Every image, sound, and performance is supposed to fit, producing a work comparable to the 19th century masterpieces of European painting and literature. The "white elephant" represents coherence. In the 1960s, critic Manny Farber described the tension through a contrast between "white elephant" and "termite" art.
The result has all the defects of the genre, including flat characterization and absurd dialogue, with few of the rewards. Once the genre where anything could happen, science fiction now tends to the high budget, high technique, and infinitesimally low risk. Instead, the problem lies in the transformation of science fiction and its cousins into the kind of seamless confection they were once pitted against. That's a realm worth exploring, rather than dismissing. Like musicals, another genre that's enjoyed a recent renaissance, science fiction is not bound by the laws of physics or logic.
Often derided as kids' stuff, imaginative genres help us think through situations and aesthetics that would otherwise seem ludicrous. It's not entirely fair to judge by previews, but the directors' other work suggests they'll be technically accomplished, crushingly loud, deeply serious, and utterly boring. There's a problem, though: Both films look terrible. The Matrix Resurrections is the fourth installment in a franchise that helped kick off the trend. Dune is the first installment of a third attempt at Frank Herbert's classic novel, which has already been filmed once as a feature and once as a TV miniseries. That shift helps explain the buzz about two releases this fall. With the audiences for adult drama shrinking, superheroes, spaceships, and monsters rule. Recent decades have seen an explosion of science fiction and fantasy. The 1970s yielded a new kind of thriller that mirrored the paranoia of the post-Vietnam era. The 1930s demanded effervescent spectacles that kept us laughing through the Depression. When politics or the economy don't give much reason to celebrate, Americans turn to the screen.
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