Science Fiction Films are usually scientific, visionary,
comic-strip-like, and imaginative, and usually visualized through fanciful,
imaginative settings, expert film production design, advanced technology
gadgets (i.e., robots and spaceships), scientific developments, or by fantastic
special effects. Sci-fi films are complete with heroes, distant planets,
impossible quests, improbable settings, fantastic places, great dark and
shadowy villains, futuristic technology and gizmos, and unknown and
inexplicable forces. Many other SF films feature time travels or fantastic
journeys, and are set either on Earth, into outer space, or (most often) into
the future time. Quite a few examples of science-fiction cinema owe their
origins to writers Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. See also AFI's 10 Top 10 - The
Top 10 Science Fiction Films.
They often portray the dangerous and sinister nature of
knowledge ('there are some things Man is not meant to know') (i.e., the classic
Frankenstein (1931), The Island of Lost Souls (1933), and David Cronenberg's
The Fly (1986) - an updating of the 1958 version directed by Kurt Neumann and
starring Vincent Price), and vital issues about the nature of mankind and our
place in the whole scheme of things, including the threatening, existential
loss of personal individuality (i.e., Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956),
and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)). Plots of space-related conspiracies
(Capricorn One (1977)), supercomputers threatening impregnation (Demon Seed
(1977)), the results of germ-warfare (The Omega Man (1971)) and laboratory-bred
viruses or plagues (28 Days Later (2002)), black-hole exploration (Event
Horizon (1997)), and futuristic genetic engineering and cloning (Gattaca (1997)
and Michael Bay's The Island (2005)) show the tremendous range that
science-fiction can delve into.
Strange and extraordinary microscopic organisms or giant,
mutant monsters ('things or creatures from space') may be unleashed, either
created by misguided mad scientists or by nuclear havoc (i.e., The Beast From
20,000 Fathoms (1953)). Sci-fi tales have a prophetic nature (they often
attempt to figure out or depict the future) and are often set in a speculative
future time. They may provide a grim outlook, portraying a dystopic view of the
world that appears grim, decayed and un-nerving (i.e., Metropolis (1927) with
its underground slave population and view of the effects of industrialization,
the portrayal of 'Big Brother' society in 1984 (1956 and 1984), nuclear
annihilation in a post-apocalyptic world in On the Beach (1959), Douglas
Trumbull's vision of eco-disaster in Silent Running (1972), Michael Crichton's
Westworld (1973) with androids malfunctioning, Soylent Green (1973) with its
famous quote: "Soylent Green IS PEOPLE!", 'perfect' suburbanite wives
in The Stepford Wives (1975), and the popular gladiatorial sport of the year
2018 in Rollerball (1975)). Commonly, sci-fi films express society's anxiety
about technology and how to forecast and control the impact of technological
and environmental change on contemporary society.
A special subsection has been created on the subject of
robots in film.
See: Robots in Film
(a comprehensive illustrated history here).
Science fiction often expresses the potential of technology
to destroy humankind through Armaggedon-like events, wars between worlds,
Earth-imperiling encounters or disasters (i.e., The Day The Earth Stood Still
(1951), When Worlds Collide (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), the two
Hollywood blockbusters Deep Impact (1998) and Armageddon (1998), and The Day
After Tomorrow (2004), etc.). In many science-fiction tales, aliens, creatures,
or beings (sometimes from our deep subconscious, sometimes in space or in other
dimensions) are unearthed and take the mythical fight to new metaphoric
dimensions or planes, depicting an eternal struggle or battle (good vs. evil)
that is played out by recognizable archetypes and warriors (i.e., Forbidden
Planet (1956) with references to the 'id monster' from Shakespeare's The
Tempest, the space opera Star Wars
(1977) with knights and a princess with her galaxy's kingdom to save, The Fifth
Element (1997), and the metaphysical Solaris (1972 and 2002)). Beginning in the
80s, science fiction began to be feverishly populated by noirish, cyberpunk
films, with characters including cyber-warriors, hackers, virtual reality
dreamers and druggies, and underworld low-lifers in nightmarish, un-real worlds
(i.e., Blade Runner (1982), Strange Days
(1995), Johnny Mnemonic (1995), and The Matrix (1999)).
Borrowing and Hybrid Genre Blending in Sci-Fi Films:
Further, there are many examples of blurred or hybrid
science fiction films that shared characteristics with lots of other genres
including:
westerns (Outland (1980))
romances (Somewhere in Time (1980))
adventure films (The Thing From Another World (1951))
action films (Terminator 2 - Judgment Day (1991))
comedies (Sleeper (1973))
serials ( Star Wars (1977))
cop-buddy films (Alien Nation (1988))
The Earliest Science Fiction Films:
Voyage Dans La Lune - 1902Many early films in this genre
featured similar fanciful special effects and thrilled early audiences. The
pioneering science fiction film, a 14-minute ground-breaking masterpiece with
30 separate tableaus (scenes), Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon)
(1902), was made by imaginative, turn-of-the-century French filmmaker/magician
Georges Melies, approximating the contents of the novels by Jules Verne (From
the Earth to the Moon) and H.G. Wells (First Men in the Moon). With innovative,
illusionary cinematic techniques (trick photography with superimposed images,
dissolves and cuts), he depicted many memorable, whimsical old-fashioned
images:
a modern-looking, projectile-style rocket ship blasting off
into space from a rocket-launching cannon (gunpowder powered?) a crash landing into the eye of the winking
'man in the moon'
the appearance of fantastic moon inhabitants (Selenites,
acrobats from the Folies Bergere) on the lunar surface a scene in the court of the moon king a last minute escape back to Earth
Otto Rippert's melodramatic and expressionistic Homunculus
(1916, Ger.) - mostly a lost silent film - was a serial (or mini-series)
composed of six one-hour episodic parts. It told about the life of an
artificial man (Danish actor Olaf Fonss) that was created by an archetypal mad
scientist (Friedrich Kuhne). The monstrous, vengeful creature, after realizing
it was soul-less and lacked human emotion, became a tyrannical dictator but was
eventually destroyed by a divine bolt of lightning. Its importance as an early
science-fiction film was that it served as a precursor and inspiration to
Universal's Frankenstein (1931) film and many other plots of sci-fi films (with
mad scientists, superhuman androids, Gothic elements, and the evil effects of
technology).
Metropolis - 1927The first science fiction feature films
appeared in the 1920s after the Great War, showing increasing doubts about the
destructive effects of technology gone mad. The first feature-length
dinosaur-oriented science-fiction film to be released was The Lost World
(1925). It was also the first feature length film made in the US with the
pioneering first major use (primitive) of stop-motion animation with models for
its special effects. It helped to establish its genre - 'live' and life-like
giant monsters-dinosaurs, later replicated in Gojira (1954, Jp.), Jurassic Park
(1993) and Godzilla (1998).
One of the greatest and most innovative films ever made was
a silent film set in the year 2000, German director Fritz Lang's classic,
expressionistic, techno-fantasy masterpiece Metropolis (1927) - sometimes
considered the Blade Runner of its time.
It featured an evil scientist/magician named Rotwang, a socially-controlled
futuristic city, a beautiful but sinister female robot named Maria (probably
the first robot in a feature film, and later providing the inspiration for
George Lucas' C3-PO in Star Wars), a
stratified society, and an oppressed enslaved race of underground industrial
workers. Even today, the film is acclaimed for its original, futuristic sets,
mechanized society themes and a gigantic subterranean flood - it appeared to
accurately project the nature of society in the year 2000. [It was re-released
in 1984 with a stirring, hard-rock score featuring Giorgio Moroder's music and songs
by Pat Benatar and Queen.
Another Lang film, his last silent film, was one of the
first space travel films, The Woman in the Moon (1929) (aka By Rocket to the
Moon). It was about a blastoff to the moon where explorers discovered a
mountainous landscape littered with raw diamonds and chunks of gold. [The film
introduced NASA's backward count to a launch - 5-4-3-2-1 to future real-life
space shots, and the effects of centrifugal force to future space travel films.
Things to Come - 1936Alexander Korda's epic view of the
future Things to Come (1936) was directed by visual imagist William Cameron
Menzies and starred Raymond Massey (as pacifist pilot John Cabal). The
imaginative English film was based on an adaptation of H. G. Wells' 1933 The
Shape of Things to Come and set during the years from 1940 to 2036 in
'Everytown.' It included a lengthy global world war (WW II!), a prophetic Brave
New World-view, a despotic tyrant named Rudolph (Ralph Richardson), the dawn of
the space age, and the attempt of social-engineering scientists to save the
world with technology. An attempt to prevent scientific progress - and the
launch of the first Moon rocket - was vainly led by sculptor Theotocopulos
(Cedric Hardwicke). David Butler's Just Imagine (1930), a futuristic sci-fi
musical about a man who awakened in a strange new world - New York City in the
1980s, provided prophetic inventions including automatic doors, test tube
babies, and videophones.
Early Science-Fiction - Horror Film Blends: The 30s
The most memorable blending of science fiction and horror
was in Universal Studios' mad scientist-doctor/monster masterpiece from
director James Whale, Frankenstein (1931), an adaptation of Mary Shelley's
novel. Her original 1818 book was subtitled Frankenstein - The Modern
Prometheus, and she used this allusion to signify that her main character Dr.
Victor Frankenstein demonstrated 'hubris' against god/nature in his
experimental desire to create life from dead body parts, and afterwards
abandoned his monstrous ugly creature. The Invisible Man - 1933Like the Titan
god, who stole fire from the gods to benefit mankind, he did not realize the
ramifications of his actions. (Although there were civilizing results of having
fire, it also brought the ability to work with metals, which could be shaped
into weapons, that could then be used in warfare.) Many other derivative works,
including numerous sci-fi films, have featured mad scientists, and
artificially-created monsters that run amok killing people.
This was soon followed by Whale's superior sequel Bride of Frankenstein (1935), one of the best
examples of the horror-SF crossover, and one of the first films with a mad
scientist's creation of miniaturized human beings. The famed director also made
the film version of an H. G. Wells novel The Invisible Man (1933) with Claude
Rains (in his film debut in the starring title role) - it was the classic tale
of a scientist with a formula for invisibility accompanied by spectacular
special effects and photographic tricks.
In the 1930s and early 40s, American sound films with hybrid
science fiction/horror themes included an oddball collection of mad scientist
films, with memorable characters who created mutated or shrunken creatures:The
Invisible Ray - 1936The Vampire Bat (1932) - a low-budget Majestic Pictures
film in which Lionel Atwill starred as mad doctor Otto Von Niemann, responsible
for creating bloodsucking nocturnal bats in a small German town; with a cast
including dark-haired, 'scream-queen' Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas, and Dwight Frye
(the crazy Renfield character in Dracula)
Doctor X (1932), a First National (later Warner Bros.) film,
in pioneering two-strip Technicolor by director Michael Curtiz, about another
mysterious mad scientist named Doctor X-avier (Lionel Atwill) and his daughter
(Fay Wray)
The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), another First National
film in two-strip Technicolor, about an insane, wax-dummy maker-sculptor, again
pairing Atwill and Wray, and featuring Glenda Farrell as a fast-talking,
wisecracking reporter; famous for the shocking 'face-mask crumbling' scene;
[re-made in 1953 as House of Wax with Vincent Price]
The Black Cat (1934) - the first and best of all the
Karloff-Lugosi pairings at Universal, featuring Boris Karloff (as a crazed
devil worshipper) and Bela Lugosi (as a vengeful architect)
The Invisible Ray (1936) - although he usually played a
grotesque monster, Karloff starred as experimental physicist Dr. Janos Rukh in
this film; after traveling to Africa with his colleague Dr. Benet (Bela Lugosi)
and becoming infected by radiation (Radium X) in a meteor of the nebula
Andromeda, Karloff was transformed into a murdering, radiation-poisoned
megalomaniac as he hunted down his enemies and projected death rays at them
from his eyes (glaring from under a soft felt hat)
Dr. Cyclops - 1940Tod Browning's off-beat The Devil Doll
(1936) - with Devil's Island escapee and scientist Paul Lavond (Lionel
Barrymore), disguised as a macabre elderly woman ("Madame Mandelip"),
vengefully terrorizing his enemies by creating shrunken "devil dolls"
to seek out his revenge; with landmark special effects, and Maureen O'Sullivan
in a supporting role as Lavond's daughter
Ernest Schoedsack's and Paramount's Dr. Cyclops (1940) - the
first Technicolor horror/sci-fi film since The Mystery of the Wax Museum
(1933), with Albert Dekker as sadistic, bald, bespectacled mad scientist Dr.
Thorkel shrinking his victims in a remote Peruvian jungle setting; the film
received an Academy Award nomination for its Visual Effects
The Monster and the Girl (1941) - another Paramount
"B" horror/sci-fi film from director Stuart Heisler, about eccentric
mad scientist Dr. Parry (George Zucco) who transplanted the brain of a
wrongly-accused and executed murderer into a murderous gorilla, who then went
on a rampage to seek revenge
director George Sherman's The Lady and the Monster (1944) -
the first film version of the classic tale Donovan's Brain by Curt Siodmak
[remade in 1954], in which the throbbing, telepathic brain of a dead and
unscrupulous industrialist/maniac named James Donovan was kept alive by
enthusiastic mad scientist/Prof. Franz Mueller (Erich von Stroheim)
Escapist Serials of the 30s: Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers
In the 1930s, the most popular films were the low-budget,
less-serious, space exploration tales portrayed in the popular, cliff-hanger
Saturday matinee serials with the first two science-fiction heroes - Flash
Gordon and Buck Rogers.
Flash GordonSpace-explorer hero Flash Gordon was a fanciful
adventure character derived from the Alex Raymond comic strip first published
in 1934 (from King Features). The serials 'invented' many familiar
technological marvels: anti-gravity belts, laser/ray guns, and spaceships.
Universal's serialized sci-fi adventures included:
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (1936), the original and the
best of its type, with 13 chapters; later condensed into a 97-minute feature
film titled Flash Gordon: Rocketship
Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938) - 15 episodes
Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940), 12 episodes, with
Carol Hughes as Dale Arden
Popular elements in the swashbuckling films were the
perfectly-cast, epic hero athlete/actor Larry "Buster" Crabbe, the
lovely heroine and Flash's blonde sweetheart Dale Arden (Jean Rogers), Dr. Hans
Zarkov (Frank Shannon), and the malevolent, tyrant Emperor Ming the Merciless
(Charles Middleton) on far-off planet Mongo. The Flash Gordon films were remade
in 1980 (with Sam J. Jones as the title character and Max von Sydow as Ming,
with music by Queen), and in 1997 as the animated Flash Gordon: Marooned on
Mongo. [There was also a pornographic knock-off film titled Flesh Gordon (1972)
that featured a dildo-shaped spaceship.
Wavy-haired, muscular Buster Crabbe also starred in the
12-part serial Buck Rogers Conquers the Universe (1939) shot between Flash
Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938) and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940). It
was derived from the novelette story "Armageddon-2419 A.D." written
by Phil Nolan (published in the August 1928 issue of the pulp magazine Amazing
Stories), and from the comic strip Buck Rogers in the 25th Century by Dick
Calkins. In this sci-fi serial, Buck Rogers pursued the vile Killer Kane (Anthony
Warde), but the series proved to be not as popular as the Flash Gordon serials.
Another serial was Republic's 15-part serial The Purple
Monster Strikes (1945), aka D-Day on Mars, with one of the first instances of
alien invasion. And in Columbia's 15-episode serial Bruce Gentry - Daredevil of
the Skies (1949), the hero (Tom Neal) fought off the genre's first flying
saucers.
Source : filmsite.org
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