"Darker and Edgier" is Tired

I'm a science fiction fan. I have R2D2 as my phone notification sounds, an oversized Lego Boba Fett as a bedside clock, and pictures of space as my desktop background. My wife is a science fiction fan as well (she's awesome). I love the idea of exploring new ideas, dreaming about the "could be", and thinking of what the consequences could be of technological progress. New frontiers always interest me.

And at the moment, movies and TV are offering more sci-fi than ever.

But, I'm bored with most of it.

In the 90s, someone came up with the idea of making entertainment "darker and edgier". As a change from the campy stuff that came before, this was probably a good thing. It was an attempt to make fiction more serious, to increase the stakes, and make it more believable. There's nothing wrong with all of that.

Fast forward to now - the middle of the 2010s - and it seems that "dark, angsty, and violent" is the only choice you get. Even if you steer clear of vampires and now zombies (both of which I personally find uninteresting), it still seems that all of science fiction and fantasy is trying to be as violent as it possibly can. Sometimes, this is done well and serves the story (Daredevil is an example of this done very well), but sometimes we want to be entertained without the shock factor being forced on us. Occasionally, I want to have fun, or to learn something new.

There are a few tropes that seem to be present in basically everything now:

• Lots of violence, as brutal as possible, and sometimes gratuitous and unnecessary (remember people, sometimes what you don't show is more effective - did we learn nothing from the first two Alien movies?)
• Characters who are in a constant state of angst towards each other - as if the writer doesn't have a good enough antagonist that they need to create more antagonism between the supposed protagonists? (As an aside, sadly it was probably Joss Whedon who triggered this one - but at least he used it for humour and gave you reasons to like the characters before you had to watch them argue).
• On the subject of humour, a distinct lack of it. Everyone wears the sad, angry face all the time.
• A pervasive pessimism. Zombie fiction is the easiest example of this: it's fearing the future, and fearing either nature or technology. Gone is the "seek out new worlds" optimism of past fiction, replaced with being told that we should be afraid of technology. (One movie that challenged this head-on was Tomorrowland, which I actually enjoyed a lot more than critics said I would, even though I would agree it didn't live up to its potential - but it's commentary about pessimism was on point).
• Often, it's gratuitously "adult" (a euphemism for an adolescent level of maturity when it comes to sex, and story-irrelevant showing of skin).

I don't see fear of the future or fear of technological progress being helpful to anyone. Yes, one of the roles that science fiction has in society is to warn us of what could go wrong, but good science fiction also includes a sense of wonder, of potential, of the hope that we can improve the human condition.

Ok, so having just seen the newest Star Wars movie, I feel like I'm saying "we need to bring balance to the Force" - science fiction can provide both a warning and hope, yet we have only been doing one of these.

While I'm ranting about what I see is wrong with science fiction, I might as well raise my other pet peeve: the "science" in the fiction is often either lacking completely or utterly awful. I will refrain from comment on JJ Abrams' Star Trek reboot, though mainly because if you've seen it, you'll know that its abuse of science is actually spectacular (I think Abrams is maybe better suited to the "magic" world of Star Wars, though even there he did a bit of stupid - seriously, Abrams, go and learn about DISTANCE in space). I heard somewhere that many Americans learned most of what they know about science from Star Trek. I found that comment terrifying, because Star Trek has pretty much never had solid or consistent science (usually it's "insert meaningless technobabble here").

The lack of science in science fiction annoys me because to me it's a sign of lazy writing: you do something stupid that ruins the believability of your world just to serve a plot, instead of letting the plot be shaped by the restrictions of reality. Let the laws of physics cause the problems your characters have to overcome, and have them restricted to using believable solutions.

However, there has been some hope recently: The Martian was amazing. If you have not seen this, then do (or better, read the book, as you will discover that even as great as the movie was, it still takes a few pointless Hollywood liberalities that make the characters look stupider than they should). The Martian was science fiction done right: set up a realistic scenario, have problems arise for real reasons, and have the characters (in this case, mostly only the one character) solve them using their knowledge of science. You can actually learn some science from this movie! This story also gave us reasons to want the protagonist to survive: he was so very human, and he was extremely funny - because you laughed with him, you also cried with him, or felt his frustration when things went wrong. And it did all this without angst between characters, without questionable motivations (seriously, everyone in that movie was a "good guy"!), no unnecessary violence, no sex, and maintaining a sense of optimism.

The Martian hasn't been the only example of science done right: Gravity was another that did it almost as well, and others such as Interstellar weren't bad (Matt Damon seems to have a thing about getting abandoned on lifeless planets). On the TV series side, The Expanse has put a lot into a realistic, believable world, where real physics is an effective plot device - although it does fall foul of being unnecessarily angsty and "adult".

I really hope we learn from The Martian. Give us movies and TV shows where we can learn something, and where the characters aren't horrible people. Make us laugh! Stop being so dour and let us get to like your characters. Again, while Joss Whedon arguably only has about two tricks - which, while good tricks, are starting to get old now too - at least he made the angst funny. For those who are wondering, I see Whedon's two tricks as: (a) have an ensemble cast who are constantly snarky towards each other (usually used hilariously), and (b) kill a beloved character in a shocking and mostly-pointless way (but at least use this to drive the story forward, like he did in The Avengers - making a death meaningful to the story is missing from a lot of character deaths now). In mentioning The Avengers, this is why I think DC Comics have got nowhere recently and Marvel are making everything: DC tries to be angsty, Marvel stays funny. I'm a little surprised the DC folks don't get that - yes, Batman Begins worked brilliantly being dark, but that's Batman; the same is not going work (and didn't) with Superman.

I find the next question is why do we keep seeing the same things being made, but I think the Batman example is why: someone does a movie that is excellent, and so studios (being focused solely on what makes money) try to replicate it. In the process though, the miss the fact that what made money was doing something original - copycats almost invariably suck. Of course, it seems that - given the continued prevalence of "dark and edgy" - that money is still being made off these sort of movies and shows. Maybe this is because we have no other choices, and we want to watch something? Maybe that's actually what audiences want? (In which case, the world has worse people than I thought). I think the reality is that original, interesting, fun stories are going to continue to be rare as long as money-focused studio executives are in control.

So what alternatives do we have? I'm not sure - we could just stop watching stuff that we don't like. But, the problem with that idea is that it means the stupid people end up deciding what gets made, because they'll continue to watch anything (this is my theory on why reality TV is so prevalent: stupid people). I think we are almost at the point where Hollywood studios cease being the source for our media - many of us are fed up with the actions of the media industry anyway (hoisting crap on us and then abusing their customers with DRM and copyright lawsuits), and independent projects are getting good enough now that they rival the quality. I recently saw a Star Trek fan film called Prelude to Axanar, and it was excellent - in my opinion, the effects and cinematography, and even the acting, were better than anything from any of the Star Trek TV series. From a fan film. Yes, it was little more than talking heads, but it left me wanting to keep watching.

Of course the sad thing about me hearing of Axanar was because of the studio suing the fan film, in what can only be described as a complete and utter jerk move (I had trouble phrasing that in non-offensive words). Suing a beautifully-made fan film - who aren't in it to make money - is a level of stupid that I find astounding. And all because the fan film was too good and became too successful (they ran a Kickstarter to fund the film and got $101,000 instead of their target $10,000 - although it is still not being run as a commercial project; the end product will be free). But, the imbeciles at the studio saw nothing but dollar signs and decided to sue. Of all the possible responses, that is the least useful: you alienate your fanbase (i.e. cut off your own air supply). If they felt threatened, there are many ways they could approach this - why not make it canon, turn all the effort (and funding) into a product that you can then market? Why not work with the creators of it? Personally, I think the studio have shown that they do not deserve fan devotion, and the project might as well drop all Star Trek references and make their film its own world (i.e. tell the same story but without any explicit references).

But, the thing that the Axanar debacle shows is that we don't need the studios. Maybe it is time science fiction fans started creating their own stories. Drop the rubbishy bits that someone seems to think we need and create something original. Tell great stories and Kickstarter fund them.

Whatever it is, I'd like to see a change in what's on offer. I'm bored with the "dark and edgy", the hyper-violent, hyper-sexualised, hyper-angsty. It's an old trope and it's tired now, and was probably never necessary - in trying to make stories more "grown up", we've succeeded in making them more juvenile, and are left with characters with no maturity. Let's do something new.