“With Star Wars the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way, towards huge but empty spectacles where the special effects–like the brilliantly designed space vehicles and their interiors in both Star Wars and 2001–preside over derivative ideas and unoriginal plots, as in some massively financed stage musical where the sets and costumes are lavish but there are no tunes. I can’t help feeling that in both these films the spectacular sets are the real subject matter, and that the original and imaginative ideas–until now science fiction’s chief claim to fame–are regarded by their makers as secondary, unimportant and even, possibly, distracting.”

–JG Ballard, 1977.