Space Opera

The Space Opera is an interesting sub-genre of Science Fiction because in a sense it legitimizes Sci-Fi as a genre. The way I see Space Opera is a standard drama film, just set in space. This makes it more accessible to a larger audience, rather than having to find its niche. Take Forbidden Planet: it is a classic narrative about people battling evil, with a subplot of romance. Anyone can watch the film and relate to it, without having to know any of the tropes of science fiction.

Another way of phrasing this is that Space Opera uses the Science Fiction genre as a setting, but pulls tropes from other genres for the plot. At its core, Forbidden Planet is more of a drama/romance than it is a sci-fi. However, this does not mean that Space Opera is undeserving of being classified as sci-fi. We need Space Opera to bring sci-fi to the mainstream, or else niche movies would never be funded.

An example of this would be the Space Opera The Martian. This novel had such broad appeal that it was adapted into a successful feature film. The story, by Andy Weir, used the science fiction genre as a setting, but the core of the story was about a man struggling to survive, a primal instinct we can all relate to. In the story, the protagonist, an astronaut and botanist named Mark, is stranded on Mars and has to survive on his own by growing crops and finding ways to communicate with NASA. This is a standard wilderness survival story, like Castaway, Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies, and other classic examples. I think that contributes to the commercial success of the book and movie. If Mark were battling aliens or had special powers, the story becomes less accessible and though it caters to avid sci-fi fans, it would not have had the widespread appeal that made it famous.