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In Praise of the Sci-fi Corridor
brumgrunt writes "Technically a corridor in a science-fiction movie should just be a means of getting from one big expensive set to the next, and yet Den Of Geek writes lovingly of the detailed conduits in films such as Alien, Outland, Solaris and even this year's Moon by Duncan Jones."
What's mostly wrong with the corridors in Stanley Donen's Saturn 3 (1980) is that the floor-surfaces resemble the base floor of a movie studio, something which had plagued the corridors in the medium-budget Star Wars three years earlier (more on Star Wars corridors in a moment).
The movie that has an opening fight sequence in a corridor and later corridor after corridor on the death star followed by another fight sequence in a prison block corridor only leading up to the-equivalent-of-Jesus getting lightsabered in half in a corridor adjacent to a docking bay .... and you say "more on Star Wars corridors in a moment."
And the second movie? Hoth ice corridors. IV, V & VI are so dependent on corridor shots.
Did you mean to say "The Corridors of Star Wars article will be out later today with a 58 page thesis on the strength of corridor running and combat between rebels and imperials in the Star Wars cinema"?
My work here is dung.
He's not saying the future shouldn't have conflict, he's saying that future doesn't need to always emphasize how horrible EVERYTHING will turn out to be.
That's why people like Star Trek movies, they have conflict, but at the same time, they point out that the future can be bright, technology can be helpful, people can be happy and life is worth living.
Back to the main topic, corridors - they are cheap for filming. That probably influenced the reason to use them more than a necessity in "Sci-Fi" films. I recommend Cube if you'd like to see the minimalist set (hint: it's a cube and not a corridor).
Any movie with a soundtrack by Queen is automatically one of the best movies ever made.
>>>Would you pay to see a story about a guy who went about his day in the future and didnt have any problems
No but that doesn't mean you have to go extreme either. I thought the best Science Stories were those that took ordinary genres, but set them in the future:
- Elijah Baley - a detective solving a murder in the year ~3,000
- Tekwar - a detective solving crimes in ~2020
- The Road Must Roll - a worker strike in the year ~2050
- I Robot - a collection of short stories where a household appliance (robot) goes haywire, and the engineer's attempt to find why the problem happened.
And so on. Science stories are best when they are tied to reality. It doesn't have to be some "nightmarish reality" to quote the grandparent..
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Well, once you invent artificial gravity, you're back to having to have dedicated floor space for walking, standing, sitting, etc. And when your habitat expands beyond just a six person capacity with everyone knowing everything, to a large community where people have specialized tasks, you will probably not want to have everything just sitting out in the open like that for people who don't know what they are doing to accidentally bump things on their way by and not know how to correct it. And when your habitat grows beyond just a few small rooms, you will have to have dedicated travel (dare I say it?) corridors, that are just that, corridors.
When your entire environment is very small and contains a very few smart, well-trained people, you can make use of every available space like they do on the ISS.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
You have never been on a submarine have you? Space ships have a lot in common with submarines.
Yes, because no one would mind people walking through their work space. Who cares if one get's jostled by someone passing through while one is performing a delicate and/or dangerous step in a procedure or experiment?
Yes, because no one would mind people walking through their living and sleeping space at all hours of the day and night. I am sure those people on night watch won't mind have their sleep disturbed ever few minutes.
Those corridors connect rooms together. They are hallways. No corridors, and you end up with one huge room which will result in no privacy, a huge waste of air, and is wonderful vulnerability because it takes just a hole or two to kill everyone on the ship.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I don't think that catastrophe sci fi is anti-science, I just think it's easier - it's the 'disaster movie' equivalent.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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