Why has there been so few space battles in cinema?

There are lots of ways to do space battles that owe nothing to ww2 movies and SW, but nobody is making really good space war movies. Instead you get retreads like WC that just reuse the SW look, which never was credible to start with, even if stylistically it worked for viewers. Even STARSHIP TROOPERS was very ww2 like. On tv DS9 did some good space battle stuff, but that was mostly after they switched from miniatures to cg unfortunately.

Good script + proper approach to fx WILL result in a space battle picture that completely removes SW from your minds. just a matter of time.

 

There are some interesting ones in TV Sci-Fi... Stargate SG-1 has some interesting things, as does Battlestar Galactica.

 

Starship Troopers didn't have any ship-to-ship combat (unlike the book), neither did Independence Day.

 

On tv DS9 did some good space battle stuff, but that was mostly after they switched from miniatures to cg unfortunately.

Well, that was all about cost obviously. Although if I'm not mistaken, they did get away with putting together two absolutely huge battles using miniatures. One was the battle where the Klingon fleet attacks the station (so many ships, they actually used Klingon Bird-of-Prey Christmas tree ornaments for far off ships), the other, the Tal Shiar/Obsidian Order attack on the Founders homeworld - they used mirrors to multiply the number of visible ships. Pretty damn clever if you ask me.

 

yeah, the kling attack on the station is still my favorite trek sequence, action inside and outside.

Too bad economics for the most part ruined the art of employing miniatures and motion control. Even films that do use them now often mess up a well shot film element in the comp phase, tweaking so much it makes it seem like it was cg.

 

technically there would be no sound or explosion

Well, there actually is sound in space, human ears just aren't sensitve enough to detect it. As for explosions, if their was oxygen in a space craft and it ignited upon being hit by blasts from another ship, there could very well be a small poof of a fiery explosion coupled with physical parts of the ship being propelled away from the ship's general location because of the force of the explosion.