What Good Sci-Fi am I missing?
POSTED BY: Calhoun
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 5, 2026 07:08
VIEWED: 27121
PAGE 14 of 15
I know Stanislaw Lem as a writer but never heard of the movie 'The Congress' it sounds like something that could be remade, Lem was a good write5r exploring space and science and ideas including philosophy, futurology, and social commentary or literary criticism, he seemed to be a man of his time and era with clever Polish criticism of the Soviet Union hidden within works that authority might have over looked...can his books and message translate into today...maybe so
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Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
I know Stanislaw Lem as a writer but never heard of the movie 'The Congress' it sounds like something that could be remade, Lem was a good write5r exploring space and science and ideas including philosophy, futurology, and social commentary or literary criticism, he seemed to be a man of his time and era with clever Polish criticism of the Soviet Union hidden within works that authority might have over looked...can his books and message translate into today...maybe so
I've never heard of him before. I'm not going to hold this movie against him.
There really is a good idea under all the crap, but it needs to be told better. Much better.
I'm not sure if he wrote the idea of sniffing a drug that puts you into "Cartoon Land" or if that was added after the fact, but even if it was his idea that should probably just be changed to living inside the internet instead. Maybe when he wrote that it was a revolutionary idea at the time, but it is just a ridiculous notion in current year. I could see drugs still being part of the experience, but maybe when people are immersing themselves in "virtual reality" online instead of living in the real world the devices they hook themselves up to can administer a regular level of drugs that keep the subject immersed in the fake reality.
People are flying all around and when they're screwing each other their bodies twist all out of shape and become one being and all sorts of weird shit. How would that translate to the "real world", is the question you'll have when the main character gets out of "Cartoon Land" and sees what the real world and its inhabitants really look like after being stuck in there for decades. Why aren't their dead bodies everywhere from people who thought they could fly? Or any countless other causes of death that these cartoon avatars would have experienced in real life by doing stuff while they're drugged out of their mind and real-world physics are still an issue.
I remember the general feeling of loathing I had while watching Cool World for the first time. Watching The Congress was 10 times that feeling. It was just an awful, awful watch.
In one way, I feel this already got a remake with Pantheon. I told my old man as much after we were finished watching it. There is actually quite a bit of overlap between the two, and Pantheon does it much, much better.
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Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.
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Rumors of an AI remake of 'Back to the Future' for a while now
Doc Brown's Dark Backstory, Hidden By 'Back To The Future,' Explained
He Was A Scientist On The Manhattan Project
https://screenrant.com/back-to-the-future-doc-brown-nuclear-dark-backs
tory-explained/
and Aliens franchise recently remade
Ridley Scott contemplated a very different ending for Alien, one that likely would have killed the franchise before it started
https://www.slashfilm.com/1441564/alien-alternate-ending-disturbing-ex
plained/
Timothy Olyphant's New Post-Apocalyptic Anime Series Hailed As One of Netflix's Best
https://collider.com/netflix-anime-terminator-zero-reviews/
'Terminator Zero'
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've never heard of him before. I'm not going to hold this movie against him.
It's possible you know him without knowing him, Polish but also seen as a social commentator and a critic of the USSR. He had influences on video gamer and SimCity, the Theme Hospital City-building game was another partly inspired by Lem's short story "The Seventh Sally" in The Cyberiad, he had an influence on Stellaris they say Multiplayer Xbox Playstation video game Lem and Tarkovsky are said to influence Interstellar or Grimdark films such as 'Event Horizon', he also did a science fiction/detective/thriller novel, scifi, film noir, Kafkaesque themes.
Personally I would think there is a possible influence on the Alien or Aliens franchise the paranoia and visuals while in space, there is humanism but also Malcontent, Darkness, Misanthropism but the aliens franchise is also very unique and its own thing.
I would like to read the original book, Rather than see what the Director interprets as 'Cartoon Land' what if this other movie was about being Manipulated scared like Bosch or The Scream is a composition by Norwegian Munch buzzed by the sounds of the city, nightscape and countryside like a Van Gough painting, glowing Stars of Night, everyone booze or stoned or cheap vodka available and they put Valium in the water.
You might know 'Solyaris' 1972 film or the Hollywood remake
a drama but also a Cosmic Horror Story the Alien is Vague and Inscrutable Alien it turns out Aliens can be Giant Living Cells an Ecosystem of its own, Living World the Gaia hypothesis has since become a thing an idea that the Earth is a self-regulating complex system
https://aliens.fandom.com/wiki/Ego_the_Living_Planet
a Living Planet he wrote this before Marvel's EGO in Guardians of the Galaxy.
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A great US writer Philip K Dick hated him though, Stanislaw Lem admired Philip K Dick and translated one of Philip K Dick's books into Polish. Admiration did not go both ways and Philip K Dick felt he was not paid or compensated enough. Dick felt monetarily short-changed by the publisher or some group behind the Iron Curtain he believed Stanislaw Lem was more than one person a movement or a socialist group committee when he found out his name and it was one person, he held Lem personally responsible for lack of payment.
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That's interesting. I've still never heard the name, but I enjoyed Sim-City and a few of its offshoots from time to time as a kid. I was just looking at something regarding that and I saw that Will Wright was inspired Lem's short story "The Seventh Sally" in The Cyberiad. I don't know a ton about Wright either, but I've heard his name pop up from time to time over the years. It's amazing how long he's been at it now.
Event Horizon is one of those movies I have really mixed feelings about. It's up my ally and I want to like it, but outside of a few bright spots I really don't enjoy that movie at all. I think it's because of how much gore they show, really. I think In the Mouth of Madness had even darker subject matter, but Carpenter didn't go out of his way to put gore in your face the whole movie and it's just a much more pleasant watch for it. You're able to use your brain and ponder the horror and consider the implications of the character's actions in a movie like In the Mouth of Madness, where you're just constantly getting one awful thing after another thrown in your face for shock value in Event Horizon once it finally starts rolling. I'm not saying it's not effective, since I get very uncomfortable when I'm watching Event Horizon, but that's not an experience I ever long to feel again.
Lawrence Fishburn's "We're Leaving." line alone almost makes the movie worth watching again if you couldn't just watch it on YouTube.
The crazy thing is that the version of Event Horizon that I'm complaining about was censored to hell. We got the "Disney" version of it. When they brought the first cut to the board to get a rating the board told them they had about a billion things they needed to do if they wanted to bring it down to an R rating from an X rating. They removed all sorts of orgy scenes and tons of scenes that were even more gory than what we saw. I'm surprised that cut hasn't been released after all these years, but I think it's better it never sees the light of day.
Quote:
I would like to read the original book, Rather than see what the Director interprets as 'Cartoon Land' what if this other movie was about being Manipulated scared like Bosch or The Scream is a composition by Norwegian Munch buzzed by the sounds of the city, nightscape and countryside like a Van Gough painting, glowing Stars of Night, everyone booze or stoned or cheap vodka available and they put Valium in the water.
This movie was more along the lines of get everyone high enough to forget how miserable life is genre like Huxley's "Brave New World".
I had to admit, I didn't see ANY of that coming during the first full hour of the movie. That was so far out of left field for the movie you were watching when it happened that you're just blindsided with it.
There is a good story in there that could probably be converted into something that would make my all time Top 10 list if it were in the right hands. The cartoon stuff would have to go though. I don't see how anybody could make that work.
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Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.
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19 Best Sci-Fi Fantasy Shows of 2024
https://www.cinemablind.com/best-sci-fi-fantasy-shows-2024/
Fallout was good and X-Men tried to relight the past cartoon glory
Constellation that seems to just be one of those bad memory loss, confused, parts of life are missing type TV series
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Red Dwarf return "might not happen" – star confirms status of new episodes
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/sci-fi/red-dwarf-return-might-not-happen
-exclusive-newsupdate/
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So little scifi on tv
Fear Hits Home in New 'Alien: Earth' Poster
https://collider.com/alien-earth-tv-series-poster/
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coming soon
Dane DeHaan Joins ‘Neuromancer’ Apple TV+ Series
https://deadline.com/2025/03/dane-dehaan-neuromancer-apple-tv-series-1
236331178/
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Cancelled and not cancelled but then un-cancelled to be cancelled, management at studios, is Trek gone the way of Star Wars a dying brand or something to do with having new bosses?
Paramount Canceled 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' by Renewing It for Two Seasons
https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-canceled-two-season-r
enewal/
seems like it got a good run in the end
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