Science Fiction Films

Genre films have generally not fared particularly well. Westerns, once popular, are terribly unpopular now. Mysteries, once popular, are rarely seen. For a while, fantasy films fared poorly. Two series have helped revive fantasy: the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Harry Potter. Before that, you'd be hard pressed to find a really popular fantasy film.

Science fiction films have been there since the silent days. Metropolis, by Fritz Lang, envisions a city with skyscrapers and cars filling up highways, a prescient view, even if the film itself is a bit odd, about a woman who fights for some kind of freedom for the downtrodden, and a robot that's built to resemble her, or someone's wife.

Despite the long history of science fiction films, there are few that are considered great. Despite its slowness, people consider 2001: A Space Odyssey a great SF film, made all the more intriguing by its lack of real characters, except possibly HAL. Up there is Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, which might be as much horror or suspense as science fiction. There's also Blade Runner, still perhaps the best of Ridley Scott's films.

There are those that have been popular. E. T. the Extra Terrestrial and Star Wars tops the lists. There's also The Matrix, Alien, Mad Max, The Terminator, and so forth.

Most SF films are so different from science fiction stories that they almost don't fit in the genre. For example, despite the prolific technology in Star Wars, it can be seen closer to fantasy. Alien was more interested in the horror of a relentless alien being.

Philip K. Dick has seen a bit of a resurgence. Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Paycheck, Minority Report and a few others are films that have been made.

Sometimes, a small film like Shane Carruth's Primer shows that an SF film doesn't need lots of special effects.

Science fiction writers, being genre writers, often lack certain strengths, usually characterization. They have plenty of ideas, and some know a great deal of science, but otherwise, the characters are meh.

I once read a short story about a man who has injected himself with, if memory serves, some sort of nano-robots. The problem? They are starting to grow intelligent. After a while, he no longer needs food, as they can basically photosynthesize. He realizes he may no longer be in control, because once they figure out what's going on, that they live in a person, they will take over him. Stories of people losing control to technology have been as old as Frankenstein.

Another short story involves a guy who's a genius, part of some group of super-geniuses, who realizes he's completely paranoid. He knows somewhere, somehow, out there is someone just like him, and he has to find him and eliminate him before he is eliminated. There's not a great deal of science (except once he realizes his opponent has bested him), just paranoia.

This year, the best science fiction so far has been Sunshine, and yet, it doesn't dwell much on the science, nor much on characters. Still, it presents a compelling view of travelling to the Sun, which is a story, that Danny Boyle points out, has not been seriously treated (there was, he notes, a throwaway travel to the Sun in Lost In Space).

The Matrix deals with virtual reality, which is something more akin to Philip K. Dick novels where, perhaps due to his own experimentation with drugs, was near and dear to his own experiences. Many films of that era deal with such issues.

Of course, there are classics like 1984 of future totalitarian society.

Sometimes SF tries to speculate what will happen to society, how it will change, what problems will be faced. Sometimes, it's just to have a different venue, and have some special effects wizardry. Sometimes, it's other genres like adventure, horror, placed out in space.

Space films rarely are about the same kinds of topics as more "serious" films. How often do you set a romance in space, where space is somewhat incidental? A great book, Forever War, based on Joe Haldemann's experience in Vietnam, is not only a story about time, war, aliens, but also, a love story. But, to my knowledge, it's never been made into a film.

Indeed, many SF books that have been considered great haven't been made into movies. Isaac Asimov, widely considered a great SF writer, has never really had his books made to film, and I say that given I, Robot. His books tend to be talky and brainy, and less than cinematic.

They've been talking about making Ender's Game into a film. It's not terribly science-y as these films go, but it does extrapolate on the idea of a future where kids become geniuses in war.

SF writers and fans often criticize films for making films lacking imagination. Part of it is budget. Part of it is, perhaps, that films are not a good medium for SF. A good SF film should really be a miniseries, long enough to get you to understand the world that is being presented. Most films have a very little time to get you interested in the characters or the film. A series would give you time to follow what's going on.