Four SF Movies

Four of my favorite science fiction movies, presented in no particular order and with no particular rhyme or reason.

Robinson Crusoe on Mars

This was a surprisingly faithful retelling of the famous novel, though with certain exceptions, such as the fact that Friday apparently hails from Alpha Centauri and I personally do not recall slavers in manta-ray ships cruising around in the novel. I mostly remember the rather dramatic backgrounds (matte paintings, but good ones) and the sense of menace when the alien slavers in their ships (which look like recycled War of the Worlds props) appear in the black sky. The matte paintings and the locations give Mars a certain scale and presence that I quite like. Some detect in it the malign hand of European imperialism, but come on, sometimes an SF movie is just an SF movie.

2001: A Space Odyssey

My dad hated this movie. Hated it. From the moment we first watched it on a hot summer night at a drive-in theater he hated it, and referred to the entire genre from that point forward as "science friction". Dad was an otherwise honorable man, though, so we smile benignly at his lack of respect for what is truly a landmark in science fiction. Its special effects remain good to this very day, but mostly I like its sense of purpose and calm rationality - it presents a near future where policy is made by rational people with huge brains, not dominated by the sleazy doings of a bunch of celebrity idiots who wouldn't know a magnetic anomaly if one bit them on the ass. It also captures some of the mystical element I detect in some of Arthur C. Clarke's novels, and I for one wasn't bothered by the "confusing" ending. And the scene where Dave "lobotomizes" HAL remains pretty disturbing, almost half a century later - I still don't know why I feel sorry for a murderous computer, but I do. Its sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact abandoned much of the Utopian rationalism of 2001 and portrayed a world poised on the brink of annihilation at the hands of squabbling child-like Superpowers, but it isn't bad either. Not at good as 2001, but not bad.

5,000,000 Years to Earth

Another classic from the mid-1960s. Here, engineers digging a new tunnel for the London Underground find what they think is an unexploded German bomb from the war. Turns out it's something much more interesting: an ancient telepathic spacecraft from Mars that can change colors, makes funny noises, and causes a giant electrical mirage of one of the telepathic Martian mantis-creatures to loom over London like a bad omen. There's a lot to like about this movie, not least of which is the fact that the hero is a middle-aged scientist with a beard and a tweed jacket (see above) who may or may not actually be mad. It has it all. Science versus the military-industrial complex, paranoia, telepathy, ancient astronauts, ethnic cleansing, demon possession, mysterious substances, and a hero holding a teacup (again, see above). And how many times do you see a movie where the alien menace is terminated with the assistance of a giant crane? 'Nuff said.

Alien

Truly one of the scariest movies I've ever seen, it retells the (grim) adventures of the crew of the Nostromo after the ship is re-routed to investigate a rescue beacon. Turns out (Aha! Corporate malfeasance!) it's a warning beacon, and things don't go well from that point on. Critics complain it's more of a conventional horror movie than a science fiction movie, and maybe that's true. But it had a spaceship, so I think it's SF. If the future of 2001 is clean, orderly and rational, the future of Alien is grubby and workaday and kind of corrupt - probably a more accurate model of the future than 2001, now that I think about it. The Alien of title fame turns out to be a really tall, thin guy in a rubber suit, but the movie nonetheless manages to generate a very real sense of Lovecraft-style terror. By the standards of the 1970s it was a fountain of gruesome gore, and it still has moments that can make me writhe, but compared to the Saw franchise it's about as gory as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.