Free The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois Page B

genre movies that did big box-office business this year, although few critical darlings or films thought of as “serious” movies.
    According to the Box Office Mojo site (boxofficemojo.com), nine out of ten of the year’s top-earning movies were genre films of one sort or another (counting in stuff like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as fantasy/SF – Hell, it’s even got aliens! – rather than “action/adventure”, and including animated movies but excluding the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace , which is probably stretching the definition of “genre movie” too far); thirteen out of twenty of the year’s top-earning movies were genre films; and at least twenty-seven out of the hundred top-earning movies (depending on where you draw the lines – and for reasons of my own personal prejudices, I’m not counting horror/slasher/thriller movies) – were genre films.
    In fact, it’s clear that genre films of one sort or another have come to dominate Hollywood at the box-office, producing most of the year’s really big money-makers, and that’s been true for a while now. During the last decade, each year’s top-grossing film has been a genre film of some sort: superhero movies (three of this year’s top-earners are superhero movies, and 2007’s biggest earner was Spider Man 3 , a lesson that I doubt has been lost on the movie-makers), or fantasy/adventures such as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest or The Return of the King , or SF/adventures such Star Wars: The Phantom Menace , or even fantasy movies ostensibly for children such as Shrek 2 or The Grinch Who Stole Christmas . You have to go all the way back to 1998 before you find a non-genre film as the year’s top-earner, Saving Private Ryan.
    Of course, the kicker is, what do you mean by “genre film”?
    Of the year’s top ten highest-grossing films, of the nine that can be considered to be genre movies of one sort or another, three are superhero movies ( The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and Hancock, with The Incredible Hulk finishing in fourteenth place and Hellboy II: The Golden Army finishing in thirty-eighth place); one is fantasy/adventure ( Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull , with the comparable The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian finishing in thirteenth place); four are animated films ( Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, and Dr Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who !, with superhero – sort of – animated feature Bolt finishing in nineteenth place, and The Tale of Despereaux , released at the end of the year, perhaps destined to climb the charts); and one is a glossy vampire/romance movie ( Twilight ). (For those interested, other than Quantum of Solace , the two highest-earning non-genre films were Sex and the City and Mamma Mia !, which finished in eleventh and twelfth places respectively – unless you want to make the somewhat arch argument that they’re fantasy films as well.)
    Like last year, there were almost no actual science fiction films on the list at all, even in the top hundred, let alone the top ten. The closest approach to a real SF film out this year was the animated film Wall-E , which did make the top ten list, in fifth place, in fact, and although its science was a bit shaky (you can’t make an ecosystem out of one plant and one cockroach), for the most part it treated its science fiction tropes with respect and intelligence, and what satiric needling there was at the genre was affectionate. In fact, with its humans who have become so pampered and constantly waited on by machines that they’ve lost the ability to walk, it may be the purest expression of 1950s’ Galaxy-era social satire of the Pohl/Kornbluth variety ever put before the general public. Wall-E itself got treated with an amazing amount of respect for an animated film ostensibly for children, as Ratatouille and The Incredibles had been before it, and is probably the one out of the top-grossing genre