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.
Unpopular opinion: Star Wars is in space and has spaceships and aliens. Good enough, it’s sci-fi.
People attribute these silly, gatekeepy characteristics to sci-fi, but sci-fi doesn’t need to be about anything. Sci-fi is allowed to be shitty or irrelevant.
Sci-fi is allowed to be shitty or irrelevant, but that is absolutely unrelated to Star Wars not being sci-fi. Star Wars isn’t shitty, and it is relevant.
The reason it isn’t sci-fi is because it a) makes no attempt whatsoever to explore the implications of the differences between its world and ours, and b) it makes no attempt to scientifically explain those differences.
There has been exactly one time when SW has attempted to explain its universe, and midichlorians have been a meme for decades because it was trying to introduce scientific explanations into the wrong genre.
To be clear: this is fine. Saying Star Wars isn’t sci-fi is not an insult. It’s just a genre, and genres aren’t better or worse than each other. If Star Wars did try to be sci-fi, it wouldn’t be able to tell the grand good and evil story it’s trying to tell - that’s the advantage of fantasy.