I have a habit of looking over the cheap movie shelf at my local Wal-Mart, just to see if there are any movies that might be interesting. Almost inevitably, low-budget science fiction movies that haven’t even made their way to IMDB catch my eye, and yet these are the ones that are most likely to make it into my cart. I realized at some point, that this was something of an odd habit – why would I go out of my way to pick up what is surely going to be a B movie, when there is a perfectly good movie right next to it at the same price?
After thinking about it, I’ve had a general dissatisfaction with mainstream Hollywood science-fiction for a few years, that has prompted me toward riskier movie buying choices.
In the last decade or so, mainstream Hollywood sci-fi has been inundated with two things: super heroes and action movies with cool special effects. Now, these two things are what have made modern science fiction into something that is mainstream, so I’m not going to disparage them here. In fact, this has been fantastic for the genre because it has allowed some of the smaller budget sci-fi movies to be made that I have really enjoyed. Some of these I’m sure would never have gotten the chance to be made and find themselves onto my shelf without the spike in popularity.
On the other hand, what I really like in a sci-fi is a slower, deeper, plot or story. This makes the selling points of modern sci-fi nearly reversed – I don’t care how big your special effects budget was, tell me how much time and care you spent on story and script writing; If your tag line has anything to do with “non-stop action”, that tells me you may not be spending enough time on dialog or providing the details that make a science-fiction world really immersive and intriguing.
This tends to lead me to the direct-to-DVD movie shelf, where the main-stream expectations and need to appeal to a broad audience to repay millions of dollars is less present. That’s not to say there’s isn’t bad advertising going on (Quantum Voyage had a railgun wielding space marine on the cover), but it is generally less egregious than what’s on the new release shelf. Also, it tends to be less expensive, which means that it’s less of a risk if it’s a flop. Conversely, there’s always the chance that it’ll be laughably bad, which means that it’ll have been worth it too.
Over the years, I’ve gotten some great movies off the low-budget shelf. I consistently find that I end up a focused and unique story, which usually puts it at least a head above other modern sci-fi. Sometimes, it’s laughable in its idiosyncrasies, but I’ve yet to pick up something that was just bad, so it’s a practice I’m likely to continue.