MODERN SCI-FI
28 August 2010
Raise your hand those with a working crystal ball. No? The future is the undiscovered country, to mangle Hamlet. What has cinema got to say on the subject?
Science fiction is perennial, but with the success of Inception, an especially intelligent blockbuster, it is perhaps timely to look at vivid depictions of the future on the silver screen. Not definitive then, but hopefully a way to initiate debate.
Children of Men (2006)
A modern masterpiece and one of the best films of the entire noughties, there is so much going on it is hard to decide what to start to talk about. It is a warning, extrapolating society’s current travails and extending them to a scarily logical conclusion. Opening with the Earth’s youngest person murdered, we then focus on Clive Owen’s London civil servant still grieving over the death of his child and the separation from his wife (played by Julianne Moore). An Orwellian culture now exists with rigid controls over the population, as well as an H.G. Wells idea of Eloi and Morlocks where illegal immigrants are treated in similar ways to the photos revealed from the Abu Ghraib prison. There are images of cattle being burned, a thinly-veiled reference to mad-cow and foot and mouth diseases, and genetic modified food. There is terrorism on a large scale, where he even coffee houses are targets. And the human population is dying off. No baby has been born in 18 years. This is an allegory par excellence.
Among all this tragedy is a glimmer of hope where one woman is revealed to be pregnant. Children of Men becomes a thrill ride as Owen’s Theo has to get her to safety, as everyone wants the mother and more importantly the unborn child. Director Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki ingrain images into your mind that are so extraordinary that you want to rewind sequences to admire theme, e.g. a car chase/siege done in one take entirely from within the vehicle as it is attacked. This will be being taught at film schools for years.
Jurassic Park (1993)
More upbeat than the above, but also a morality tale, this is a story that harks back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, scientific breakthrough unchecked and without deep thought; and The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs, resurrecting the dead. Jurassic Park is also a metaphor for The Manhattan Project; Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond as a sort of Dr. Oppenheimer facilitator. Not as satisfying as the novel, with the darker elements toned by sentimentality and the seeming desire to reach as a wide an audience as possible, this was one of those blockbusters that blew the mind of virtually of everyone. Computer generated imagery had already begun, but this took it to another level.
Scientists and a chaos mathematician are given a tour of an island that is the home to the latest theme park and scientific marvel. The dream of every child and, let’s face it, most adults, to see dinosaurs walk the Earth. However, human weakness, coupled with nature’s ways, go to scupper an act of hubris.
Science fiction is perennial, but with the success of Inception, an especially intelligent blockbuster, it is perhaps timely to look at vivid depictions of the future on the silver screen. Not definitive then, but hopefully a way to initiate debate.
Children of Men (2006)
A modern masterpiece and one of the best films of the entire noughties, there is so much going on it is hard to decide what to start to talk about. It is a warning, extrapolating society’s current travails and extending them to a scarily logical conclusion. Opening with the Earth’s youngest person murdered, we then focus on Clive Owen’s London civil servant still grieving over the death of his child and the separation from his wife (played by Julianne Moore). An Orwellian culture now exists with rigid controls over the population, as well as an H.G. Wells idea of Eloi and Morlocks where illegal immigrants are treated in similar ways to the photos revealed from the Abu Ghraib prison. There are images of cattle being burned, a thinly-veiled reference to mad-cow and foot and mouth diseases, and genetic modified food. There is terrorism on a large scale, where he even coffee houses are targets. And the human population is dying off. No baby has been born in 18 years. This is an allegory par excellence.
Among all this tragedy is a glimmer of hope where one woman is revealed to be pregnant. Children of Men becomes a thrill ride as Owen’s Theo has to get her to safety, as everyone wants the mother and more importantly the unborn child. Director Alfonso Cuaron and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki ingrain images into your mind that are so extraordinary that you want to rewind sequences to admire theme, e.g. a car chase/siege done in one take entirely from within the vehicle as it is attacked. This will be being taught at film schools for years.
Jurassic Park (1993)
More upbeat than the above, but also a morality tale, this is a story that harks back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, scientific breakthrough unchecked and without deep thought; and The Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jacobs, resurrecting the dead. Jurassic Park is also a metaphor for The Manhattan Project; Richard Attenborough’s John Hammond as a sort of Dr. Oppenheimer facilitator. Not as satisfying as the novel, with the darker elements toned by sentimentality and the seeming desire to reach as a wide an audience as possible, this was one of those blockbusters that blew the mind of virtually of everyone. Computer generated imagery had already begun, but this took it to another level.
Scientists and a chaos mathematician are given a tour of an island that is the home to the latest theme park and scientific marvel. The dream of every child and, let’s face it, most adults, to see dinosaurs walk the Earth. However, human weakness, coupled with nature’s ways, go to scupper an act of hubris.
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Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
Science again. Here, robotics and time travel. America develops a computer program so sophisticated that it becomes sentient and overthrows its human master. The future is now a post-nuclear holocaust wasteland with humanity mounting a barely effective resistance. The machines send a robot into the past to kill the mother of the rebellion leader, John Connor. They fail, and in this sequel they send a more sophisticated model back to kill the pre-teen Connor, while the adult Connor sends a robot to protect himself. There is an argument as to which is superior, but the sequel for me pips the post, as it is not as simple as machines bad, humans good. The flaws and positives in each are demonstrated in one of the best action films ever made. Only Aliens (also by director James Cameron) and Die Hard can touch this.
Tron (1982)
Long before Cameron made Avatar, Disney released Tron. The most sophisticated programmers have game avatars, sentient versions of themselves existing in computers. A corporation has developed an incredibly powerful program called Master Control, which is devouring other ones. Soon it will be too powerful to halt. Former employee Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) attempts to do just that, but is sucked into this computer world by a newly developed laser.
Far ahead of its time, Tron tackled the gaming world and the issue of corporate monopoly in a dazzling designed movie.
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Face/Off (1997)
Physical alteration manifests itself in an insanely energetic look at what some will do to prevent crime. To infiltrate a gang and stop a bomb going off in Los Angeles, John Travolta’s Sean Archer, swaps his face with that of Nicolas Cage’s coma patient and master crook Castor Troy. As you can imagine, such drastic surgery awakens him and Troy in turn takes on the identity of Archer. Not only as is this an example of charismatic acting taken to another level, it is an intriguing look at empathy; where two people walk in the shoes of another and understand their lives a little better and are changed for it. Oh yeah, and the action is seriously awesome; check out Cage and Travolta being catapulted through the air with a speedboat in the background and them landing on a beach.
Strange Days (1995)
Empathy reaches its zenith in Kathryn Bigelow’s extraordinarily directed pre-millennium thriller. Set in the dying days of 1999, a new technology has become the drug of choice; a device that the user wears to record sensory impressions of their activities, these memories are then sold to punters looking for vicarious thrills. Ralph Fiennes’ Lenny Nero is an ex-cop and now a purveyor of these experiences, calling himself the “Santa Claus of the subconscious”. However, he gets sucked into a conspiracy where various memories provide the evidence to multiple killings. The link between the mind and society has never been so exhilarating.
X-Men (2000)
Enhancing the human and body as a metaphor for puberty, abuse and discrimination, the X-Men universe is an allegory in particular for the civil rights movement; as those who with super-powers (telekinesis, metal manipulation, fast healing, etc.) are persecuted. The first picture in the series is a look at a Martin Luther King, Jr. figure (Professor Xavier – Patrick Stewart) attempting to thwart a Malcolm X figure (Magneto – Ian McKellen) from a violent solution to this hatred aimed at the newly established mutants. A mixture of wish fulfilment and social commentary.
