John Scalzi - Five Years That Changed Science Fiction Forever

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John Scalzi - Five Years That Changed Science Fiction Forever
September 29, 2010
John Scalzi
AMC Filmcritic.org

I've been on a little bit of a kick regarding significant science-fiction films the last couple of weeks, and this week I'd like to come at it from a slightly different angle. As significant as a science-fiction film can be, it's rarely so in isolation: there are years that stick out as being important for the genre because two or more films cause a shift in how science-fiction film is seen by the public or by the industry. Below you'll find my list of the five years that changed science-fiction film, arranged by order of their importance.

1977
Easily the most important year in science-fiction-film history -- and one of the most important in film history, period -- because of (surprise) Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. I went on in detail about this a couple of weeks ago, but to recap quickly: aside from its massive popularity, it incorporated a large number of technical advances for which it was amply rewarded (the film won six Oscars, most in technical categories) and started a focus on back-end processes that continues to this day. It also cemented in Hollywood's mind the idea of the summer blockbuster. Effects-laden, merchandise-driven spectaculars have been a part of the film industry since the early days, but for better or worse this film pushed the category into overdrive.

Often overlooked in the wake of Star Wars, however, is another massively successful 1977 science-fiction film: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, released late in the year. It confirmed that Star Wars' cocktail of special effects and science-fiction themes was not a fluke, and soon after every studio was looking for its own sci-fi spectacular to shove up on the screen.

1968
Another year with a one-two sci-fi commercial-critical combination: Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Planet of the Apes was significant not only for its technical and makeup advances (the latter of which prompted a special Academy Award) but because of another special effect entirely: Charlton Heston, who was a legitimate A-list star in an era when A-list stars didn't do science fiction. After Apes' success, Heston would go on to star in other hit science-fiction films (Soylent Green, The Omega Man), showing other major stars that science fiction wasn't slumming.

Stanley Kubrick's 2001 tapped into both the space race and the "Tune in, turn on, and drop out" vibe of young America by offering a film that was simultaneously a reasonable extrapolation of then-current technology and space exploration and a psychedelic head-trip experience -- both thanks to cutting-edge special effects that won Kubrick his only Oscar. Both Apes and 2001 kicked off a run of serious science-fiction films with sometimes dark social themes -- a trend that would continue for almost a decade, until Star Wars arrived on the scene.

1931
Science fiction got its first top grosser for the year: Frankenstein (also classified as a horror film), which took home what would be the equivalent of about $375 million today. Along with Dracula, also a monster hit that year for the same studio, Universal, it established the idea that fantastical genre films could be audience pleasers. Universal certainly didn't need to be told twice, and in the next decade it cranked out its classic monster movies, which combined horror, fantasy, and science fiction in equal measure. Those films would have an unexpected fringe benefit for Universal: their sets would be recycled for Flash Gordon, the studio's cheaply made but highly successful science-fiction serial.

1982
Star Wars and Close Encounters established that science-fiction filmmaking could be epic; in 1982, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial showed that it could have a heart and that the genre could very successfully (and profitably) marry itself to a family-friendly story and audience. This would in turn spawn the eighties subgenre of Spielberg-esque films, featuring a winsome alien-robot-Sasquatch and leading to various heartwarming adventures. This subgenre, while profitable at the time, eventually trickled out but has recently found a second life in the form of computer-animated films such as Wall-E, a clear computerized descendant of E.T.

E.T.'s influence on science-fiction film was immediate and obvious, but the other major science-fiction film's influence was not: Blade Runner was not a financial success on its release, but its visual look dazzled an entire generation of aspiring science-fiction professionals, from writers to directors to visual artists, and its influence is felt not only in science-fiction film but in literature, video games, and graphic arts.

1902
The year that started it all, with Georges Méliès's Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), a film I've been noting quite a bit recently, in fact, so I'll avoid rehashing what makes it significant. What I will say is that the film was popular enough to be pirated -- by no less than Thomas Edison, who took pilfered copies and exhibited them in the U.S. without paying Méliès -- proving that the concerns of the film industry today are as old as the industry itself and that the appetite for science fiction is just as old too.