Responding to comments made by LJK:

>I remember up through the middle 1970s, just before Star Wars first
>appeared in theaters in 1977, that wile of course there had always
>been a bad slew of SF films for decades, there were also a few true
>gems, especially in the late 1960s through the early 1970s."

I would argue that the last really good SF flick was Kubrick's "2001". Nothing has come close to it in terms of SF quality. The original "Star Wars" was one of my favorite movies but I would not call it "science fiction" but rather a "space fantasy". Most so called "science fiction" movies are merely "space fantasies". For example the Disney cartoon "Treasure Planet" is an obvious space fantasy. No reasonable person would think it was science fiction. "Treasure Planet" got poor reviews and ended several careers at Disney but wasn't a bad movie IMHO. Good science fiction is very hard to make which is why its so rare.

>Take Dark Star as just one example. Made by John Carpenter and
>Dan O'Bannon in 1975 (O'Bannon would go on to work on Alien in >1979) for the astoundingly low budget of $35,000,

"Dark Star" is a fun flick. It's amazing what can be done with old pie pans and vacuum cleaner parts.

>And as for FX - computer graphics have become so good now
>that it isn't even any more fun to see how well a film did in that
>area.

I just saw "Shrek 2" with my family. The story and plot for the original "Shrek" was slightly better but "Shrek 2" was still fun. The FX for "Shrek 2" are so good that the characters almost look real. I actually found that a bit distracting. It was hard to switch my mind into viewing this as an extremely well made cartoon versus real actors moving in a strange and sometimes jerky manner. Within 5 years they will be able to resurrect Humphrey Bogart and Groucho Marx. I actually don't like the idea of this. It will be a bit like colorizing the old classic B&W movies which was vandalism in my humble opinion. I believe an appropriate use of FX would be in making movies based upon genuine SF, e.g. "Dune", "Ringworld", "Forever Wars", "Foundation Triology", etc.

>Return of the Jedi was the sign of how an already light film series
>was heading down like a Star Destroyer into the rebuilt Death Star.

My theory concerning George Lucas and the degrading qualtiy of "Star Wars" is his ex-wife Marcia Lucas was the brains behind the outfit. Marcia Lucas won an oscar nomination and oscar for her editing work on "American Graffitti" and "Star Wars". An obvious flaw with the latest Star Wars movies is the editing is terrible. People say that Marica Lucas kept George Lucas in line when they made movies together. After they divorced, there was no longer any creative feed back over George Lucas. George Lucas began running "open loop" and his movies went down hill fast.

Gary