Skip to main content

Best Science Fiction Movies (part 2)


So this is a continuation of the list of my favorite science fiction films. Here are three more for the list:

The Andromeda Strain. It was based on the novel by Michael Chrichton, and was his first work to be turned into a film. Michael was very, very good to Hollywood. Besides the Andromeda Strain he penned the novels that were turned into many movies including, The Terrminal Man. Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere, Rising Sun. He also created Westworld, Looker, and the TV show ER, among others.

Andromeda Strain came out in 1971 and is set in a top secret underground facility set up to deal with biohazards. A satellite falls into a small town and some kind of organism on the satellite kills everyone in the town. We follow the scientist as they try to figure out what kind of organism it is and how to neutralize it. They approach the problem, dare I say, scientifically. They don’t just push a button on a computer and the answer pops out. They have to run tests and procedures that at best can only answer part of the question, or in most cases simply rule out things that don’t fit. The wonderful design and sets contribute to the atmosphere. There is an intelligent script and fine acting. The story sucks you in and keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Interstellar. There is a lot to like about the 2014 film Interstellar. It has a thoughtful script, an excellent cast, and the sure fire direction of Christopher Nolan who co-wrote the script. It is also a warning tale about the fragility of the planet we live on and if we screw it up there is likely nowhere else we can go. One of the things I like about it is that it lets us experience what time dilation would be like (always good when you can explain Einstein in a way that the average person can understand). Some of the astronauts have to go down to a planet that is very near a black hole and so while they are on the planet they will experience a time shift from the massive gravity that is not experienced by the astronaut left behind on the mother ship.

Okay, what happens to Cooper as he falls into the black hole may fall more into the realm of fantasy than science, but that is a minor quibble. Generally the humans in the film are human, with all the grandeur and faults that define our species. The film raises questions and does not spoon feed you the answers.


Star Wars. Also known as episode 4. I know there are a lot of people who say that The Empire Strikes back is the best of the series, and in some ways it is. But on my list the original will always be king. I have a bias for the first movie in a series. Sequels are made because the first is so successful. The original is a unique idea. Sequels, no matter how good they are, are copies (one exception that comes to mind is Terminator 2, which far surpassed the original). When I saw the first Star wars in 1977, it was a formative experience for me.

There are not any great scientific ideas in the movie. It is pretty much standard Space Opera, but it is a good story told in a masterful way.  We empathize with Luke Skywalker. He is the underdog who has thrown in with a group of underdogs. What we feel for the character of Luke in the first film, sets the stage for the whole series. The underdogs are matched against a seemingly all-powerful villain. Throw in a likable scoundrel, a feisty princess and Alec Guinness’s portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi is the icing on the cake. Yeah, it’s not great science fiction, but it is a great movie.
To be continued next week . . .

(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, Amazon, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out soon).
Link to Star Liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Empathy

  Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...
1 comment
Read more

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

My first experience with cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction was Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer was one of the early works that defined the cyberpunk genre. It was insanely influential. It won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award. But for me, it just did not resonate. I had a hard time visualizing the concepts. It left a bad taste in my mouth for cyberpunk. I mostly avoided the genre. Then a couple of years ago I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson which is cyberpunk (although some people say it is a parody of cyberpunk). Whatever, I liked it. I recently picked up All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu and it immediately became apparent to me that this was cyberpunk. Julia Z is the main character, and I think this is going to be the start of a series following her. She is a hacker (hence cyberpunk). She has got herself in trouble and so she lives on the margins, barely making it. Then a lawyer asks her for her help. His wife has been kidnapped. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Polar Bears and Entropy

  Extinction is a normal part of the evolution of life on our planet. You and I and all individual organisms eventually die. That is the way of things. Entropy happens. Entropy is a word from the third law of thermodynamics that basically means: things fall apart. The natural tendency is for things to become less orderly as time goes on: things break down, things erode, things rust, things wear out. Entropy is a measurement of how fast that is happening in any given system. Individual death is a natural outcome of entropy.   But an extinction is where all the members of a species are no longer living. Millions of species have gone extinct over the lifetime of our planet. There are natural background extinctions that happen continually. But sometimes there are events that trigger mass extinctions, where vast masses of species go extinct all at once (all at once in geologic terms, which might mean over the course of hundreds of years). There have been 5 mass extinctions over ...
Post a Comment
Read more