Wait, what?

Back to the Future is sci-fi, pure and simple. It has time travel.

Last edited by Jimmy B (2011-01-25 23:37:29)

Oh, so you've stopped claiming that every sci-fi film is fantasy? Sorry, my bad.

that was pretty much my first post saying that the characters act like characters from a fantasy/ fairytale world.

I was just trying to come up with a definition for fantasy (I repeated this in both posts) and never tried to claim all scifi is fantasy.

I explain this to people as the difference between plot-driven and character-driven stories.

My favourite comparison is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan versus Star Trek: Nemesis: the former has a story pushed along by clearly-defined characters each doing their best in the immediate circumstances in pursuit of larger goals; the latter has muddled ciphers tramlining through a cocktastically insulting plot that was desperately cookie-cuttered from Wrath of Khan itself.

Yeah, by plot-driven, I mean that the character's decisions are not flowing from who they are, what they believe and what they need right now, but apparently arbitrarily, according to what the next scene in the story requires them to have done by then. Sure, the writer will probably have had a plot in mind when crafting the characters, but it has to seem like the characters are in charge of their own destinies for it to be character-driven to me.

My experience of analyzing stories is that, written well, characters pull every compelling story along, and the plot only becomes apparent when you back at the tracks they left. Whereas, those stories that fail have the bones of the plot sticking out like ribs on a supermodel. I can't think of a movie, off-hand, whose story could be fairly described both ways.

I don't think he was saying they were equally valid in the first place.

Yeah, I think we're on the same page, I'm just asserting my opinion to make sure everyone knows how big my dick is.

8===============>

Where 1 "=" = your penis

Your dick is plot-driven.

You generally don't consider yourself to be that type of person, all the way up until the moment you totally are.

There are tons of relationships in, oh say, TNG that absolutely don't work for me, that might work for you.  I recognize that this ultimately boils down to preference as opposed to some mythical litmus test that definitively distills good from bad. 

Again, I barely have a dog in this fight.  Spider Man 2 is not going to be the film I go down swinging for.  But it's worth recognizing your hate for this movie has become self aware and spawned an engine of perpetual motion that cannot be dissuaded from its supposition of this movie sucking, irrespective of wether or not the performance of two actors simply "works," for someone else or not.

p.s. For the record, every time Tasha Yar and Data's "love affair," got referenced as evidence of Data being more than machine, I wanted to knock the books out of Star Trek's hands and pants it in front of the entire gym class.

Yes, that's why I used the word "generally."

People are not entitled to be wrong.

[serious face!]