Wrong lessons learned

I've come to terms with the fact that I actively enjoy bad movies. This is only up to a point, of course. Still, while I love good movies more, I'm willing to watch really bad ones over and over again. It's the ridiculous aspect that brings me back for more. I can watch outlandish, good movies, particularly comedies, over and over again, too. It's just that most over-the-top movies are bad, not clever. Wet Hot American Summer and Billy Madison are bizarre and great; Red Planet and Demolition Man are bizarre and awful. And I love them all in unique ways.

But watching bad science fiction of late, I realized that I don't get hooked by the plots and adventures and chase scenes and wall-busting fights (unless, as I said, they're utterly ridiculous). Instead, I love learning about the futuristic societies. And judging by the fact that this part of sci-fi movies is almost always fairly minimal, I think the rest of the world isn't as interested as I am.

I mean, if the average man wanted to know more about the political structure in Starship Troopers, I'd expect filmmakers would provide it. After all, the novel of the same name that inspired Starship Troopers contains all kinds of political and social details that were left out. It's a book about a society, not about ridiculously ineffective infantry that have coed showers.

Of course, thinking this way about movies usually takes me off on inappropriate philosophical tangents because I stop caring about the people involved and start watching their world very closely. I take the wrong message away from these movies; instead of marveling at the characters' lives, I wonder how they vote.

I judge sci-fi on the merits of its society. Most of it comes up lacking, which is why I don't read much of it. For every Orson Scott Card or John Varley or Philip K. Dick -- true science-fiction greats -- there are dozens of half-assed hacks who survive as writers because insatiable sci-fi fans must take whatever they can get. Of course, some might not be able to tell the difference, either.

Good science fiction is hard to come by because it demands creating a new society with a new structure and a complete set of rules. Writing contemporary or historical fiction is much easier -- you can just work with the laws, customs, and necessities appropriate to the setting. Inventing a setting means inventing an entire workable, believable culture and explaining it to the reader without being boring. Honestly, that is hard to do.

Sure, you can write a textbook that will communicate everything about an imaginary society, but you have to entertain people to get them to pay any attention. The boring factor is why societal details get overlooked in most sci-fi movies. Most viewers don't care about it and don't demand too many explanations.

One explanation for every three explosions is usually good enough. That's why those special people -- the people who were more interested in the social structure and breeding processes of Brave New World than in the actual characters -- end up watching and wondering and taking away the wrong lessons from most sci-fi.

Take Minority Report. Spielberg spent time and money designing a plausible and thorough future for our country, and I still wanted to know more. I was most curious about the drug Tom Cruise takes. What does it really do? How widespread is it? Was it originally a medicine? Is it grown? Manufactured? Extracted from cocker spaniels?

(That's a great image. Imagine a highly-addictive substance that is only found in the spines of newborn puppies. You'd spot the suppliers walking their breeding stock through Boston Common. Junkies would loiter around pounds, waiting for new arrivals. No self-respecting neighborhood would allow people to give away free puppies anymore. Even having a dog would be suspect. Dog shows would turn into counterculture conventions. Leftist animal-rights activists would ally themselves with right-wing drug enforcers. Do you see why I get tangled up in these movies?)

Or Strange Days. There's a weird following around this James Cameron-written 1995 sci-fi mystery. Some people will tell you that it's fantastic. Thank God I'm here to tell you that they're wrong. What is fantastic, however, is the underlying premise. In this future, you can record your experiences and replay them, making you see and feel everything that you did -- allowing you to re-experience in full any part of your life that you've recorded.

This sparks a black market in recordings because you can also replay other people's experiences. People start robbing liquor stores or murdering people or driving recklessly through traffic just to sell the exciting tape to some uptight businessman in need of a risk-free adrenaline high.

But does the movie focus on the implications of this technology? NO. It's a straightforward serial-murder mystery that regards the mental recordings only as potent pieces of evidence. Imagine the possible effects! How does it affect someone's mental state and emotional development to experience things that he's never done or couldn't do? What kind of normal, non-criminal tapes would be popular? Would people want to see through the eyes of a child or an old man? What about viewing a recording of one of your parents? Do psychologists record their patients in order to understand them better, or would such a recording drive a normal person insane?

While it's not a serious movie on any level, Demolition Man hints at all kinds of changes to society. Sure, they're intended to be funny, but I found them tantalizing. Taco Bell won the "Franchise Wars," and now all restaurants are Taco Bell (albeit of varying levels of class). Toilet paper has been replaced by a mysterious hygienic device consisting of three seashells.

It's a pacifist, Puritanical future, and I hope that no country ever adopts the ideals seen in that version of America. Of course, it wasn't intended as serious social commentary -- at least I hope not, since that didn't really come across -- but as a backdrop for violent match-ups between Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. It was pretty good for that.

I want more details! And I want you to think about it. Question, question, question. If a movie claims that money has been eliminated in the future, can you imagine a plausible way that might happen? Does anyone explain it? If countries have changed names and governments, do you know why and how?

It comes down to this: When you watch a sci-fi movie, do you think about the plot or do you get in philosophical debates? Maybe I'm unusual, but a bad movie with a well-detailed society doesn't seem all that bad in the end.