Science fiction is a genre of film that depends on suspension of disbelief, more so than any other type of film. We live in a world where there are police cars chasing fleeing suspects every day, so the car chases in action films are reasonable. We live in a world where someone like Jeffrey Dahmer can kill and eat 17 people over 13 years, so even the most outlandish horror movie ghouls aren’t really that far-fetched. But the moment you get robots and aliens and futuristic technology involved? Then you’re talking crazy.

That’s why science fiction movies, in order to not be cheesy, need to work twice as hard to keep the audience grounded. Instead of just using our time period, sci-fi filmmakers have to create an alternate time period and, indeed, a whole new world for their characters to inhabit, from the bleak dystopian future of Blade Runner to the sterile white nightmare of Logan’s Run. Once you’re invested in creating this world and its technology, you can go about telling the story you want to tell with all the frills the audience likes. Everything from types of food to modes of transportation have to fit the new futurescape, otherwise the audience never buys into the story and doesn’t care about the inevitable awesome climax.

Audiences like tension, they like a sense of danger and urgency, and audiences LOVE big, expensive explosions. Sci-fi movies deliver massive kabooms in spades, and io9 has a great list of their favorite science fiction movie ship self-destruct sequences. In an action movie, the heroes will wreck a sports car while stopping the bad guys. In horror movies, things (and people) explode all the time. In sci-fi movies, sometimes you have to blow up an impossibly-expensive star ship to stop the unstoppable alien killing machine.

That’s what heroes do!

Rachel Christie is quite an accomplished young woman.  Or she was, anyway.  At age 21, not only is she in training for the 2012 London Olympics as a heptathlete, she also found some time on her days off to become the first black winner of the Miss England competition.  However, while she might still represent […]

The 2009 inductees for the National Toy Hall of Fame have been announced, and this year’s class of honorees is the direct opposite of last year’s class.  Where the 2008 version required a lot of imagination to wring the most fun out of them, 2009’s hall of fame class requires a lot less thinking and […]

After 13 years on the police force, Terry Ashe has seen and experienced a lot of crazy things.  However, he hasn’t lost his sense of humor, or his ability to tell an appropriately lurid tale.  When his police cruiser was bitten by an angry alligator (apparently this is a common problem in Florida), he could’ve […]

Any time a baby goes missing, a big manhunt breaks out.  Fortunately for 7-month-old Shannon Lea Dedrick, her story has a happy ending.  Unfortunately for Shannon’s mother, Chrystina Lynn Mercer, and babysitter, Susan Elizabeth Brown, the baby’s happy ending will probably get them both jail time.  Shannon was reported missing on Saturday, and was discovered […]

It was a scene worthy of the great Mark Twain; indeed, it was a crucial moment in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer!  A case of mistaken identity allowed a Brazilian man named Ademir Jorge Goncalves to make an appearance at a very unlikely event:  his own funeral.  It’s like something out of a Coffin Joe […]

The champagne is drying in the locker room, and the Bronx is celebrating this morning as the New York Yankees have claimed their 27th World Series championship as the best team in Major League Baseball.  To the victors go the spoils, like rings, a trophy, and a ticker-tape parade through New York’s Canyon Of Heroes.  […]

There’s one thing that’s fun about slot machines.  You put money into them, lights flash and bells ring, and if you’re lucky, you’re a winner and money clinks noisily into the winnings slot.  Most of the time, you don’t get anything but the lights and noise, but Bill Seebeck hit the jackpot.  Literally and figuratively.  […]