Monday, November 02, 2009

Science Fiction Movies.

There have been a slew of science fiction movies this year. Well, good science fiction, in my opinion. Three of them are noteworthy: Star Trek, District 9, and Moon. I just saw "Moon" last night at the dollar theater. I'm starting to count the days until Avatar is released. It will be as if I am watching a science fiction movie, in what used to be a science fiction manner. I will be watching it in a high resolution format, probably, in the new 3-D, and it was shot with High-Definition 3-D cameras. Not to mention, it has state-of-the art visual effects, it is the most expensive film of all time, and it is coming out in the year 2009. Who would have thought? Well, there are some big incredible effects movies coming out this holiday season, including 2012 and The Lovely Bones. This year is stuffed with computer visual effects.

But, as always, it is never the visual effects that make the movie. Even though the visual effects in all of the movies I mentioned above are state of the art. It is always the dynamic story that makes the movie good. Notice I did not mention Transformers? Star Trek was a big budget movie with a studio backing it. Because it focused on brining those characters and themes about star trek that everyone loves, it succeeded. Moon and District 9 are different though. They are basically independent movies with a huge following. The visual effects in both of these films are just as seamless as those in Star Trek. The only difference is, there are bigger and larger moments in Star Trek and thus more FX are needed.

Moon
follows the story of a man who works on the moon by himself. He is basically a maintenance man for the machinery on the moon. These machines are responsible for harvesting an Element from the moon to fuel the earth's resources. He deals with the struggle of loneliness and missing his wife and kid. There is a robot who is played by Kevin Spacy who is his support. This robot gives an equally compelling and creepy performance as Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey.