So now here we are, in the century that was going to be the future. Actually, we’ve been here for a decade now, so by rights this list would have been more apropos ten years ago. But 8sails didn’t exist back then, so we’ll just have to play catch-up now.
“Science fiction” covers a lot of ground, from optimistic, outer-space extensions of Manifest Destiny to horrifying visions of future dystopias. A list of eight movies could never encompass the entire genre or even all the sci fi movies we like. These eight, however, all stand on their own merits in addition to being excellent representatives of their genre.
A Clockwork Orange – Though I don’t think Anthony Burgess’s novel should ever have been made into a movie, if a movie it had to be then this is the best it could have been. Malcolm McDowell turns in a delightfully over-the-top performance as a Teddy-Boy-of-the-Future robbed of his free will by a cruel experiment. From a sci-fi perspective, however, the real draw is the art direction. The picture’s world is Mid Century décor and architecture gone to hell, an eerily plausible alternative reality. The soundtrack’s creepy synthesizer distortion of familiar music doesn’t exactly hurt, either.
2001: A Space Odyssey – Sticking with Stanley Kubrick movies, let’s backtrack a picture to a more optimistic vision of the future. The Slab is the big star of the show, and of course the end sequence will probably continue to dazzle stoners for generations to come. But for my taste, the best parts are the small touches. For example, the space shuttle and space station both become more interesting via the addition of corporate logos. The suggestion is that this future isn’t entirely dissimilar to the real present, and someday we might be able to fly a Pan Am shuttle to an orbital Hilton just as easily as we can take a trip to Club Med now. It didn’t turn out to be true, but it was still a nice thought.
The Empire Strikes Back – I pretty much had to put one of the pictures in the Star Wars series on this list. The first one was a cultural phenomenon. This one was a better movie. This one won the spot.
1984 – This picture enjoys three big distinctions. First, it’s a remarkably faithful adaptation of Orwell’s famous novel. Indeed, where the two differ the movie is sometimes better than the book. Second, it was shot in the year referenced in the title and on the locations envisioned by the author 36 years earlier, making it the only production (as far as I know) to ever pull off this particular stunt. And third, it’s a really good movie. Depressing as hell, but still well worth a look.
Metropolis – This is the great grandmother of all science fiction movies. Though it isn’t the first sci fi movie ever made (Melies started playing around with trips to the moon two or three decades before this), it’s a watershed moment in the genre’s development. Fritz Lang demonstrated that script, acting (naturally somewhat diminished by the conventions of the silent era), special effects and politics could be combined into a single production.
The Day the Earth Stood Still – Speaking of politics, it must have taken some guts to stand up in the middle of the Cold War and produce a movie suggesting that “the enemy” might be just as human as us, if not more so. The simple premise – that a species capable of surviving long enough to develop interstellar flight would almost by definition have to be both more powerful and more peaceful than us – is cleverly advanced by a plot full of entertaining twists and turns. Paranoia has rarely been so gently exposed or so aptly punished.
Blade Runner – This one already made the list of our eight favorite movies. Thus I’ll just add that it’s an important part of the genre’s history as well. The art direction makes it a key moment in the movement afoot at the time to break away from the deco-clean visions of tomorrow and make the future a grimy place not entirely dissimilar to the present.
Forbidden Planet – I think I’ve seen this one more often than all the rest of the entries on the list put together, which is saying something because several of these are part of my personal collection. It’s just such a wonderful combination of elements: the story, the script, the acting, the robot, the monster. Even the dated elements – such as the Theremin and some of the effects – still hold considerable charm. And on top of its individual merit, it’s also a seminal piece of sci fi cinema. Star Trek in particular owes this movie a considerable debt.
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