Let’s talk signs your scifi story sucks. If Jeff Foxworthy were a scifi nerd, he’d do a ‘your scifi story might suck’ bit on the Blue Collar Comedy tour. But he didn’t so, somebody’s got to protect nerds and geeks’ hard-earned dollars and geek time. I’m always looking for well-told, undersung scifi stories to champion and somebody recommended ‘Fast Color,’ on Amazon Prime. Naturally, this movie has a lot going for it on paper, but after 90 minutes I was reaching for the remote. Fast Color *had* a lot going for it, but common story-killing mistakes prevented this otherwise-heartful movie from being a standout success.
Don’t worry, this isn’t ‘hate on Fast Color’ day – I’m using this moment to make a point. If we can watch or read scifi and see some important signs that it sucks, that helps all of us. Understanding what makes a story suck helps our stories not suck. You with me?
Okay, so back to Fast Color – what went wrong? Why did Fast Color fail to make the cut? It’s not just this movie – a lot of streaming movies have great ideas but horrible execution (Looking at you, Vast of Night). I narrowed down the list to five simple signs your scifi movie will suck. Understanding this helps us in our craft, and provides valuable feedback for other storytellers. Ready? Here we go:
1. If I’m asking ‘Why would that even happen?’
Fast Color starts out with a dramatic premise – ‘In the future American Midwest, where it has not rained for eight years,’ and my first reaction is ‘okay … why?’ FC’s mistake here is the same as every other zombie / Quiet Place / Bird Box series where the entire story hinges on the mechanics of a fantastical McGuffin. Ooh, ooh – we all have to be quiet because the aliens who just happened to arrive on meteors can
- breathe our atmosphere
- just happened to be able to kill everybody
- are still vulnerable to a low-budget MacGyver solution like high-freqency noise through a kids cochlear implant
- somehow the US military with all their anti-crowd high frequency audio tech were powerless to stop them?
Shut up and take my money! I’m sure you can hear my sarcasm – your story McGuffin better make sense, otherwise you’re wasting my time. I’m not here to unravel your logical tautologies.
2. If your characters have no personality outside the plot
The 100 is a show based on a YA novel where a hundred juvenile delinquent kids are dropped onto a post-nuclear apocalypse Earth and hilarity ensues! In seven seasons, The 100’s characters didn’t experience any personality outside of the ‘Okay, we get it – the world is a different place now’ main story arc. That’s fine, if you want to spend a couple hours on it, but seven seasons of soap-opera love triangles and ‘our definition of a “good person” might not be as simple as we think it is?’ There’s more to life!
3. If I’m looking for a cup of tea five minutes into the movie
In The Vast of Night, we follow a teenage disc jockey and his friend through the diagetic storytelling of a high school b-ball game, a new tape recorder, and their jobs at a local radio station. Where other movies create compelling versimilatude (Super 8), TVON bores us to tears with overlong camera shots, intentional glances, and meaningless pauses in action within the first five minutes. I got up and made myself a cup of tea while waiting for something to happen – I shouldn’t be doing this in the first 5 minutes of your movie. The lesson learned? Make something happen – something better be happening to keep my attention.
4. If you string us along with flashbacks
Fast Color isn’t the only movie that mishandles flashbacks (Looking at you, A-Team and Dial of Destiny). Never mind that – can’t we get on the same page about what flashbacks are for? Definitively, flashbacks ‘add depth and context to the narrative, offering a better understanding of the characters’ backgrounds or the story’s central conflict.’ How does your flashback make sense if it doesn’t connect the dots back to the main story? Forcing us to wait to the end for the payoff? It’d better be an amazing payoff, that’s all I have to say. And I’m saying it because a lot of times, it was just a placeholder to force me to wait until the end of the story to find out ‘oh, they have a bad relationship.’ We already figured that ou in the first five seconds when Mom and daughter stare at each other like two gunslingers at the OK Corral. Storytelling is like set design – you can spend as much or as little as you want – but when I look at it, it better be beautiful. 0/5 Stars for bad flashbacks.
5. If ‘The Secret’ holds your story hostage
Going back over twenty years, the Tobey MacGuire Spiderman’s had amends to make when it came to holding THE ENTIRE MOVIE HOSTAGE TO THE SECRET THAT HE WAS SPIDERMAN AND/OR LOVED MARY JANE. In fact, it never got better UNTIL he told Mary Jane and Harry that he was Spiderman. 95% of the first movie’s plot ran on the fact that he didn’t tell the truth when he could or should have. I’m still salty about it, twenty years later. It’s why I had little patience for Avengers: Infinity War when they ‘couldn’t tell Peter that Thanos killed Gamora, and then of course they do and Peter loses it exactly as they predicted. The secrets in those stories propelled or paused the story as necessary, and were only revealed when they move the story forward. That’s emotional terrorism – I know the secret is holding the story hostage. Don’t do that.
Am I painting a sufficient picture for you? I don’t like sucky scifi stories. I shouldn’t be able to sublimate your tale into a whimsical quip. You’re smart, I’m smart, you’re present, I’m present – let’s be honest and authentic in our storytelling.
To wind this up, I’ll do a Foxworthy-esque send-up of sucky scifi stories – see if any of these look familiar to you:
You Might Be a Sucky Scifi Story If …
- If the world-building is just you telling the story in a voiceover … you might be a sucky scifi story
- 95% of the budget went to music and actors, three percent two VFX, and .25% on the script … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If you’re releasing a move in 2025 with 1995 VFX … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If OpenAI refuses to steal your story … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If somebody asks if you ‘wrote it with AI’ and you say ‘no’ and then they go ‘…oh.’ … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If the plot’s thinner than the girlfriends’ space-bikini … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If the log line is ‘If you liked X, you’ll love Y!’ … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If you phone in a lazy script because you’re a billion-dollar franchise … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If the plot is a ‘trope laundry pile’ … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If all the good scenes are in the trailer … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If the biggest buzz about your movie comes from the cross-promotion popcorn bucket … you might be a sucky scifi stor
- If I have to dig three pages into Tubi to find your movie … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If Youtube offers to show your movie with no ads … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If Screenrant calls you an ‘underrated gem’ fifteen years later … you might be a sucky scifi story
And finally, the biggest sign … you might be a sucky scifi story
- If you have to ask ‘does my story suck?’ … you might be a sucky scifi story
Thanks folks, I hope this helps you identify some signs your scifi story sucks. Let’s all help each other suck less.
