When Science Fiction is an excuse for explosions

There are a group of science fiction movies that feel to me as if their primary reason for being science fiction isn't because of any interest in the genre of science fiction but because it gives them interesting new ways to blow things up.

There is nothing wrong with this. I enjoy a good action movie on occasion but putting it into the same genre as movies that rely on the science is a bit problematic.

The best way to tell if it is this type of movie to me is if you could remove the science fiction element and replace it with something else and have very little effect on the movie.

I watched "Eagle Eye" last night and I haven't completely decided if it is one of those movies or not. It's certainly more action movie than science fiction movie but the science fiction element is driving forward the story to some extent, but you could have largely replaced the science fiction element with the director of defence and besides some of the action being less plausible it wouldn't have changed anything.

Part of this comes from them wanting a big reveal on their villain. This may even work for people who have watched and read less science fiction than me but I saw it coming from about 5 minutes into the movie. The problem is that this means that the first half of the movie has almost no science fiction element, just odd things that happen.

In the end it's Science fiction and a reasonably good movie but I also don't think that it's made by people who care about science fiction or people who want an excuse to blow things up but as an action movie it was just fine.