Needs just a little touch of humanity

My last blog mentioned the types of Sci Fi that I have enjoyed over the years. To recap, I cant get into all of that CGI heavy stuff, as much as it helps, and as realistic as it can sometimes appear, Just pouring tons of that stuff into a film doesnt do it for me.

I mentioned why I liked District 9 more than James Cameron's Avatar. Both of them had stories to tell at its core, but Avatar was more like cotton candy to me. It was all fluff and flash, courtesy of all the damn CGI involved. District 9 at least relied on a more grittier, realistic feel. The special effects when used where more of a service to the film than a hinderence. And that's the thing about CGI, if used correctly, it can compliment a film. I look at it as ketchup. Ketchup is meant to compliment and add an extra zing to the fries. It's not supposed to overwhelm and drown the damn things.

But there are other aspects to a good Sci Fi franchise, and this applies to both film and novels. I'm a two sided man now. As a teen (and I spoke of this in an earlier blog) I sat through just about any action or sci fi film that crawled out of the creepy darkness that was the 1970s and 80s and although there were some good ones, whoo boy there was tons of crap. I sat through all of them, cuz I wasn't exactly looking to have my mind stimulated back then. I needed a decent plot, kick ass characters, tons of explosions and gun fire, and every once in a while, character development.

Now that I am older, I can do with more of the plot and interesting characters. I can sit through a film or go through a book that doesnt have tons of action per page or chapter, or minute after minute of big screen gunfire. I can work with a decent mix.

I would choose films like the original Star Wars franchise, E.T., the first Poltergeist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, classics all, over the present day color and sound orgies that we deal with presently. I could not sit through Cloverfield or Independence Day because I felt that there were things missing there.

(Cloverfield had no characters for me to cheer for. I was somehow hoping they'd all get stepped on. Independence Day was a flat movie for me because it was one sided. I felt no awe or interest in the alien invaders. They could have been coming to our planet for pizza or a concert or something. Their motivations were muddled and boring at best)

If you look at all of the classic films that I have chosen you see that they have one thing in common; simply interesting human characters. A little humanity interspersed with explosions and chase scenes make any fictional work highly interesting.

I could have kept the entire first tale of A Distant Battlefield on the home planet of Garian, but i felt that it was important that I bring the conflict to the familiar territory of our world. I carefully crafted every Earth character that i introduce to have their own set of interests conflicts and suspicions. I bounce these characters off each other and then see if they can eventually merge into a singular organism that can survive and cooperate for simple survival.

A Distant Battlefield Is a Sci-fi based story which basically asks whether people of different ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds can come together, put aside their general every day suspicions and hatreds of each other and survive as a group?

Simple.