When the Korean revenge movie Oldboy was released in 2003, it became a
buzzed-about cult hit largely because of three things: its cringe-inducing
violence, its stylized action, and its jaw-dropping climax. Spike Lee’s English
remake has no style and it fumbles its ending, leaving a grotesque mess.
Oldboy’s premise is that Joe (Josh Brolin) – a degenerate businessman who
hits on his clients’ wives, drinks every chance he gets, and doesn’t visit his
3-year-old daughter – is kidnapped one 1993 night and awakens in what looks at
first like a motel room but is actually a personal prison. The room’s window is
fake and the only door is bolted shut.
After resignedly giving up hope of escaping,
Joe turns to his only window to the outside world, the in-room TV. He discovers
on the news that his ex-wife has been murdered, his daughter has been adopted,
and he has been named the killer (thanks to planted DNA).
Photo: Universal Pictures
For 20 years, Joe consumes the dumplings
and vodka he’s given daily, he writes and stockpiles desperate letters to his
daughter, and he watches the world go by through his television. Then one day, without
warning, he’s released. With no understanding of what he did to deserve his
punishment and 20 years of seething fury, Joe goes on a mission of revenge.
The concept is preposterous and hinges on
the ending giving an answer of such scale that it overcomes that. The original,
despite its occasional missteps, stuck its landing with a jaw-dropping turn of
the plot in its climax; the 2013 version trips and stumbles with it, in part
due to Sharlto Copley playing his villainous role as if he has a maniacal
moustache to twirl.
Photo: Universal Pictures
Park Chan-Wook’s version had a visual flair
that amped up the gore for key moments but shied away from it for others. Lee’s
version goes for an all-is-more approach, showing everything from severed
tongues to lumps of flesh. Without any style, it starts off nauseating and fast
becomes numbing.
As its own movie, the new Oldboy is unlikeable, gruesome and dull.
As a remake, it forgets that Joe’s revenge, deep down, is less about exacting
vengeance than about trying to understand his imprisonment. By the time Spike
Lee’s Oldboy gets to its answers,
nobody really cares what the question was.
Twenty or 30 years ago, film adaptations
usually didn’t have to worry about aping their source books exactly. The recent
influx of book series with rabid fan bases being adapted into films, though, has
led to filmmakers being afraid to cut scenes that worked in the book but don’t
in the movie. Catching Fire is a
better movie than The Hunger Games
was, but it still ultimately falls into the same traps by treating its source
novel as gospel.
A year after the events of The Hunger Games, victors Katniss
(Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) have returned to their lives in
District 12, but are continually haunted by nightmares and PTSD flashbacks.
Katniss’s defiance of the rules in the prior Hunger Games has led to sparks of
rebellion amongst the volatile, oppressed districts of Panem.
Photo: Lionsgate
President Snow (Donald Sutherland) wants to
quell any insurrection before it starts, for which he blames Katniss. Along
with the new gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Snow creates
a Survivor: All-Stars edition of the
Hunger Games, allowing for the re-reaping of Katniss and Peeta.
Catching
Fire tells a somewhat similar story as the first
movie while crafting more complex characters and darker tones than the original
had time for. What could have felt reheated instead feels amped up in scale and
stakes. It doesn’t hurt that this had twice the budget of The Hunger Games, either, as the visual effects are much better
this time around. All the returning actors are excellent, particularly Lawrence
and Sutherland, and new additions to the cast like Hoffman, Jena Malone, and
Jeffrey Wright fit right in.
Photo: Lionsgate
If there’s a flaw with the movie, it’s
being too slavish to the pacing of the book. The first half of Catching Fire is all character
development and set-up, which worked much better in literary form than it does
here. By the time the Games actually begin, more than half the movie’s running
time has elapsed, which barely worked in the first movie and here just feels
uneven.
The final book of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy,
Mockingjay, is being split into two
movies, like the Harry Potter and Twilight climaxes. Carrying the momentum
of Catching Fire forward will be the
filmmakers’ biggest challenge, as this one does pretty much everything right
and does it better than the first one. And just maybe, by stretching its story
over two movies, Mockingjay will be
forced to accept being different from its book.
All
is Lost is about a man alone at sea whose sailboat
springs a leak when it hits an adrift cargo container. Through a series of misfortunes,
his situation slowly gets worse, despite his every knowledgeable efforts. His
tenacious battle to survive as every element turns against him is the crux of
this marvellously thrilling movie.
Photo: Lionsgate
It’s hard to imagine how All is Lost got made. The entire movie
takes place at sea, either aboard a sailboat or in a life raft. Only one actor
is seen during the entire movie. At 77, that one actor (Robert Redford) is
seemingly too old to appeal to younger demographics or to even meet the
physical demands required for the movie. It’s only the second movie written and
directed by J.C. Chandor. Oh, and outside of 15 seconds of pre-credits
voiceover, only two words are spoken during the entire 106 minutes of All is Lost (one of which isn’t suitable for print).
And yet...
Photo: Lionsgate
All
is Lost is an absolutely riveting movie. Much like
Ben Affleck’s improvement between Gone
Baby Gone and The Town, J.C.
Chandor has gone from a great debut to a sophomore masterpiece. His writing is so
spare that it’s a shock the few times we actually hear Redford’s voice, yet the
action is methodically well-written. The movie is also very effectively shot. There
are parts of it that are like Life of Pi,
Cast/Away, The Perfect Storm, and Open
Water, but All is Lost does each
familiar scenario better than its progenitors.
Photo: Lionsgate
Robert Redford wholly inhabits the nameless
protagonist and masterfully emotes decades of experiences and relationships
without saying a word. (Just the way he gives himself time to momentarily relax
after almost dying before doggedly getting right back up, or the way he
slightly rolls his eyes at each cruel twist of fate, says more than pages of
dialogue could.) And the ocean in All is
Lost is a character itself, with its own temper, generosity, and
mercuriality.
It’s fitting that 2013 gave the world both Gravity and All is Lost, as they’re almost companion pieces. Like Gravity, All is Lost paints a gripping tale of one person relentlessly
struggling to survive against harsh elements and cruel odds. Also, like Gravity, All is Lost is one of the very best movies of the year.
Matthew McConaughey doesn’t get enough
credit. Yes, he’s done his share of stinkers like Sahara, but he’s also done gems like A Time to Kill and Contact.
Over the last few years, McConaughey has refocused himself and delivered a
string of complex performances in The
Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Magic Mike, and Mud. His acting in Dallas
Buyers Club is the apex of his career so far.
Set in 1985, when misinformation about AIDS
polluted the national conversation and most associated it purely with gay
people, Dallas Buyers Club centres on
a volatile, vulgar, homophobic Texan named Ron Woodruff (McConaughey) who is
diagnosed with HIV and given 30 days to live.
Photo: Focus Features
Woodruff finds experimental drugs in Mexico
that help him but that aren’t approved by the FDA in America, which he begins smuggling
over the border. He reluctantly teams up with Rayon (Leto), a transgender drug addict
he meets in the hospital, to help him distribute the medicine to AIDS
sufferers.
To get around the legal restrictions of
selling unapproved drugs in the US, Woodruff charges people $400 a month to
join the Dallas Buyers Club, which gives them unlimited access to all of his
drugs. His ensuing and escalating battle with the FDA and the US Government
echoes his battle with AIDS; both last far longer than anyone expected, but the
outcome to both is ultimately inevitable.
McConaughey shed nearly 50 pounds to play
Woodruff and he learned to carry his gaunt body completely differently. He’s
given great performances before, but nothing before was even in the same league
as his work here.
Photo: Focus Features
Leto is also absolutely brilliant. He
stayed in character for 25 days of filming and he completely disappears in Rayon.
Whether you know Leto from My So-Called
Life, Requiem for a Dream, Panic Room, or the band Thirty Seconds
to Mars, there’s virtually no recognizing him in Rayon, even when all the
makeup and outfits are stripped away.
Dallas
Buyers Club tells a similar story as Philadelphia, but it does much more with
its true story. The characters are complex, the performances are powerful, and
the story is both inspiring and haunting. Ron Woodruff and Rayon are one of the
most unusual pairings this year, but they’re also one of the most fascinating.
The French coming-of-age drama Blue is the Warmest Colour has been
making headlines, but not for the right reasons. The story involves two young
women who fall in love. Like any movie about a realistic romance, there are sex
scenes, which have become all that news articles and the PTC have been able to
talk about. It’s a huge disservice to a movie that deserves to be talked about
because of its quality, not because of its content.
In France, the film was called The Life of Adèle: Chapters 1 & 2,
and the movie indeed feels like two distinct halves. The first half, as Adèle
and Emma fall in love and build a relationship together, is wonderful and
hypnotic. The second half, as jealousies and time chip away at their love,
feels more forced. The first two-thirds of the movie fly by, but after one
particularly convoluted argument in the second half, the movie loses its
momentum and never quite gets it back.
The sex scenes in the movie are graphic
enough to have garnered an NC-17 from the MPAA and a hard R from the Ontario
Film Board, but they serve a valuable purpose to the story and make up a rather
small percentage of the three-hour running time.
Photo: Mongrel Media
The real showcase of the movie is its
acting. Both Exarchopoulos and Seydoux are superb, creating a relationship that
rarely feels anything but real. The extremes they went to not just physically
but emotionally are the stuff of awards, and it’s not hard to see why they each received one at Cannes earlier this year. Blue
is the Warmest Colour is a powerful modern romance
with excellent performances and a new story to tell. If the second half had only
been as strong as the first, it also would have been one of the best movies of
the year.
There are lots of great movies that aren’t very fun to watch. Nobody watches Schindler’s
List or Requiem for a Dream and
says, “That was fun!” Dark or depressing movies can serve a very important
purpose, though, as they can make for the most powerful films. 12 Years a Slave is one of the most
powerful of the year.
Based on a true story, 12 Years a Slave tells the tale of Solomon Northup, a free black
man who, in 1841, was abducted and sold into slavery in the Deep South. Northup
endured horrific abuse for a dozen years before he regained his freedom,
eventually writing the memoir from which the movie’s adapted.
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Important movies have been made about
slavery, like Glory, Amistad, and the miniseries Roots. 12 Years a Slave is more powerful than any of them, largely because
it personalizes the incomprehensible atrocities of slavery. By beginning with Northup’s
freedom, his slavery feels all the more restrictive, driving home realities
that are often glossed over in movies because of their brutality.
Director Steve McQueen very effectively
puts you right next to Northup during his unwavering, twelve-year quest for
freedom, forcing you to see the life of a slave and daring you not to look away.
Fox Searchlight Pictures
The reliable Ejiofor gives the best
performance of his career as Northup. It’s riveting, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s
shaping up to be the odds-on favourite for winning Best Actor at next year’s
Oscars. This is acting of the highest calibre and the movie would be worth
seeing just for him.
In addition to the fantastic Ejiofor,
though, the movie also boasts an impressive cast of supporting actors including
Paul Giamatti, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, and Paul
Dano. Every one of them brings their A-game to the movie, filling every scene
with impressive acting.
12
Years a Slave is not an enjoyable movie. By no
means should it be, because the subject matter isn’t really something in which
to find fun, but it’s worth noting before heading to the theatre that this is a
very dramatic drama. It has a hopeless tone for much of it and the weight of
the movie can be crushing at times. Truth be told, though, that’s partly what
makes the movie so great.
If there was much that was disappointing
about Marvel’s 2011 movie Thor, it
was that so much of the grand story was wasted on Earth. The fish-out-of-water
scenes of the exiled alien Thor (Chris Hemsworth) adjusting to life in New
Mexico were amusing, but the best parts of the movie involved the gorgeously
realized Asgard and the almost-Shakespearean family drama.
After trying to take over Asgard in Thor and Earth in The Avengers, Thor’s Machiavellian brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) this
time takes a backseat to another villain: Christopher Eccleston’s Malekith, a
dark elf who is out to destroy the universe because... well, that’s what
supervillains just have to do.
Photo: Marvel Studios
The confusing plot also involves a MacGuffin
called the Aether that’s basically the essence of darkness and would allow
Malekith to destroy the Nine Realms (which include Asgard and Earth). Thor
decides he can’t defeat Malekith alone, so he frees his recently imprisoned
brother to acquire his help.
Since Natalie Portman was in the original,
her character of Jane Foster has been awkwardly shoehorned into the sequel, as
well. Through convoluted turns of the plot, Foster finds herself infected with
the Aether, which awakens the long-thought-dead Malekith and gives the movie a
reason to bring Foster to Asgard, where she stops serving any real function.
Photo: Marvel Studios
Once Thor releases Loki, the movie finds
its footing. Being freed from the shackles of having to play the villain, the
character of Loki is even more amusing. As the wild card of the plot, you can
never tell what his true intentions are, which helps make his character so interesting.
Hiddleston plays him with a gleefully sardonic smirk, clearly relishing the
opportunity to play up the mischievous side of the god of mischief.
Asgard feels more real here than it did in Thor, no doubt partially due to director
Alan Taylor’s experience helming HBO’s Game
of Thrones. The movie walks a fascinating line between science-fiction and
fantasy that feels quite fresh, deftly weaving a story of aliens and Norse
mythology.
Thor:
The Dark World is almost as good as the first Thor. While some aspects don’t work quite
as well as in the original, others work even better this time around. Marvel
has figured out the perfect uses of both Thor and Loki in the series. Now if
they just give Foster some actual responsibility in Thor 3, these may just outdo the Iron Man trilogy.
As a five-part feature, I'll be counting down the best science-fiction through the history of cinema. From dinosaurs to aliens, from Star Wars to Star Trek, from the depths of the ocean to the far reaches of outer space, these are The 50 Greatest Science-Fiction Movies.
THE 50 GREATEST SCIENCE-FICTION MOVIES
Part 5
By Chris Luckett
(Curious about why certain movies were chosen or ranked as they were? Click here.)
10.
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Before E.T.:
The Extra-Terrestrial, there weren’t many sci-fi movies aimed at kids. There
were certainly age-appropriate sci-fi movies, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the first two Star Wars movies, but even those had
adults as the main characters. By making the protagonist of his movie a child,
Steven Spielberg found an alchemical mixture that others have been trying to
replicate for over thirty years. The genius and power of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is that while it stars a child, the
movie appeals to everyone. Kids enjoy it because they can relate to the
point-of-view of Elliott (Henry Thomas), but adults love it because it has a
magic in it that makes grown men and women feel like children again. No matter
how old you are, when you sit down and watch the boy-and-his-dog story of a
young alien accidentally left behind on Earth and the lonely boy who finds him,
cares for him, and vows to help him get home, you can’t help but feel like a wide-eyed
child, filled with wonder at the spectacular storytelling. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is one of the most emotionally powerful
movies the science-fiction genre has given audiences.
9.
Jurassic Park (1993)
Before Jurassic
Park, dinosaurs never seemed truly real. Having died out millions of years
before humans were on the scene, dinosaurs had only been depicted before in
sculptures, drawings, and stop-motion animation, through the extrapolation of
their fossils and the imaginations of artists and scientists. Jurassic Park’s breakthrough CGI made
dinosaurs truly scary in a way that hadn’t been possible even a few years
earlier. One of the best things about the effects is that it still holds up today
(which certainly can’t be said for many other ‘90s movies with early CGI).
Steven Spielberg used his masterful skill at building tension to inject
thrilling action and suspense elements into the story of an island filled with
genetically recreated dinosaurs that break loose and terrorize some visiting
scientists and children. The movie is perfectly cast; Sam Neill, Laura Dern,
Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, and a young Samuel L. Jackson were all
just recognizable enough without distracting from the dinosaurs themselves. The
clever script makes the complicated science of Michael Crichton’s novel comprehensible
to both adults and children and makes the story, which had already been done
somewhat in Them! and WestWorld, seem wholly original. Jurassic Park influenced many action and
disaster movies of the last twenty years and is largely responsible for
ushering in the modern popularity of science-based action movies.
There are two types of time travel movies.
There are hard science ones, like 12
Monkeys and the Terminator
movies, that treat the plot device seriously and look at the realistic
ramifications of time travel. Then there are fun, loosely scientific ones that
are more interested in speeding past the time travel catalyst and getting to
the antics that ensue from the premise. When it comes to the latter, Back to the Future is still the one to
beat. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is a teenager who slacks off at
school, skateboards around his hometown of Hill Valley, and hangs around with a
crazy, old inventor, “Doc” Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd). One night, Doc
Brown calls Marty out to a shopping mall parking lot to show him his latest
invention: a plutonium-powered DeLorean capable of travelling
through time. Soon, Marty finds himself stuck in 1955 and needing to convince a
thirty-years-younger version of Doc Brown to help him get back to the future.
(Get it?) Along the way, Marty also has to play Cupid with his parents, whose
path together he inadvertently disrupts. With a great soundtrack, charming and memorable performances from everyone in the cast, a clever plot, and an excellent sense of humour, Back to the Future has become a timeless
classic.
6. A
Clockwork Orange (1971)
Movies that are ahead of their time are
often underappreciated in their own. (Look at the change in the reputations of Blade Runner, The Shawshank Redemption, and Fight
Club over the years.) When A
Clockwork Orange was released in 1971, it told a story of a near-future
when teenage hooligans freely roam the streets at night and terrorize upright citizens. Alex (Malcolm McDowell) is the leader of his gang of
“droogs,” who spends his days giving into his base impulses of masturbation and
Beethoven and spends his evenings assaulting unsuspecting people with his own
disturbing brand of ultra-violence. When he is arrested and subjected to a
brainwashing program to rid him of his evil impulses, Stanley Kubrick’s
dystopian vision of the future goes from interesting to fascinatingly
provocative, raising important questions about free will and choice while also
leaving nightmarish images in your memory. The nearly unintelligible language
the young protagonists sometimes speak is a quite original satire of the new
slang every generation adapts, and the score selections of the soundtrack
perfectly compliment the scenes. History has been very kind to the prophetic A Clockwork Orange, which has gone down
as one of Stanley Kubrick’s purest masterpieces, if also one of his most dark
and disturbing.
5. Aliens (1986) (special edition)
The very best sequels try to be
substantially different from the original, to make a name of their own instead
of falling back on their progenitors’ (like with the darker tone of The Empire Strikes Back or the altered
protagonist in Terminator 2: Judgment Day).
James Cameron’s Aliens is remarkably
different from Ridley Scott’s Alien
and its differences often let Aliens
surpass the original as a movie. Instead of the creeping tension of the first one, Aliens loads up on skilfully
bombastic action sequences and insanely tense ratchetings of suspense. Ellen
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is the sole survivor of the Nostromo, the rest of its
crew having been killed by the stowaway alien of the first movie. Discovered in
cryo-sleep 57 years after the events of Alien,
Ripley thaws out to find that not only is there no evidence of the alien existing
but that the planet where the Nostromo crew picked up the alien has been
colonized for 20 years. And then communications with the station on the planet
go out. Ripley’s fury and desire to exterminate the creatures that killed her
old crew drive her to join a rescue mission to the planet, but things go badly
wrong. Weaver’s acting in Aliens
earned her an Oscar nomination, as she took the character to even
scarier places than in Alien, as well
as showing a caring, maternal side that helped make Ellen Ripley such a
well-rounded character in cinema. As with The
Abyss, James Cameron’s director’s cut is a much better version of the film;
the extra 17 minutes makes for a fuller experience, while not slowing the movie
down at all. It’s rare for a really good movie to have an even better sequel,
but as great a scary movie as Alien
is, Aliens is an even better action
movie.
4.
Minority Report (2002)
One of the best things about
science-fiction is how well it lends itself toward examining big ideas, through a different setting with all the right pieces exaggerated in just the right proportions to make a statement. These are
the movies that often lead to long conversations in the parking lot of the
theatre or around a living room. Minority
Report, from the writer of Total
Recall and Blade Runner and
directed by Steven Spielberg, is one of the very best at causing such
conversations. In 2054, the police department in Washington, D.C. has a
controversial task force that deals in “pre-crime.” Imprisoned children with
psychic abilities can predict murders and Det. John Anderson (Tom Cruise) and
his team use them to stop crimes before they happen. Ah, but if a person is
arrested before they do something, what’s to say it would have happened? That’s
the crux of the movie, especially when Anderson himself is fingered in a murder
prediction, causing him to go on the run from his own task force to clear his
name. If that weren’t enough, the Pre-Crime Division is also under investigation by an auditor from the Department of Justice (Colin Farrell,
showing how strong an actor he can really be) when Anderson runs, leading to complex
cat-and-mouse chases as strong as the best scenes in The Fugitive or The
Negotiator. Steven Spielberg and his team put an incredible amount of work
into making the world of Minority Report
seem real. The ingenious inventions that populate the film, from facial
recognitionn advertisements to electronic paper, have influenced
technological breakthroughs like tablet computers in the years since. More than
anything, though, Minority Report is
a thought-provoking and brilliant chase movie set in a time that doesn’t seem
fictional so much as a peek into our actual future.
3.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
(special edition)
When Arnold Schwarzenegger starred as the
unstoppable killing machine T-800 in The
Terminator, he gave the world one of the scariest movie villains of the
‘80s. James Cameron brilliantly flipped the tables for the sequel using one
simple idea: since the T-800 was essentially just a reprogrammable
machine, it didn’t have to necessarily remain an antagonist. After the events
in The Terminator, Sarah Connor
(Linda Hamilton) has been committed. (Any evidence of the first terminator somehow
disappeared after its destruction.) Meanwhile, in the future, Sarah’s grown-up son, John
– the leader of the human resistance fighting a war against self-aware
computers and machines – learns of a plot the machines have to send a more
advanced terminator, a T-1000 (Robert Patrick), back in time to assassinate
John as a child (Edward Furlong). John’s militia have acquired a reformatted T-800
and send him back with instructions to protect John at all costs. Having
Schwarzenegger return as a different T-800, now filling a heroic role instead
of a villainous one, provided a fresh, radical change in tone. The CGI of the
liquid metal T-1000 was revolutionary for its day and paved the way for Jurassic Park. Like many of Cameron’s
movies, a slightly longer director’s cut exists, and like The Abyss and Aliens, the
special edition is vastly improved just by the additional few minutes. James
Cameron has made more amazing sci-fi movies than anyone, but this is his
masterpiece. It does everything the original did and does it better, as well as
turning two-dimensional characters in complex ones (even the inhuman T-800) while still saving room for a few huge explosions. Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a perfect sci-fi action movie.
2.
Star Wars (1977)
If you haven’t seen Star Wars, then what are you even doing reading this list? The
original space opera from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars (or A New Hope, as it would later be rebranded) changed the face of
cinema forever. The monomyth concept theorized by Joseph Campbell, which runs
through everything from The Lord of the
Rings and Harry Potter to The Lion King and The Matrix, was retrofitted by George Lucas using an outer space
motif. Hero Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) heads off on an adventure with the
sage mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), the roguee captain Han Solo
(Harrison Ford), Solo’s hairy sidekick Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), and the comical
robots C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker). Luke's task: to master The
Force (a life force that binds us all) and rescue the kidnapped princess Leia
(Carrie Fisher) from the evil Darth Vader (David Prowse and James Earl Jones).
Everything about the movie is ingrained into popular lexicon and our collective
cultural memories, from lightsabers and “May the Force by with you” to the
Death Star and “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” It’s no accident
that Star Wars became the
highest-grossing movie of all-time (twice, including the 1997 re-release that
dethroned Jurassic Park). It fulfills
every element needed of a classic movie, it has a family-friendly rating while
still being entertaining for adults, and the connection it made with audiences
the world over is felt in all the sequels, prequels, TV series, books, video
games, toys, and conventions. Star Wars
is the most beloved sci-fi movie of all time and deservedly so.
1.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Leave it to the greatest film director to
make the greatest science-fiction movie. Stanley Kubrick, the man behind such
masterpieces as A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, and Dr. Strangelove,
or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, became famous for
always wanting to try different genres and never working in the same one twice.
After the black dramedy Lolita and
the war satire Dr. Strangelove,
Kubrick set his sights on space. His vision of space travel and the future was
so smartly prescient and clearly thought out, it led to rumours of NASA hiring
Kubrick to fake the 1969 Moon landing that still persist to this day. 2001: A Space Odyssey opens audaciously,
with the first twenty minutes taking place amongst apes, learning to use tools
and weapons millions of years before modern man. The movie then makes the
longest flash-forward in film history, jumping from prehistoric times to the
year 2001, with a space shuttle heading to Jupiter. There are parallels between
the two sections, not the least of which are black monoliths that cause
inspiration or progress in any species that discover them. (It makes more sense
in the movie.) During the trip to Jupiter, the film finds time to pit man
against machine in a subplot with the self-aware spaceship computer system HAL
9000 deciding to eliminate the “unreliable” human element from the mission. By
the mind-boggling final 40 minutes, even those who understood the bulk of the
movie often get lost the first time around. 2001:
A Space Odyssey is not a movie that makes complete sense the first time
it’s seen, simply because it is so different from what other sci-fi movies
settled for doing and because there is so much going on in it. Much like the
best art, it takes time and reflection to appreciate everything the
artist attempts. Kubrick dabbled in sci-fi again with A Clockwork Orange, but he never went back to space (unless, of
course, you believe the Apollo hoax story). When you achieve perfection the
first time, what need is there to try again? The titular year itself may have
come and gone already, but 2001: A Space
Odyssey remains the greatest science-fiction movie of all time.
As a five-part feature, I'll be counting down the best science-fiction through the history of cinema. From dinosaurs to aliens, from Star Wars to Star Trek, from the depths of the ocean to the far reaches of outer space, these are The 50 Greatest Science-Fiction Movies.
THE 50 GREATEST SCIENCE-FICTION MOVIES
Part 4
By Chris Luckett
(Curious about why certain movies were chosen or ranked as they were? Click here.)
20.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997) Neon
Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion is
everything Pacific Rim wanted to be.
While the title is certainly a mouthful, it’s a fascinating action movie that
is only outshone by its backstory. “Neon
Genesis Evangelion” was an anime TV series in the ‘90s about three teenagers
trained to pilot huge robotic suits in a war against giant monsters. The disappointing
two-episode series finale was so reviled by audiences in Japan that the anime’s
creator, Hideaki Anno, received death threats. To appease fans, Anno released
two movies: Death & Rebirth
(which retells the series’s plot in 100 minutes) and The End of Evangelion, a proper climax to the story. The End of Evangelion is so full of heady
ideas, it’s practically impossible to fully understand upon its initial
viewing, or even after a second or a third. It’s more open to interpretation
than Mulholland Drive, more visually disturbing
than Eraserhead, and more mind-boggling
than 2001: A Space Odyssey – yet it’s
also packed with wall-to-wall action. Watching the series isn’t necessary (though
viewing Death & Rebirth certainly allows for a fuller appreciation of the sequel/finale). Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of
Evangelion stands on its own not just as a spectacular climax to a story
but as one the most perplexing and intense animated movies of the ‘90s.
19.
WALL-E (2008)
WALL-E just may be Pixar’s greatest movie. The sheer audacity of having
virtually no dialogue during the first third of a cute, animated movie is hard
to believe, especially coming from Disney. Taking its time to develop character
and paint a detailed view of a grim future, WALL-E
hypnotizes from its very first shot. The movie takes place in 2805, after the
Earth has been polluted to its saturation point and all humans have left the
planet. WALL-E is the only functioning clean-up robot left on Earth. One day, a
sleek-looking robot named EVE descends from the sky. EVE is a scout robot sent by
humans to check for signs that the planet could once again support life. After
finding a living plant, EVE returns to space and WALL-E follows. The ensuing
plot becomes both a satire on consumerism and one of the most heart-tugging and
genuine romances in modern cinema – a feat made all the more impressive by the
fact the main characters are nearly-silent robots. With a powerful
environmental message for kids and a touching love story for adults, WALL-E is must-see animation.
18.
The Fly (1986)
One of the greatest remakes in cinema is David
Cronenberg’s version of The Fly,
which strips away the camp of the 1958 original and amps up the grotesquery and
tragedy. Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) is a brilliant scientist who has created
a teleportation device capable of transporting a person from one telepod to
another. One night, Seth drunkenly tests the teleporter on himself, unaware
that a housefly is also in his telepod. The teleportation program, unaware of
how to reanimate separate entities, combines the DNA of both Seth and the fly
when it reconstructs him in the other pod. This begins a sad tale of hubris and
misfortune, as Seth slowly devolves and loses his humanity. The plot can be
seen as a metaphor for battle against any number of diseases as well as just a
devastating look at aging. Cronenberg is not afraid to employ gore in his
visual effects, but it’s never done arbitrarily. It’s rare for a sci-fi horror movie
to also be a powerful love story, but the doomed tale of Seth and Veronica
(Geena Davis) manages to also be that, with one of the most powerful endings in science-fiction.
17.
Star Trek (2009)
By the mid ‘00s, the Star Trek franchise was mostly dead. After six television series
and ten movies, interest had largely waned and many felt the hokey effects and
hopeful optimism just didn’t have a place in modern entertainment. It was J.J.
Abrams, the man behind Lost and the
excellent Mission: Impossible III,
who showed Star Trek could still work
for new audiences by injecting it with a healthy dose of Star Wars. By ramping up the action and exploiting scenes for their
natural comedy, 2009’s Star Trek flew
higher than any previous movie in the series had. What’s more, it found an
ingenious way to not only work at a fresh introduction to the series for the
uninitiated but also to also take part in the same universe at the earlier
shows and movies, using a very clever time-travel plot device to rewrite its past. The cast, who all had daunting tasks ahead of them in portraying
characters so equated with their original actors, found a perfect balance
between homage and originality. Abrams’ work on Star Trek has become a lightning rod for fanboys and Trekker
purists who cringe whenever they hear “lens flare,” but his 2009 reboot managed to
be a better piece of sci-fi entertainment than any of the more traditional Star Trek movies had been.
16.
The Thing (1982)
Less of a remake than a complete teardown
and reconstruction based upon a similar setup, John Carpenter’s The Thing vastly improves on 1951’s The Thing from Another World. In the
original, a scientific team in the arctic discovered a plant-based alien buried
in the ice and had to kill it before it killed them. In the 1982 remake, the
team is still trapped in the arctic, but the life form they find is parasitic.
With access to the outside world cut off, cabin fever sets in and everyone
turns against each other, unsure of who’s infected and who’s not. It’s a
fascinating concept to apply to the scenario and it leads to the movie being an
incredibly frightening tale of paranoia. Even without the shock moments and
gory visual effects that punctuate the movie, The Thing manages to be one of the scariest movies in science-fiction
by setting its events in motion and then stepping back to let its characters
deal with each other. The fact that it’s not always clear who’s really infected
makes the movie all the more gripping.
15.
District 9 (2009)
District
9 is many things – a fake documentary, an action
movie, a horror film, a black comedy, a South African apartheid parable – but more
than anything, it’s a provocative piece of science-fiction. District 9’s setup begins in 1982, when
a gigantic spaceship came to a hovering rest of Johannesburg, South Africa. The
ship had broken down and the aliens found inside were malnourished to the point
of death. The aliens were transported down to Earth, but their camp was soon turned
into a prison (the titular District 9), with peoples’ xenophobia and prejudice
leading to the aliens (derogatorily called “prawns” by human characters) being
segregated, mistreated, and denied the right to leave Earth. Decades later in 2009, when
a government agent (a sympathetic Sharlto Copley) is tasked with relocating the
aliens and becomes infected inside District 9, he begins a transformative
journey that takes unpredictable twists and barrels through insane action sequences while
telling an incredibly smart story. District
9 is pretty much everything you could want in a modern sci-fi movie.
14.
Alien (1979)
One of the seminal sci-fi thrillers, Ridley
Scott’s Alien was revolutionary for
its time and holds up better than most pre-CGI movies. The gripping suspense of
the film is matched by its bravura pacing and an authentic-feeling vision of
the future. The towing spaceship Nostromo responds to a distress call on a
nearby planet, only to discover a lethal species of predatory aliens. The first
half of the movie is an atmospheric wonder of slow burns and growing dread. The
second half of the movie involves an alien sneaking onto the Nostromo after the
crew depart the planet. At that point, Alien
becomes a futuristic Agatha Christie story, with the alien hunting down the
crew members one by one. The cast, including Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm, John
Hurt, Tom Skerritt, and Harry Dean Stanton, is wholly perfect in their roles.
Scott’s vision of spaceships that were dank and grimy instead of shiny and
sterile was incredibly bold for its day. Alien
introduced one of the scariest monsters in cinema and is still one of the
tensest movies to take place in outer space.
13.
The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Following up the global blockbuster and
cinematic game-changer Star Wars (or A New Hope, as it would be rebranded)
was seemingly a no-win scenario. Star
Wars had taken the world by surprise and tapped into something no movie had
before 1977. It had both become the highest-grossing movie of all-time and been
nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. On top of all that, the story had
been seemingly told as far as it would go. Many people had high hopes but low
expectations when The Empire Strikes Back
was released in 1980. What people got was a much darker tale of personal
setback, death, betrayal, loss, and heartbreak. On top of that, it introduced
Yoda, who would become a memorable favourite amongst fans; “The Imperial March,”
one of the most recognizable pieces of film score in science-fiction; and one
of the greatest, and arguably the most well-known, plot twist in movies. (Search
your feelings. You know it to be true.) Debates still rage on over whether The Empire Strikes Back is superior to Star Wars. Whichever you prefer, it’s
essentially comparing one diamond to another.
12.
Ghostbusters (1984)
There are those who don’t consider Ghostbusters science-fiction. Some argue
its paranormal and supernatural elements make it more fantasy than its proton
packs and particle accelerators make it sci-fi. (To be fair, original versions
of the script also involved time travel, space travel, and parallel
dimensions.) When it comes down to it, Ghostbusters
is not only sci-fi, it’s the greatest sci-fi comedy there has been. The tale of
three unemployed parapsychologists who start up a ghost-hunting business in New
York is rich soil for comedy, and Ivan Reitman and the cast reap every opportunity.
Bill Murray is in top form as Peter Venckman, as are Dan Aykroyd as the
childlike Ray and Harold Ramis as the ever-serious Egon. Its special effects
were pretty impressive for its time, especially for in a comedic movie.
Moreover, Ghostbusters is one of the
most gorgeously filmed comedies; almost every shot is framed perfectly and
subtle establishing shots go a long way toward showing both the beauty and the
creepiness of New York City. One of the funniest movies of all time and a
perfect balance between comedy and science-fiction, Ghostbusters set the standard for its sub-genre.
11.
The Matrix (1999)
Many of the ideas in The Matrix weren’t entirely original. Movies like Strange Days, Ghost in the Shell, and Dark
City tackled them first, but none of them approached the concepts as
stylishly. The Matrix came along at
just the right time, when people were thirsty for a great, new science-fiction
movie that used ever-improving computer effects. As 1999 began, many expected that
quenching movie would be The Phantom
Menace, but it was Andy and Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix that went down as the sci-fi opus that brought the
millennium to a close. Thomas Anderson (Keanu Reeves) works in a cubicle by day
and does under-the-table hacking jobs under the alias of Neo by night. His life
is turned upside-down by the revelation that the whole world as we know it is
actually a computer program that machines use to brainwash our minds while they
harvest the energy from our slumbering bodies. Once freed by Morpheus (Lawrence
Fishburne), Neo is enlisted to take down the machines and free everybody who’s
still “plugged in.” The sequels may have left a bad taste in some people’s
mouths, but it shouldn’t detract from the outstanding achievement of the
original. From the innovative “bullet time” sequences to Hugo Weaving’s
deliberate performance as the sinister Agent Smith, The Matrix was the perfect movie for its time and ushered sci-fi
into the modern mainstream.
