Ten Sci-Fi Flicks for the Thinking Man
...or woman.
Unless you've been living in a cave for the last four years, you know that the cheesy old sci-fi TV series known as Battlestar Galactica got picked up, dusted off, and given the all-time, grand champion, mother of all reboots. Solidly led by a couple of veteran movie actors (Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell), BSG has garnered a reputation as one of the best shows on TV. But don't just call it a sci-fi show; its so much more than that. It's about love and loss. It's about what it means to be a soldier, and what it's like to be a refugee. It's about religion and fanaticism. It's about government and corruption. But mostly it's about our own humanity, and what it really means to be human. Since some of us here are at RT are huge BSG fans (and we're betting some of you are too), in honor of the beginning of the end (starting next week), we thought we'd share a list of "thinking man's" sci-fi films; sci-fi stories that aren't about laser battles or rampaging mutants, but more thoughtful pieces on what it really means to be human.
By the way, if you're wondering who we think is the final Cylon, as you can imagine, we're still arguing about that; when pressed, most of us that watch the show suspect President Laura Roslin (even if she doesn't know it). But Editor in Chief Matt Atchity is going with an extreme longshot and betting that the final Cylon will be revealed as Zack Adama.
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Planet of the ApesWe like to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution -- or the divinely appointed head of the food chain, whichever you prefer -- but what if our inability to transcend our biggest flaws (like, say, our thirst for war) resulted in humans losing their top-dog status? These were the questions asked by Pierre Boulle's novel, La plančte des singes, adapted for the big screen by Michael Wilson and Rod Serling for this 1968 classic. Planet of the Apes took some liberties with Boulle's book, but that's par for the course with adaptations -- and the changes worked, most notably Serling's addition of the film's classic twist ending, which Boulle said he wished he'd come up with himself. Blending thought-provoking commentary and popcorn action at a level few science fiction films had achieved, Planet struck such a chord that it spun off multiple sequels, a television show, and Tim Burton's 2001 remake (not to mention the reboot that's reportedly in the works). As Variety noted on the film's release, "Planet of the Apes is an amazing film."
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Dark CityPhilosophers and scientists have been trying to locate the seat of the human soul for as long as there have been philosophers and scientists, and we're arguably no closer now than we were when we started -- so it would be unreasonable to expect a 100-minute science fiction film to solve the riddle, or even shed any new light on the subject. Dark City probably doesn't do either of those things, but it does provide plenty of nifty special effects, and blends sci-fi and noir more enthusiastically than any major entry in the genre since Blade Runner. For some critics, this wasn't enough to forgive City's occasionally incomprehensible plot (eFilmcritic's Rob Gonsalves called it "one of the most ludicrous movies in years"), but most scribes responded to director/co-writer Alex Proyas' stylish visuals, and some fell completely in love with it; the Washington Post's Stephen Hunter, for one, declared that "if you don't fall in love with it, you've probably never fallen in love with a movie, and never will.".
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arendr on 01-7-2009 06:50 PM
Nice work here, Jeff. I'm glad you mentioned Solaris.
And I hope to one day have the pull in Hollywood to make a movie like 2001.