12 Days Of Cinematicalmas: 7 Sci-Fi Movies For People Who Don't Like Sci-Fi Movies

by Robert Newton Dec 11th 2005 // 3:13PM

Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Joss Whedon, 12 Days of Cinematicalmas

Blade Runner

Taking a simple, scientific "what if" and chasing it down its many possible paths is the task of any conscientious sci-fi writer. Here are seven films that let the drama unfold so fluidly that we sometimes forget we are momentarily dwelling in the land of the fantastic. Sci-fi fans tired of the scorn and derision by the unconverted can do something insidious this holiday season - by making the non-believers watch these Trojan treats...which they may actually like ("One of us! One of us! We accept you! We accept you! One of us!")
  • Serenity (2005) - Buffy The Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon spun off his criminally short-lived 2002 TV series, Firefly, into this rock-solid space western set 400 years in the future about a motley crew of a space freighter running from their shame (and a mutant menace). The tech doesn't call attention to itself, nor do the costumes, helping make this keenly-written, organic wolf-in-sheep's-clothing a kick-ass treat to enjoy in the company of working men and mensches alike.
  • Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol wrote and directed this nearly perfect drama about a regular guy, played by Ethan Hawke, who rejects his genetically determined lot in life and aspires (and conspires) to become an astronaut. A beautiful, existential body slam. Alan Arkin, Loren Dean and the future Mrs. Hawke, Uma Thurman co-star in this first part of Niccol's unofficial speculative trilogy, which continued with Peter Weir's sublime The Truman Show (1998) and the serviceable Simøne (2002).
  • Blade Runner (1982) - Chronically odd boy Philip K. Dick has not had his work treated better than in this futuristic tale of Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a "blade runner" whose job is to retire too-human machines called Replicants who have run to 2019 L.A. to enjoy their final days. Rutger Hauer, who plays the psychotic replicant Roy Batty, entirely improvised his climactic "Tears In Rain" soliloquy, creating one of the most memorable - and, ironically, most human - moments in sci-fi movie history. The only version that is available (legitimately) on DVD is director Ridley Scott's 1992 Director's Cut, which dispensed with Ford's cumbersome narration from the original theatrical version, as well as the cop-out happy ending. It also added a dream sequence in which Deckard dreamed of unicorns, suggesting that Deckard, too, was a Replicant.
  • Until The End Of The World (1991) - Despite the fact that Wim Wenders has disowned the 158-minute theatrical version of this deeper, meatier Strange Days, it is still powerful, visionary stuff. William Hurt plays a traveler whose quest to help his blind mother see again takes him to the Australian Outback, a place immune to the impending massive destruction of many of the the world's electronics by large-scale EMP's (think the end of Fight Club or Escape From L.A.) Wenders played the festival circuit with a 280-minute version starting in 2001, though neither version is yet available on DVD. See also Wenders' creepy 1997 slow burn, The End Of Violence, about a plan to surveil all of L.A. via closed circuit.
  • Contact (1997) - Carl Sagan's complex account of the world's first extraterrestrial contact could not have possibly have been presented word-for-word on-screen, but Robert Zemeckis did a brilliant job of breaking it down to its basic parts. Jodie Foster plays an astronomer driven to make sense of the alien message, with Matthew McConaughey as an unconventional man of the cloth who serves as Sagan's spiritual voice. A smarter version of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
  • The Final Countdown (1980) - Get that infectious hair metal hit by Europe out of your head right now, as it wasn't recorded until 1986 and is therefore not in this forgotten movie about a modern aircraft carrier that goes back in time to just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Veteran director Don Taylor (who retired after this one) makes very real the crew's quandry as to whether or not they should alter history, and an all-star cast, including Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, Katherine Ross and Charles Durning make it easy to sell to your folks and grandfolks. See also The Philadelphia Experiment, which was also based on the secret Navy experiments to cloak the U.S. fleet during World War II.
  • Charly (1968) - If made today, this version of Daniel Keyes' high school reading list staple, Flowers For Algernon -- about a retarded man (played by Cliff Robertson in an Oscar-winning performance) who becomes super-intelligent -- it is likely that the Farrelly Brothers would have had something to do with  it (especially considering the upcoming The Ringer). Like an improbable Awakenings, it forces us to consider what a meaningful existence is, and what we are willing to do to force that definition on others.
Add 'em if you got 'em...

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