But first - this. Below is a still I saw ages ago in a magazine article about the forthcoming Star Wars prequel (you know the one I mean – the one that was so bad it made your shit itch):
Bigger image here. Ewan MacGregor in the guise of a rained-on Noel Edmonds, acting badly in a bad film. What interested me was the rain - it struck me that, fantasy/sci-fi being what it is, this scene must take place on a planet where it always rains.
A month or so later, as I walked out of the cinema in a cascade of obscenities and disappointment, I was at least gladdened to have been proved right - Obi Wan had visited the World of Always-Rain.
My question is - what property of fantasy/sci-fi made this predictable? Why would we think (or why did I think) that a planet of constant rain is appropriate to the genre, but a passing rain shower not?
If you can't ascribe a believable character to your characters, you can try to ascribe it to their environment.
ReplyDeleteMore seriously, I suppose those genres always involve people's dealing with the special challenges of environments different from our own. Desert-World & Snow-World are rather more striking than Tuesday-in-Margate-World though, so you're right to pick on this latest instance as a sign of exhaustion.