Category: science fiction

Gattaca (1997)
Written & Directed by Andrew Niccol

During my college years, I knew a couple of people that loved Gattaca. My first time watching it was around 2005, and I have to say I wasn’t left highly impressed. There has always been something empty about the film that I don’t think was intentional. That said, it has undoubtedly had a significant influence on science fiction films that have come out since, mainly with aesthetics. I think the themes of the movie don’t get explored in a way that feels satisfying. The ending feels like a bit of a letdown, and I don’t think the characters’ arcs are resolved in ways that make sense. 

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They Live (1988)
Written & Directed by John Carpenter

By the end of the 1980s, John Carpenter had grown increasingly furious with how Ronald Reagan had transformed America into a capitalist’s wet dream. Houseless populations were rising while corporate profits skyrocketed. He saw Reaganomics and its acolytes as aliens from another world, harvesting humanity for its labor and resources, leaving a dried, empty husk. Carpenter started to pay closer attention to marketing and saw the embedded consumer propaganda that underlies everything, pushing people to constantly spend money on things they didn’t need. An encounter with a Universal Studios executive who didn’t see a problem with selling out because “everyone does” served as a significant catalyst for Carpenter to make this film. The result is cult classic and science fiction masterwork.

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Predator (1987)
Written by Jim Thomas & John Thomas
Directed by John McTiernan

After the release of Rocky IV, a joke went around Hollywood that he’d run out of people to fight. His next opponent should be an alien. Brothers Jim & John Thomas decided to bang out a script inspired by this joke. The original script, titled Hunter, featured a band of alien hunters from various species hunting down targets. This was revised and refocused to one alien hunting down a group of human soldiers. It was initially envisioned as a pulpy low budget science fiction picture, but producer Joel Silver saw it as a perfect follow-up to his recent Commando with Arnold Schwarzenegger. John McTiernan was hired to direct, having only made one previous film. Predator would be his studio debut and would lead to one of the career-defining action films of the era.

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Videodrome (1983)
Written & Directed by David Cronenberg

Few voices in science fiction and horror are as unique as David Cronenberg. He often makes films that are intentionally complex and reality-bending enough to confound audiences. Videodrome is a masterpiece of body horror touching on the themes Cronenberg found most fascinating during this part of his career: sexuality and the inner development of humanity. We’re thrust into a world like ours but where reality is slightly off from the start. It’s never clear if this is the near future or an imagined present. This lack of detail about when this happens is precisely what the film needs to exist in an uncanny space as it tells its story of humanity’s psychic transformation at the hands of mass media.

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Fantastic Planet (1973)
Written by René Laloux and Roland Topor
Directed by René Laloux

One of the most challenging things in science fiction is appropriately conveying the alien-ness of another world. So often, writers lean into cliches or just create bland, uninteresting worlds. Think of the lifeless creatures from Independence Day or the generic Grays that populate so much of science fiction. It always stands out when a filmmaker makes me feel like I am experiencing a culture, a species, a world entirely unlike my own. I have to find a way in and try to make sense in the context of that species, not necessarily my own. Fantastic Planet definitely presents a world like that but does seem to lean into elements of human behavior to tell its allegory rather than go complete alien civilization.

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Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
Written by James Cameron and William Wisher
Directed by James Cameron

Certain movies extend beyond just being a new film and exist in their time as a cultural phenomenon. Terminator 2 was that sort of a picture, where even ten-year-old me, who couldn’t see the film at the time because it was rated R, could feel how big it was. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the biggest action star at the time, and he was returning to work with James Cameron. Since directing the first Terminator, Cameron had helmed Aliens and The Abyss. In the latter film, he experimented with computer special effects that audiences had never seen before. For such a small number of films, the director had gained massive acclaim. At the time, with its budget of around $100 million, it was the most expensive movie ever made.

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The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Written by Edmund H. North
Directed by Robert Wise

This month (May 2021), I will be looking at films considered Science Fiction Masterworks. In October, I did this with some horror movies and wanted to do something similar. Science fiction is an extensive film category that has overlaps with other genres like comedy, action, and horror. It can also be very futuristic and high tech or grounded in our present-day with light elements of the fantastic. To start things off, I watched The Day the Earth Stood Still. I know some things about this movie, the theremin music by Bernard Hermann, the famous “Klaatu Barada Nikto” phrase, and the opening scene of the flying saucer landing in the middle of Washington D.C. A remake was done in 2008, which I have heard was dismal, while the original has garnered a ton of praise.

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