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Stupid Science Fiction Cliches ? Can you name some ?

posted a month ago by brux (14840)
32 replies | jump to latest

* Monster aliens, mindless destroyers, or rabid eaters of people who are nevertheless capable or interstellar space flight and high technology.

* Space ships that are really huge cities that come to Earth and hang in the air above our major cities. Imagine how much energy is wasted to do that rather than to just land and sit on the ground, or float in the ocean, or just orbit the planet?

* Alien technology and the insides of their ships. Do they have TV screens or buttons and levers? They always have creepy instrumentation.

* And speaking of creepy instrumentation, they also look creepy. Weird, monstrous, evil, giant teeth, or full of slime. Scarcely better than the monsters in the 1960s movies.

* Robots are always more human than the humans.

The list can probably go on and on ...

[–] rootvegetables (1899) a month ago

* sci-fi movies never take place in the town of Mooseport. A town to which sci-fi creatures would surely be welcome.

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[–] StoneKeeper (28330) a month ago

Man… I thought you’d change your gimmick for the new year.

Apparently not! 🤦‍♂️

[–] rootvegetables (1899) a month ago

I have set upon this course and must now see it through.

[none]

[–] StoneKeeper (28330) a month ago

You must be a persistent person. I’d hire you if I had a company.

[–] rootvegetables (1899) a month ago

Let me know if you ever start a company.

[none]

[–] StoneKeeper (28330) a month ago

I’m not… but I’m looking FOR company.
You busy Friday night?

Wanna watch The Guyver with me?

[–] rootvegetables (1899) a month ago

I just might. Will try. Updates to come.

[none]

[–] 123Guy (7838) a month ago

GET A ROOM, you guys!

[–] StoneKeeper (28330) a month ago

Hey, HEY, HEEYY!!

What are YOU doin’ Saturday night?

🤓

[–] 123Guy (7838) a month ago

Nuttin, honey....

HEY! WAIT I see what you tried to do there

[–] rootvegetables (1899) a month ago

We’re holding off on the room until we watch ‘Brokeback Mountain’.

[none]

[–] 123Guy (7838) a month ago

well. ok.

as long as there is a plan

[–] fourlemons (3606) a month ago

1. At least in the movies I've seen aliens from other planets are always wayyy ahead of us when it comes to technology and travel through the universe. Are we really the dumbest creatures out there?

2. Aliens eat/drink weird looking food/drink. Absolutely nothing looks like what we eat and drink.

[–] brux (14840) a month ago

LOL - yes and often living creatures while they are alive. They have no prepackaged food, or food in bottles or cans!

Its very likely there is no such think as faster than light travel, and any civilization that wants to expand must do so the slow way - generation ships that might take hundreds of years to arrive and colonize a new star system - if that is even possible.

[–] fourlemons (3606) a month ago

I probably should have rephrased what I wrote above and even thought about it as I wrote it. When I said light years ahead I just meant wayyy ahead of us. 😊 (I edited it.)

[–] MaximRecoil (4845) a month ago

"1. At least in the movies I've seen aliens from other planets are always wayyy ahead of us when it comes to technology and travel through the universe. Are we really the dumbest creatures out there?"

If the premise of the movie is that aliens have come here and the setting is present day, then it goes without saying that they will be way ahead of us technologically, since interstellar travel requires more advanced technology than we have.

But there are also movies and TV shows where humans from Earth (usually in a futuristic setting) travel to other planets, and it's not uncommon for them to encounter aliens that are technologically inferior. It happens quite a few times in the various Star Trek series for example.

[–] fourlemons (3606) a month ago

Yes, understood. That's why I started with "at least in the movies I've seen" and I would extend that to TV shows, as well. I have not watched Star Trek but have seen clips with "inferior aliens".

[–] samoanjoes (58580) a month ago

People/aliens from different planets and galaxies all speak English.

[–] nyctc7 (44104) a month ago

That's the first thing that I thought of.

[–] ShogunofYonkers (78543) a month ago

EVERYONE should speak English or I’ll have nothing to do with them🤬

[–] samoanjoes (58580) a month ago

"Speak English or get out of my galaxy" is the 2097 version of "speak English or get out of my country."

[–] ShogunofYonkers (78543) a month ago

Get off my lawn space alien!

[–] MarkPh (1029) a month ago

Predictions are hard, especially when they are about the future. (Albert Einstein)

Of course there are many elements in scifi movies that make no sense whatsoever, mostly because producers primarily wanted to make a horror movie where scifi was only their secondary goal.
Aside of that there are absurd elements in scifi movies where storywriters got things totally wrong despite trying a good estimate of what the future might look like, but there are also elements where storywriters heavily underestimated the future, i.e. compare the "communicators" they had in Star Trek to our todays mobile phones.

What always strikes me as stupid is that almost all the "Aliens" in almost all the scifi movies must from a scientific point of view be an evolutionary side branch of life on earth.
The body features of all the Alien life are too close to one or another species we know from earth to have evolved on another planet in a different environment.
I.e. that almost all aliens take air and food through the same opening in their bodies, which is an evolutionary flaw of life on earth because it can and does make people as well as animals choke to death on food.

There are a few exceptions, i.e. "The Blob", but for the vast majority of scifi movies producers just didn't have enough phantasy to imagine what life evolved on other planets might look like.

[–] [email protected] (6247) a month ago

A cliche which I am stealing from Jerry Seinfeld…on every planet the society wears the same clothes. They decide on a certain few colors in a jumpsuit and that becomes the outfit everyone wears.

[–] brux (14840) a month ago

That's a good one I have not heard yet. Same with humans in the future too, they all wear uniforms of some kind.

[–] jriley555 (8543) a month ago

That aliens could :

breath our air
eat our food
mate with us
get here in the first place
not want to take over (in a BIG way)

[–] ShogunofYonkers (78543) a month ago

There seems to be a shortage of railings in the Star Wars universe even though the characters are thousands of feet up.

*yes, I stole this from The Family Guy😄

[–] samoanjoes (58580) a month ago

That's how I feel about the Batcave.

[–] ShogunofYonkers (78543) a month ago

That’s a poor design build for a billionaire!

[–] jriley555 (8543) a month ago

Rails are for closers. 2d place gets a set of steak knives.

[–] ShogunofYonkers (78543) a month ago

Third place gets tossed thousands of feet into the endless void of space.

[–] mikethemartian (6996) a month ago

Put me on the Cadillac board!