whatever happened to good sci-fi horror movies?

been awhile since i've posted, and i really have no excuse for it. with my unemployment soon to be at an end, it seems like a good idea to take this up again as a way to procrastinate.

so. i watched The Fly a few nights ago. not the old 1950's one, which i kindof want to see now, but 1986's david cronenberg remake starring jeff goldblum and geena davis. first off, a few notes on the movie itself:

1. great makeup effects. maybe i'm just nostalgic for the great makeup of the 80s, but man, it feels like they don't do makeup anymore. CGI is great and all, but for some things, moviemakers should stick with tangible effects. a perfect example of this is the recent trend to use CGI for blood and miscellaneous wounds (they did this in ninja assassin a lot). stick to blood packets and squibs guys; we can tell when that shit is computer generated.
2. geena davis is a freak of nature, and also quite the butterface. 6 foot tall chick in good shape? sounds great. then you look at that 80s frizzy hair and those weirdass cheekbones, and man, just kills the mood.
   
3. jeff goldblum is the man. i could listen to him talk about anything. a perfect example of this is found here (ignore the stupid burger king thing at the beginning).
4. david cronenberg loves to gross you out. i remember watching this movie when i was about 12. my mom was still at work, and my dad made my brothers and i spaghetti. as we're chowing down on glorious italian delights, the scene comes on where jeff goldblum bites off a fingernail and then loses other various body parts. lotta pus in those scenes. thank god we weren't eating vanilla pudding.
5. great music. music can so often make a good movie great. try to imagine star wars, jaws, indiana jones, or saturday night fever (didn't see that one coming, didja) without the music. it just doesn't work. also, sometimes the music is infinitely better than the movie. i felt this way about last of the mohicans (terrible boring movie, possibly some of the best music ever). and yes i know a lot of people love that movie, but they're nuts. anyway, the music in The Fly fits so perfectly with the tension and overall despair of Brundlefly's journey into hell. well done Howard Shore.
   

ok, so that's all i want to say about the movie specifically. the real point of this post is to bitch about current horror movies, specifically the genre of sci-fi horror/thriller. i think back on movies i love in this genre, and all of them came from before 2000. examples: Alien, Event Horizon, The Fly, Species (first saw it when i was 12; take one damn guess why i loved it), The Thing, Mimic, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Terminator, Predator (kinda thriller/horror, since they were being hunted) and probably about a million more that i'm forgetting.

now, post 2000, what do we get? 4, count them, 4 goddamned Resident Evil movies, and every single one is just unfathomably terrible. as long as we're talking about Resident Evil movies, let's just do the whole uwe boll countdown: Alone in the Dark (1 and 2), Far Cry, House of the Dead, etc. also, we got Aliens vs. Predator (garbage) and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (highly entertaining garbage). i had high hopes for Pandorum, and even that one eventually fell through. let us also not forget The Chronicles of Riddick. it seems like pretty much all of the sci-fi horror/thriller movies that came out in the 2000s were pretty terrible.

now granted, there are a few exceptions. Sunshine was awesome, and it had some Event Horizon-esque moments. there are probably more, but i'm blanking on them right now. suffice to say, it feels like the vast majority of these movies now are garbage. so what's the problem with them? aside from the terrible writing, acting, and directing, they just all feel so cliche. there's always darkly lit corridors (stolen from Alien), way too many quick cuts and flashing lights (who the fuck installs strobe lights in a spaceship?), some kind of sabotage (yes, let's man the ship holding the fate of mankind with 3 goddamn people, one of whom is clearly crazy), and usually too neat of a wrapup in the end.

also, there just doesn't seem to be any love for the project. if a studio spends 50 million on a movie, current ticket prices, combined with wide releases, pretty much guarantee that the thing is gonna make its costs back. if you dropped 150 million on a movie back when ticket prices were $3, you really had to be sure it was going to kick ass. otherwise, you end up with Waterworld. also, now they can just tack 3D onto the movie post-production, do a truly shitty job of it (see, e.g., the new clash of the titans), and the movie will rake in an extra $3-5 per ticket. it's a veritable gold mine. so instead of making a movie that actually has to depend on a story, acting, and good direction to pack the seats, we get visual orgies with about as much plot and character development as Debbie Does Dallas (without the bonus of, you know, an actual orgy).

as an example of this point, look up there at the shitty movies i listed, and try to name a GOOD actor or director in any one of those movies. hell, i actually challenge you to name even one actor in any of those movies that isn't milla jovovich or vin diesel. alone in the dark starred christian slater and tara reid, for fuck's sake (and she played an archaeologist!!). the directors are just as bad. by contrast, the good movies of back in the day had actual talent behind them. james cameron did great writing/directing for Terminator, john carpenter did the same for The Thing, ridley scott made a story about space truckers amazing in Alien, natasha henstridge's amazing breasts made Species an instant classic, and even Event Horizon had A-list talent (morpheus AND dr. alan grant from Jurassic Park).

so are those movies from a bygone era, and we're now forced to watch absolutely shitty sci-fi horror/thriller from now on? actually, no. there appears to be hope for the future. ridley scott is doing an Alien prequel (so excited, as the Alien franchise is one of my all-time favorites). another Predator movie (aptly named ... Predators) is coming out this summer. written by Robert Rodriguez and starring topher grace, adrien brody, morpheus, and shane from The Shield. clearly that's an all-star action team right there; you don't fuck with eric foreman. there's also an indie darling called Splice that's supposed to be pretty decent. i'm sure there are many more, but i'm not going to look them up just yet. i don't want to jinx it.

maybe this is a sign of better times to come. maybe i can finally hold my nerd head up high and say that yes, i like science fiction, and i specifically like it when it scares the shit out of me. i think that'll be a good day for america.