|
|
Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 5, No. 14 |
|
A Century Movies PART TWO |
 This classic from the 1950s set the tone for 'intelligent sci-fi' movies in the new era |
Sci-Fi cinema comes of age
in the years after WW2
of TheColumnists.com
When World War II ended in 1945, shortly after America pushed the world into the atomic age by dropping two A-bombs on Japan, the world also was entering the first true Sci-Fi Age.
Science-fiction had been around for years in pulp magazines, comic strips, serials and the occasional low-budget movie, but several important developments of the late 1940s spurred interest in it at a much-accelerated rate.
Crucial were the revelations about the German rocket program of World War II. World scientists now realized that the German rocket scientists had brought us to the edge of the space age. By going on from the German V-1 and V-2 experiments, it was feasible to believe rockets big enough to lift a spacecraft into orbit now might be constructed.
Also heavily important was the aftermath of the atomic bombs. Fear of the lasting effects of radiation began to spread. Mankind also now had devastating proof of the terrible havoc that could be brought upon nations by atomic warfare.
Both atomic energy and rocket science propelled a heavy new interest in science as the important work of nations. Sci-fi ideas of the Jules Verne and H.G. Wells eras now began to look less fantastic and more achieveable. Science magazines proliferated and with it came a growing interest in speculative fiction.
Reports of unidentified flying objects that had spread worldwide since 1947 fed the public's interest in such things. Before the war, it wasn't likely anyone really feared an invasion from space. But now that our own scientists were talking seriously about flying to other planets...could other planets possibly be flying to us?
But the most important development of all may have been the coming of age of a generation of young boys and girls who had grown up on the "Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers" serials of the 1930s, the "Superman" comic books of the 1940s and EC's "Weird Science" comics of the early 1950s, along with the short stories of writers like Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and others.
These youngsters would grow up to be the Steven Spielbergs, George Lucases, James Camerons and others who would make the films that lifted science fiction out of the low-budget Saturday matinee category and into the "A" picture mainstream.
The first big burst of sci-films of the 1950s showed how the developments of the 1940s had forged new trails. Our fear of radioactivity and its consequences spawned all those films about insects that grew as big as houses. Our fear of nuclear Armageddon produced a sea of films that ultimately created the "apocalypse" genre, among them the "Mad Max" films and such early classics as "The World, The Flesh and The Devil" and the drive-in favorites like "Day the World Ended." Our fear of outer space invasions prompted "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" and the wave of similar films, but also led to that great modern Spielberg classic "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Our fascination with space travel began with such films as "Conquest of Space" and "Flight to Mars," but ultimately forged a marketplace where a wondrous and imaginative film like Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" might flourish.
 |
 |
|
|
Great writers began to pay close attention to science-fiction premises. The celebrated English author Nevil Shute was inspired to write "On the Beach," a post-nuclear war novel that became an acclaimed 1959 film by Stanley Kramer. Frenchman Pierre Boule, whose novel "Bridge Over the River Kwai" became the Oscar-winning best film of 1957, also wrote "Planet of the Apes," adapted for a series of big budget movies and a TV series. Ray Bradbury's stories had been the source of many early sci-fi films, but when French filmmaker Francois Truffaut turned Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" into an art house sci-fi film, even snobbish critics paid attention. Jack Finney's novel "The Body Snatchers" was turned into Don Siegel's creepy 1955 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and suddenly everybody was talking about "pod people" being grown in basements to replace most of us. Ira Levin's best seller "The Stepford Wives" about robot replacement wives was turned into a popular 1975 film that many saw as a feminist parable about the power men hold over their women.
(A further sign that sci-fi is now an ingrained part of the Hollywood production scene: "Planet of the Apes," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "The Stepford Wives" all have been remade at least once since the originals came out.)
The coming of Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek" to prime time television in the 1960s also opened many doors. Intelligent, even cerebral sci-fi writers were tapped for "Trek" storylines. If serious speculative fiction could be taken seriously by a TV network, it followed that feature films might find such a market among the young filmgoers of America.
Now studios were interested in films about speculative ideas, even if they were part and parcel of storylines an earlier generation might have considered "kid stuff." They learned that a film like "Colossus: The Forbin Project" (1970) could be a sci-fi thriller by genre, but also engage intellectual moviegoers who liked the fact that the film explored the issue of super-computers that might someday "think" enough to take control of the humans who built them.
If a filmmaker like Robert Wise, a pioneer with his 1951 "Day the Earth Stood Still," could win Oscars for films like "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music," then turn out a sci-fi thriller like "The Andromeda Strain" (1971), about a deadly virus from outer space, then sci-fi was ready to go mainstream.
What sci-fi needed to finally shed its reputation as kiddie fare was a monumental box office blockbuster. It finally got one in 1977 with George Lucas' "Star Wars," a romanticized version of a 1930s-style serial. Though a swashbuckler at heart, "Star Wars" also was a stylized Samurai film, westernized and gimmicked up with the latest special effects technology.
After "Star Wars," the whole universe changed for science-fiction projects. There had never been a blockbuster space monster movie until Ridley Scott brought us 1979's "Alien," a high tech spin on the old "monster loose in the hold" storyline used back as far as "It! The Terror From Beyond Space" (1958). There had never been a blockbuster robot movie until James Cameron's "The Terminator" (1984), which begat even bigger, richer sequels. Dinosaur movies had been around since the original silent movie version of Conan Doyle's "The Lost World," but Spielberg's "Jurassic Park," adapted from Michael Crichton's best seller about cloning dinosaurs from their fossilized eggs, became a 1993 mega-blockbuster and already has fostered two sequels.
 |
films that explored the mysterious world of cyberspace and the quasi-religious issues rolled into it. |
Today the science fiction movie has replaced the western as a standard feature of most studio production charts. There are sci-fi genre "thrillers" that simply aim to take the fans on a funhouse ride, replete with dazzling special effects and thrills galore. But there also are lots of "serious" sci-fi films like Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner," Spielberg's "Minority Report," and the Wachowski Brothers' "Matrix" trilogy that aim to explore ideas while entertaining us grandly.
Though the ongoing "Star
Wars" films continue to regale us with the space jockey
fun of the "Flash Gordon" and "Buck Rogers"
years, only the real diehard snobs among us still think of sci-fi
as a kiddie genre. It has come of age in the new century and
we can expect lots of really great "A" sci-fi films
from now on.
©2004 by Ron Miller. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" is courtesy Allied Artists. "Star Wars" is courtesy 20th Century-Fox. "Jurassic Park" is courtesy Universal. "The Matrix" is courtesy Warner Bros.
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |