Star Wars and Jupiter Ascending – A Welcome Return to Space Opera
Space Opera – large, sweeping epic stories set in space — have taken a back seat in recent cinema and TV history, but they’re set to make a welcome return. How will this affect the new Babylon 5 movie?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock — and especially because you’re visiting this website — you’ve probably seen trailers for Jupiter Ascending, the latest offering from the Wachowski Siblings, and have heard a thing or two about JJ Abrams producing Star Wars Episode VII.
If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that you’re probably as excited as I am at the prospect of these two new movies. Jupiter Ascending looks like it has excellent production values as well as an intriguing plot, whilst expectations are running high for the new Star Wars — and hopefully a return to former glory too.
Flavour of the Month
Space Opera hasn’t exactly been flavour of the month in sci fi circles of late, and I’m not quite sure why that is. Perhaps since people believed that the space race was well and truly over, and with more pressing concerns in the immediate vicinity, space opera failed to find relevance.
I think that’s a shame. Movies like Jupiter Ascending and Star Wars are a good bit of escapism that gives us the motivation to deal with difficult situations in our own lives. And they give us a little perspective too. At least we’re not going to wake up one day to realise that the Sith are still nefariously vying for control of the galaxy, or that you’re a genetic copy of the princess of the universe.
Movies with Plots
But as it seems people are taking more of an interest in space again (dizzyingly terrifying tales of zero gravity disasters notwithstanding) which will hopefully reinvigorate cinemagoers, and prove to the bigwigs at movie studios that people are still interested in the kind of sci fi stories that actually have plots.
And chief among them is Babylon 5. News on that front has been a little hard to come by lately, probably because JMS is gearing up for the release of his new TV series Sense8.