Science Fiction

Science Fiction has been a part of moving making since the earliest years of the medium.  There are actually very few forms of movies that were not already a part of the stories that people told using the media available to them.

But doing Science Fiction movies required the use of special effects and we can see that these have clearly developed and changed across time.  In fact Science Fiction is the genre that has most pushed the development of special effects in film.

1902 Voyage to the Moon we see speculation on what it would require to get to the moon and what the people who visit there might find.  In terms of special effects we see the rocket landing in the eye of the man in the moon (there is nothing wrong with a little comedy mixed in with science fiction)  We also see the use of painted scenes, composited scenes, jump cuts to make things and creatures appear and disappear.

1927 Metropolis we see probably the most influential film within Science Fiction.  The visuals are absolutely stunning and it doesn't really matter that there is no sound.  This is a film that every person who creates any kind of motion picture should see.  You may as well be directly influenced by it since you will be indirectly influenced.  The backgrounds are painted and the effects are basically crude but the quality of the visuals has inspired others to make these kinds of effects work better.

1974 Young Frankenstein is a comedy homage to the Frankenstein and monster movies that are also a variation on the Science Fiction genre.  Every one of the movies in this category owes a deep debt to Metropolis is the form of the laboratory and the depiction of the mad scientist.  We have seen this guy in motion pictures too many times to count.  In Young Frankenstein they used the actual static electricity machines that were used in the 1930s Frankenstein movies.

1977 Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope is directly influenced by Metropolis in the character of 3P0 who is very similar to the robot Maria.  The Star Wars prequels also pay their respects to Metropolis through the visualization of the government planet.

1982 Blade Runner is Ridley Scott's masterpiece and it was co-produced by Sir Run Run Shaw.  This movie is also a visual treat and it owes a great deal to Metropolis in terms of the cityscape of future Los Angeles as well as the Robot as Human story line.  You should watch this one as well out of respect to Sir Run Run Shaw and to see the shots inside the Bradbury Hotel in Los Angeles.  The closing monologue by Rutger Hauer on the nature of humanity is also worth the time.  Plus there is great action.

1954 Seven Samurai was also an influence on the Star Wars movies and the characters of C3P0 and R2D2.  Akira Kurasawa was the director of the Seven Samurai and the Hidden Fortress as well as many other Japanese language films that must be seen.  He was a phenomenal story teller and his work influenced many of the films that came after regardless of their country of origin or language spoken in the film.  His translations of Shakespeare's plays into the context of Japan are also amazing and are probably the most innovative translations of Shakespeare to the screen.

1968 2001: A Space Odyssey was also created by a very interesting director, Stanley Kubrick.  2001 is the only film that can rival Metropolis for its influence on the films that followed.  What is particularly interesting in the film is that the computer is the bad guy.  It reflects a much less favorable view of computers that one that is held in the world today.  At the core of the computer's evil though is conflicting instructions so that the in-out logic of the computer cannot deal with nor process the complexity of human thought or instructions.  Computers are still not human and appear insane when randomness and complexity are structured according to programmed logic.  The red eye of the HAL 9000 computer has become the symbol of evil computers.

2008 WALL-E pays direct homage to 2001 in the Auto-Pilot.  This use of HAL is in the red-eye and the story of conflicting human instructions.  WALL-E is extremely interesting for a lot of different reasons and this is one of them as the 40 years between 2001 and WALL-E have not made the red eye any less scary.

REMEMBER: There is nothing new under the sun and great ideas come from many different places.  Use other people's creations with respect and you can tap into the great storytelling and cultural or aesthetic connections that have built up around that work.  Respect means not stealing everything they did in the past but using their executions to inspire the story you want to tell.  Respect also means admitting the source or your inspiration either explicitly or implicitly.

- Dr. W -