V.

Films

Science fiction has interested film-makers since the earliest days of the cinema, although not often to the benefit of the film or science fiction itself. Most of such films have been adaptations of science-fiction literature and comic strips.

Unlike science-fiction literature, science-fiction cinema was, until the 1970s, increasingly preoccupied with unnatural creatures of various sorts, giving rise to a subgenre colloquially referred to as horror or monster films. Films featuring alien beings, mutant creatures, or soulless humans were more often than not stereotyped melodramas. Among common themes of such science-fiction films were the fallibility of megalomaniacal scientists, the urgency of international cooperation against invaders from outer space or monsters from Earth, the rash hostility of people to anything alien, and the evil aspects of technology.

The earliest film to tackle fantasy, if not science fiction proper, was Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon), created by the French film-maker and magician Georges Méliès in 1902. The film company of the American inventor Thomas A. Edison produced A Trip to Mars in 1910. Early German film-makers produced influential films culminating in such Expressionistic films as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919, Robert Wiene) and Metropolis (1926, Fritz Lang). Prominent American monster films, which have since inspired countless sequels, are Frankenstein (1931, James Whale), Dracula (1931, Tod Browning), and The Mummy (1932, Karl Freund). Notable American serials of the 1930s were based on the comic-strip characters Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. In 1933 came King Kong (Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack) and The Invisible Man (James Whale). In 1936 Great Britain produced the ambitious Things To Come (William Cameron Menzies), a visionary treatment of a utopian technocracy, the scenario for which was written by Wells, author of the novel, The Shape of Things to Come (1933), from which it was adapted.

The American producer and director George Pal contributed several well-regarded films, beginning in 1950 with Destination Moon (Irving Pichel) and continuing with When Worlds Collide (1951, Rudolph Maté), The War of the Worlds (1953, Byron Haskin), and The Time Machine (1960, George Pal). All four films won awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their special effects. Other notable films of the 1950s were The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, Robert Wise), Forbidden Planet (1956, Fred M. Wilcox), and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956, Don Siegel).

The critically acclaimed science-fiction films of the 1960s and 1970s include The Day of the Triffids (1962, Steve Sekely), Alphaville (1965, Jean-Luc Godard), Fahrenheit 451 (1966, François Truffaut), Fantastic Voyage (1966, Richard Fleischer), Planet of the Apes (1968, Franklin J. Schaffner), The Andromeda Strain (1971, Robert Wise), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976, Nicolas Roeg), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg). Stanley Kubrick made the epic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which was one of the most widely discussed science-fiction films of all time; and the science-fiction adventure fantasy Star Wars (1977, George Lucas) became one of the biggest box-office hits to date. Several film episodes of Star Trek (based on the television series); Mad Max (1979, George Miller) and its sequels; Brazil (1985, Terry Gilliam); Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982) by Ridley Scott; The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991), and Aliens (1986), by James Cameron; E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jurassic Park (1993), A. I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), and Minority Report (2002), all by Steven Spielberg; the Matrix series of films (1999-2003) by the Wachowski brothers; and the sequels to Star Wars have demonstrated the range and popularity of science-fiction film-making since the 1980s.