Science Fiction Films - The Best - Part Three

3. 1981 Outland

Visually this in a little industrial like the first Alien with a real sense of working class mixed in with a tinge of next year’s Blade Runner cynicism. Sean Connery is filling a sort of Clint Eastwood (Gauntlet) or Gary Cooper (High Noon) role in that he is the hero who is expected to fail but ends up being a little more effective than anyone really wants him to be. Too many science fiction films portray the individuals as all being utterly efficient in the environment and this one departs wonderfully into Connery struggling into a spacesuit and clumsily spacewalking, and obviously somewhat terrified to be doing it.

This is really a noir/Western/scifi with loser against the odds hero with one friend in the shadows, and shotguns and weapons stashes, all in a metals processing space station. (Saw this two times, last time about two years ago).

4. 1982 Blade Runner

Now the real gumshoe scifi. And the standard for the cluttered multicultural view of the future. It turns out the antiseptic landscapes of 2001 just weren’t as engaging and didn’t seem to be as likely as the Alien/Blade Runner messy bedroom of a planet vision. Blade Runner drips atmosphere from every corner of every frame like the everpresent rain, the polyglot pidgins and Tokyo-ish neon advertising scrolling off the surfaces and the large buildings looking like nothing as much as Neuromancer’s data blocks, and just the crush crush crush of humanity and information.

(It turns out that William Gibson rewrote the first half or so of Neuromancer a number of times because having seen Blade Runner, and his novel not quite finished, he thought people would have thought he just cribbed from the film since the two visions were so close. And even though it remains a unique work, and quite rereadable, one sees Ridley Scott’s world as one reads. Its just one of those times where independent realizations of the same basic (and predictable) vision arise at the same time.)

This was one of those films were a number of great talents merged starting with the original story from Phillip K. Dick and director Ridley Scott but the screenwriter David Webb Peoples was not only responsible for this but would also come up with 12 Monkeys in a few years, and though it had been written a decade before and would not be made for some time, would also be the writer of possibly the finest modern Western and Clint Eastwood’s finest film Unforgiven.

Ford is the embodiment of “old habits die hard”. He’s an old time private detective, reading print newspapers by the light of the kiosks and actually physically hunting and chasing his quarry in time honoured fashion. The only futuristic thing other than the landscape, which really is just accretions of tradition with a veneer of modern technology, are the creatures he seeks, doomed chamelions, poetically inclined flashes of existence. Otherwise its a pretty old story.

This picture is just to remind us to be thankful that John Woo did not get his mitts on this one. (I’ve seen this maybe three times, have a copy of the old version and need to see the new big screen version that just came out).

5. 1983 Videodrome

This is a very powerful film and yet any image seems campy and much of the film itself is a b grade production. It seems David Cronenberg has become technically smooth only in his last two films History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Before that, though uncompromising in his vision, his films seem to careen lurch from scene to scene.

This one has all the traditional Cronenberg horror elements of parastic invasion of the body, ideas becoming flesh, and the spread of behaviours that are corrosive to the most basic tenets of society. A little like Ring, this challenges the idea that you can watch something dispassionately, that you can really remain separate from it. It also has that great ambiguity of the protagonist, James Woods, either taking a step towards another form of humanity, an evolution of sorts, or simply being insane (prefiguring somewhat his The Fly as well). Cronenberg’s characters always seem to be stretching the limits of humanity and trying to break the gene barrier.

In comparison to the other films so far, this is quite crude on the surface, but is is intellectually profound and subtle. This one truly makes you question reality. Woods, as Max Renn, loses control of his body. It changes without his direction, and sometimes at the behest of others, his hand becoming a gun of flesh or his stomach a receptacle for a videocassette, which then plays him.

And hey, what great names, Sonia Smits plays Bianca O’Blivion the daughter of Brian who is essentially Marshall McCluhan. Great moments throughout the film like a drop in centre for the homeless where they can watch television because that is the basic need. (Now it would be a video or gaming terminal). (I have seen this about four times and the last time about a year ago).