It’s a slightly click-baity title, but as we’re still generating more content for our magazines, this one included, why not?
My Sci-fi unpopular opinion is that 2001: A Space Odyssey is nothing but pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. I’ve tried watching it multiple times and each time I have absolutely no patience for the pointless little scenes which contain little to no depth or meaningful plot, all coalescing towards that 15 minute “journey” through space and series of hallucinations or whatever that are supposed to be deep, shake you to your foundations, and make you re-think the whole human condition.
But it doesn’t. Because it’s just pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. Planet of the Apes was released in the same year and is, on every level, a better Sci-fi movie. It offers mystery, a consistent and engaging plot, relatable characters you actually care about, and asks a lot more questions about the world and our place in it.
The newest Robocop movie was actually REALLY good,
as probably the best prediction of how we will start with autonomous robots in the battlefield being sidekicks to a prime human operator,
and that there will be a public push back about them being deployed in a police manner, but a political push to deploy them in a civilian theatre.
And when the majority of someone’s body is replaced by artificial limbs/organs/etc. At what point are they still human.
The Cyborg of Theseus?
Both it (and the original) also raise the subtle question of, if cybernetics are owned by a business, at which point are they considered a person in their own right, or just another piece of company property?