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.

It insists upon itself, Lois.

  • MudMan@kbin.social
    2·
    2 years ago

    I guess that depends a lot on your perspective on narrative and the world in general

    [SPOILERS], I guess, I don’t see a content warning tool in this editor, but someone let me know if I’m missing something and I’ll edit this.

    I happen to be an atheist. Non-beligerent, definitely not an “internet atheist” type, but I just don’t believe in a supreme power, so it’s always jarring when a narrative thing ends on a note where they assume that of course in this years-long debate between mysticism and reason the figure matching the Christian deity is the right answer.

    It’s not even annoyance at there being religious people or anything like that. It’s just in my world when somebody raises “well, it could be God intervening in our lives”, that is obviously the wrong answer unless you’re in a show where Christian mythos is explicitly established as a fantasy trope (say, Supernatural or Buffy or whatever). If you just spring that stuff on me in the finale you’re already losing me, even before you use it as a plot device to deus ex machina all the garbage and loose ends you couldn’t figure out during the show’s run.

    So yeah, I’ll take “we’ll make the omniscient hemiplegic kid kid and the cool dragon lady a nazi because the outline says so and we have better stuff to do than wrap this up” over “God hates robots and that’s why all this happened, I dunno”.

    • joonazan
      1·
      2 years ago

      I am an atheist as well and I liked the ending. It isn’t supernatural, it just matches old cylon legends.

      I’m currently rewatching and what actually bothers me is how the tomb of Athena works and all the plot holes and poor episodes. For example there is an episode where is a lack of metal just after they disable hundreds of cylon raiders. Also, the heavy raider taken back from Caprica is never used again.

      • MudMan@kbin.social
        2·
        2 years ago

        Wait, how is it not supernatural? The show literally ends on a debate between two supernatural beings about whether the do-over current-Earth version will avoid repeating the cycle when their technology gets advanced enough. There is zero question that they’re supernatural. The text says it outright. And it’s not a hallucination or a fakeout or a technological artifact, we get an omniscient POV showing us this, it’s not filtered by the views of a character.

        Hey, I also wanted it not to suck, but the text is what it is.

        • joonazan
          1·
          1 year ago

          I’ll have to keep an eye open for that when I get to that point. I mostly remembered the explosion before that which was entertaining, though unlikely.

          I’m actually surprised how well it holds up on the rewatch. It is very good moment-to-moment but the plot is weak and badly paced and Baltar is not nearly as entertaining as the first time around.

        • cerebrate@kbin.social
          1·
          1 year ago

          @MudMan The thing that really pissed me off about the ending was that by throwing away their tech, history, and basically all knowledge they ensured that all the hard-earned lessons of their history and the course of the series were lost.

          “All this has happened before and all of it will happen again”? Well, congrats, dumbasses, you just guaranteed that it will and the cycle will continue by ensuring that humanity won’t have any opportunity at all to learn anything from all the shit it’s just been through.

          (The only way I can rewatch it is to pretend it ended just before Lee “Fuck Your Descendants” Adama breaks the future.)

          @Anomandaris @comedy @Ksanoj @Ni @joonazan

          • MudMan@kbin.social
            1·
            1 year ago

            @cerebrate

            But also, no, there is no guarantee that it will all happen again. Why would it happen again? Beyond the entire thing being the whim of a heartless omnipotent deity there is no reason why a whole sentient technoorganic species going full paleo would then rebuild themselves into two factions of mostly organic and mostly artificial lifeforms and trigger a galactic war.

            That’s extremely specific. They could also all die fromt he plague because they never stumble upon antibiotics instead. Unless more angels come to tell them to lick the heal fungus, of course, which is now a thing that could absolutely happen.

            You really think I’d be over it at this point, and yet…