton and I'm very much on board with that. It seems the right mix of SF and horror for the current environment.

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Nothing is ever gone for good. If you wait long enough it will be recycled.

Yeah - turns out it's been rebooted as a new film trilogy with the original director on board. Could be a star trek style reboot.

Apparently the definition of space opera is substantially broader than I thought, by my own one BSG and B5 are tonally completely wrong to be considered space opera. Wiki tells me I'm wrong though.

Echoing that The Expanse will hopefully kick start things on the TV front. On the movie front there is also Jupiter Ascending on top of the already mentioned ones.

Really would like to see HBO do one, and I know Wert has put forward Nights Dawn by Hamilton and I'm very much on board with that. It seems the right mix of SF and horror for the current environment.

I haven't read any Hamilton but would there be room for HBO to have the required about of sex and violence for them to consider making it? It's why Morgan's "kovacs" books seem destined for a HBO adaptation but they certainly aren't space operas.

The "ascension" show has potential - wasn't aware of it until checking this thread.

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Yeah - turns out it's been rebooted as a new film trilogy with the original director on board. Could be a star trek style reboot.

I haven't read any Hamilton but would there be room for HBO to have the required about of sex and violence for them to consider making it? It's why Morgan's "kovacs" books seem destined for a HBO adaptation but they certainly aren't space operas.

The "ascension" show has potential - wasn't aware of it until checking this thread.

LOL. Hamilton definitely has enough sex for HBO.
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I haven't read any Hamilton but would there be room for HBO to have the required about of sex and violence for them to consider making it? It's why Morgan's "kovacs" books seem destined for a HBO adaptation but they certainly aren't space operas.

The "ascension" show has potential - wasn't aware of it until checking this thread.

If anything they'd need to cut down on the sex; right now its more at Cinemax levels. And there's plenty of violence, including the really gore-y kind for most of the first third, and occasionally thereafter as well.

I hadn't thought of Hamilton as a candidate for HBO adaption before, but now that I am, I love the idea.

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Not sure if we'll ever get the franchise back now

A Stargate reboot is currently in development. My understanding is that's a total reboot, starting with a movie trilogy and then a possible TV series spin-off. Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich are back in charge and the existing film and all three TV series will be ignored.

This has not gone down well with long-term Stargate fans, to put it mildly.

I haven't read any Hamilton but would there be room for HBO to have the required about of sex and violence for them to consider making it?

There's way more sex in The Reality Dysfunction than in A Game of Thrones. PFH does turn it down massively in the second and third books, but yeah, there's no problem on that front.

The budget remains the biggest problem on that score. Even on a HBO budget, realising the interiors of Tranquillity and Valisk, the jungles of Lalonde and the destruction of Pernik will be a big ask.

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Fair points on the budget.

All I'll say on the sex front is that the main character has a zero g sex cage in his room on his ship. I almost mentioned it as another of the things that make it HBO appropriate. Certainly no issues on the violence side either.

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