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Sunday, February 1, 2026

Keeping the Sabbath With Disaster Movies

I am trying to keep the Sabbath by not doing business or working. I turned on the TV and looked at what Google TV suggested. Somehow, I ended up in a disaster movie category. Some were familiar such as Armageddon.  Many are familiar plot ideas. London is flooding. Mom must escape with her child. 

Way too many involve one maverick professor or grad student trying to save the world from a disaster that has a several hour timeline. 

A few that I started such as 2012: Ice Age start with such horribly overdone dialog and "sciencey-sounding" phrases that i had no hope for something that would entertain me without making me cringe. It really is not that hard to write a sci-fi script that is actually somewhat based on real science.  Pretty clearly, it is very easy to raise money to make several million dollars movies with horrible scripts.

4 comments:

  1. Hollywood has lost the ability to write anything that isn't about Hollywood. It's why all of genre is dead. Science Fiction shows that have burning fire in the vacuum of space. Fantasy shows that have primitive villages whose populations exactly match that of west Hollywood. Disney has lost the ability to do animation.

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  2. Maybe I am just old and cantankerous (well … not maybe) but there are so many recycled movie plots.

    One that is just worn out is retired CIA assassin/special forces operator/cop who retired to quiet life suddenly has to rescue wife/daughter/friend’s daughter and stumbles into secret government plot. There’s a whole subgenre of this where he has incipient dementia that gives him a deadline. Way overworked.

    After Bond, Bourne, Cruise’s Mission Impossible, and Jack Ryan, everything following is dullsville.

    Except RED and RED 2, which are hilarious spoofs. (And filmed before Bruce Willis’s dementia started becoming apparent.)

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  3. To be good science fiction, it must first be good science.

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  4. Thank you for setting the example of keeping the Sabbath.

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