Sci-Fi And The Sincerest Form Of Flattery
I know many of you prefer “science fiction” or “science fantasy” or “speculative fiction” or “sf” or even “stf” for short, but I ain’t that guy…
I’m a sci-fi kinda guy.
I prefer sci-fi because to me it evokes the nerdy playfulness the genre should embrace at some level (and, no we’re not gonna debate geek vs nerd as a descriptor; “geeky” implies biting heads off chickens no matter how benign and respectable the root has become).
. . .
A brief history of sci-fi films -- a very brief history.
Georges Melies’ 1898 short A Trip to The Moon is one of the earliest examples of the genre, and it arrived full blown at the dawn of cinema via its literary predecessors in Verne and Wells.
There were a lot of bona fide sci-fi films before WWII -- the Danes made a surprisingly large number in the silent era, Fritz Lang gave us Metropolis and Frau Im Mond, we saw the goofiness of Just Imagine and the spectacle of Things To Come and the space opera appeal of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.
And that’s not counting hundreds of other productions -- comedies and contemporary thrillers and westerns -- where a super-science mcguffin played a key part.
That came to a screeching halt in WWII primarily due to budget considerations and real world science easily overtaking screen fantasy. Still, there were a few bona fide sci-fi films and serials during the war and immediately thereafter, but it wasn’t until the flying saucer scare of the late forties that sci-fi became a popular movie genre again (and on TV as well).
Ground zero for 1950s sci-fi was George Pal’s Destination Moon, which was an attempt to show a plausible flight to the moon (it was actually beaten to the screen by a couple of other low budget movies that rushed into production to catch Pal’s PR wave for his film).
This led to the first 1950s sci-fi boom that lasted from 1949 to 1954, followed by a brief fallow period, then a larger but far less innovative second boom in the late 1950s to early 1960s.
BTW, let me heartily recommend the late Bill Warren’s magnificent overview of sci-fi films of that era, Keep Watching The Skies, a must have in any sci-fi film fan’s library.
Seriously, go get it.
Bill and I frequently discussed films of that and subsequent eras, and Bill agreed with my assessment of the difference between 1950s sci-fi and 1960s sci-fi: 1950s sci-fi most typically ends with the old order restored, while 1960s sci-fi typically ends with the realization things have changed irrevocably.
In other words,
“What now,
puny human?”
I judge the 1960s sci-fi boom to have started in 1963 (at least for the US and western Europe; behind the Iron Curtain they were already ahead of us) with the Outer Limits TV show, followed in 1964 by the films The Last Man On Earth (based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend), Robinson Crusoe On Mars, and The Time Travelers.
But what really triggered the 1960s sci-fi boom was Planet Of The Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The former was shopped around every major Hollywood studio starting in 1963 until it finally found a home at 20th Century Fox (whose market research indicated there was an audience for well-made serious sci-fi film and hence put Fantastic Voyage into production). Kubrick, fresh off Lolita and Dr. Srangelove (another sci-fi film tho not presented as such), carried an enormous cache in Hollywood of that era, and if MGM was going to bankroll his big budget space movie, hey, maybe there was something to this genre after all.
From 1965 forward, the cinematic space race was on, with 1968 being a banner year for groundbreaking sci-fi movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Barbarella, Charly, Planet Of The Apes, The Power, Project X, and Wild In The Streets. (Star Trek premiering on TV in 1967 didn’t hurt, either.)
And, yeah, there were a number of duds and more than a few old school throwbacks during this era, but the point is the most interesting films were the most innovative ones.
Here’s a partial list of the most innovative sci-fi films from 1969 to 1977, nine-year period with some of the most original ideas ever presented in sci-fi films. Not all of these were box office successes, but damn, they got people’s attention in both the film making and sci-fi fandom communities.
=1969=
Doppelganger (US title: Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun)
=1970=
Beneath The Planet Of The Apes [a]
=1971=
=1972=
Solaris [b]
=1973=
The Final Programme (US title: The Last Days Of Man On Earth)
=1974=
=1975=
Shivers (a.k.a. They Came From Within and The Parasite Murders) [c]
=1976=
God Told Me To [a.k.a. Demon]
=1977=
[a] I include Beneath The Planet Of The Apes because it is the single most nihilistic major studio film released, a movie that posits Charlton Heston blowing up the entire planet is A Damn Good Idea; follow up films in the series took a far more conventional approach to the material. While successful, neither the studio nor mainstream audiences knew what to make of this film, so 20th Century Fox re-released it in a double bill with another problematic production, Russ Meyer’s Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, and holy cow, if ever there was a more bugfuck double feature from a major studio I challenge you to name it.
[b] Other than Karel Zemen’s delightful animated films, Iron Curtain sci-fi movies rarely screened in the US, with the exception of special effects stock shots strip mined to add production values to cheapjack American productions (looking at you, Roger Corman). Solaris is the exception.
[c] David Cronenberg made several other films in this time frame, but most of them were variations on the themes he used in Shivers, including his big break out, Scanners. Realizing he was repeating himself, Cronenberg reevaluated his goals and started making films with greater variety of theme and subject matter.
. . .
The astute reader will notice I bring my list to an end in 1977, a mere nine-year span instead of a full decade.
That’s because 1977 also saw the release of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and Star Wars.
The effect was immediate, with knock-off films being released the same year.
1978 saw Dawn Of The Dead, a sequel to 1968’s Night Of The Living Dead, and Superman, the first non-campy superhero movie aimed at non-juvenile audiences.
1979 gave us Alien, Mad Max, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
These films were not just successful, they were blockbusters.
And none of them were original.
Close Encounters served as an excuse to do a Kubrick-style light show; plot and theme are about as deep as a Dixie cup, and of all the blockbusters of that era, it’s the one with no legs.
Alien’s pedigree can be traced back to It! Terror From Beyond Space (and It’s pedigree goes back to A.E. van Vogt’s “Black Destroyer” and “Discord In Scarlet” in the old Astounding Stories) and Demon Planet (US title: Planet Of The Vampires) by way of Dark Star (Dan O’Bannon writing the original screenplays for that film and Alien as well).
Mad Max, like 1981’s Escape From New York, differs from earlier post-apocalypse movies only insofar as their apocalypses of a social / cultural / political nature, not nuclear or biological weapons. Mad Max, in fact, can trace its lineage back to No Blade Of Grass, which featured it own caravan of refugees attacked by modern day visigoths on motorcycles, and the original Death Race 2000, as well as an odd little Australian non-sci-fi film, The Cars That Ate Paris.
Not only was Dawn Of The Dead a sequel, but it kickstarted a worldwide tsunami of zombie movies that continues to this day (no surprise as zombie films are easy to produce compared to other films listed here, and while there are a few big budget examples of the genre, the typical zombie movie is just actors in ragged clothes and crappy make-up).
Superman was…well…Superman. And Star Trek was Star Trek.
And the granddaddy of them all, Star Wars, was a cinematic throwback that threw so far back it made the old seem new again.
Not begrudging any of those films their success:
They were well made and entertaining.
But while there had been plenty of sequels and remakes and plain ol’ knockoffs of successful sci-fi movies in the past, after these seven there was precious little room for anything really different or innovative.
1982’s E.T. was Spielberg’s unofficial follow-up to Close Encounters.
1984’s Terminator consciously harkened back to Harlan Elison’s Outer Limits episodes “Demon With A Glass Hand” and “Soldier” (not to mention 1966’s Cyborg 2087 which looks like a first draft of Cameron’s film)
All innovative movies are risky, and the mammoth success of the films cited above did little to encourage new ideas in sci-fi films but rather attempts to shoehorn material into one of several pre-existing genres.
Star Wars = space opera of the splashy Flash Gordon variety
Star Trek = crew on a mission (Star Trek: The Next Generation [+ 5 other series], Andromeda, Battlestar: Galactica [4 series], Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, Farscape, Firefly [+ movie], The Orville, Space Academy, Space Rangers, Space: Above And Beyond, plus more anime and syndicated shows than you can shake a stick at)
Superman = superheroes (nuff’ sed!)
Close Encounters / E.T. = cute aliens
Alien = not-so-cute aliens
Terminator = robots vs humans (and, yes, The Matrix movies fall into this category)
Escape From New York = urban post-apocalypse
Mad Max = vehicular post-apocalypse
Dawn Of The Dead = zombies
Mix and match ‘em and you’ve got a nearly limitless number of variations you know are based on proven popular concepts, none of that risky original stuff.
Small wonder that despite the huge number of new sci-fi films and programs available, little of it is memorable.
. . .
It shouldn’t be like this.
With ultra-cheap film making tools (there are theatrically released films shot on iPhones so there’s literally no barrier to entry) and copious venues for ultra-low / no-budget film makers to show their work (YouTube, Vimeo, Amazon Prime, etc.), there’s no excuse for there not to be a near limitless number of innovative films in all genres.
But there isn’t.
I watch a lot of independent features and short films on various channels and streaming services.
They’re either direct knock-offs of current big budget blockbusters (because often the film makers are hoping to impress the big studios into giving them lots of money to make one of their movies), or worse still, deliberately “bad” imitations of 1950s B-movies (and I get why there’s an appeal to do a bad version of a B-movie; if you screw up you can always say you did it deliberately).
Look, I understand the appeal of fan fic, written or filmed.
And I get it that sometimes it’s easier to do a knock-off where the conventions of the genre help with the final execution.
But let’s not make deliberate crap, okay?
Oscar Wilde is quoted as saying “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” but he was quoting somebody else, and that wasn’t the whole original quote.
Wilde was quoting Charles Caleb Colton, a dissolute English clergyman with a passion for gambling and a talent for bon mots.
Colton’s full quote:
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
Don’t be mediocre.
Be great.
© Buzz Dixon
