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2001 • Star Wars • The Matrix

By Fred Topel

11:00AM on Dec 15, 2009

11 movies that changed sci-fi (and 9 that didn't)

James Cameron promises that this week Avatar will revolutionize not only cinema, but also science fiction itself. It seems like the movies that actually mark changes come out of nowhere and don't make such big promises, but we'll see. As we await the highly anticipated return of Cameron, check out the movies that actually did revolutionize sci-fi—plus those that made those big promises but fell short of delivering on them.

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First, those that changed things ...
The Day the Earth Stood Still
For a while, sci-fi had been the genre of throwaway mutant monster movies, perhaps with a little touch of Red Scare metaphor. The original Robert Wise Day brought social statement to the forefront. The drama of an alien invasion and a destructive robot also made people think about humanity’s capacity for violence.
2001
This was the first time space looked real, right? No strings, no flying saucers, just space stations and the deep black starry void. The objective story about astronauts’ battle with HAL took sci-fi suspense to the next level in such a realistic environment, and the abstract story of human evolution keeps people speculating to this day.
Planet of the Apes
This movie took sci-fi social allegory into the mainstream and started the first bona fide sci-fi franchise. Yeah, Chuck Heston had to beat the damn, dirty apes, but what does it say about our own treatment of animals? Also, it was the first sci-fi merchandising where kids could buy Dr. Zaius dolls and re-enact the courtroom debates.
Star Wars
The blockbuster is born. Making the leap from 2001, George Lucas made realistic visual effects fast paced and breathtaking. Ideas like light sabers and The Force became common lingo in the English language.
E.T.
Steven Spielberg wasn’t going to let Lucas be the only one to change the genre forever. Playing to his own strengths, he made the world cry over a rubber alien. E.T. showed that sci-fi could be emotional, that you could feel for fantastical creatures and make more money than any movie would for the next decade.
Blade Runner
This one was a slow build. Unsuccessful at first, the visuals of Blade Runner found their way into many subsequent works. A scientifically imagined future of dark skyscrapers and cluttered back alleys became the foundation for dystopian cinema. You might also say that the Philip K. Dick inspired metaphysical debates paved the way for The Matrix.
Tron
This was the first major look at virtual reality, with computer programs portrayed as humans in the mainframe, but that’s not really the contribution Tron made to cinema. As the first CGI movie, it showed the world you could create believable worlds and kick-ass action in the computer. Without Tron, there might not have been a Pixar.
Terminator 2
The next great leap was probably James Cameron taking action to the next level with the first $100 million budget and the morphing technology that became all the rage for two or three years. Even Michael Jackson used it in a video. Also, the fact that T2 was so good, expanding the story of The Terminator and flipping its own characters (T-800 as a good guy, Sarah Connor as a soulless badass) was profound.
The Matrix
The Wachowski Brothers brought together their favorite elements of martial arts and cyberpunk and turned the whole world onto their niche interests. Wirework kung fu became a mainstay of American action movies after decades of use in Hong Kong (Even Charlie’s Angels did it.) You could finally have a conversation with people on the street about reality as programmed memories. Of course, their new invention of bullet time became the most overused gimmick in film history. It had a good run though.
X-Men
There had been successful comic book movies before, and big titles like Spider-Man were already in the works when the first X-Men came out, but this is the one that truly started the comic book movie boom. It wasn’t even the best of the X-Men trilogy, but it was the first movie that showed grown-ups in silly costumes could be real characters dealing with real issues and make blockbuster cash. Spider-Man would blow it away, but this made it viable for the Marvel slate to become a real power in Hollywood, and for all the no-name comic books to make movie deals, too.
300
Robert Rodriguez and other filmmakers had done green screen movies before, but Zack Snyder's film is the one that showed it could be more than just a gimmick. They could create full color visuals out of graphic novel panels and do action that’s just not possible in real life. Now even low budget movies are using green screen to elevate their aesthetic.
And, the ones that didn’t ...
Moonraker
After Star Wars, the James Bond franchise decided to take advantage of their lone space title, promising to take James Bond beyond. While the film may be a cheesy favorite in the franchise, it did not take anyone beyond anything. It’s so silly, the effects are weak even by ‘70s standards, and the space part is all slow floating.
The Lawnmower Man
In its day, this movie proved a modest success that fascinated people with the idea of virtual reality. The blocky graphics were enough to entice people for more virtual trips, but alas, that’s all there was. We wouldn’t get any cyber-gryoscope VR trips in real life, and the movies would not build on the concept until someone totally revamped the metaphysical idea of a matrix on their own.
Strange Days
In 1995, the James Cameron scripted tale of New Year’s 1999 made bold claims to show the end of the world. Like the real Y2K, nothing really happened at the New Year’s climax of this movie. The virtual memory downloads haven’t come to be yet either. Even in the movie, they were only the vehicle for a standard murder mystery.
Wild Wild West
Will Smith promised another “Big Willie Summer,” and after Independence Day and Men in Black, it seemed like a viable possibility. Alas, the remake of the techno-western was an overblown dud that offended viewers on the sheer level of excess. The upside? A humbled Smith would pay more attention to scripts and ultimately deliver I Am Legend and Hancock.
Matrix Revolutions/Reloaded
After the original sparked cinematic intrigue with virtual metaphysics and visual imagery, The Wachowski Brothers and producer Joel Silver made big promises for the sequels. They would of course take things to the next level, as any evolving technology would. It turned out, they didn’t even have more of the same to deliver. Most of the sequences in the sequels less memorable than the original (the freeway chase was cool, but the “Burly Brawl” had nothing on the subway fight). And those big robot fighters in Revolutions were just a knock-off of Aliens.
Polar Express
Robert Zemeckis is still standing by his motion capture technology. Three films later he still insists this is the new way to make movies, where actors can play any type of character and bang it out in a week on the soundstage. The movies may have broken even but no one’s really buying Tom Hanks as a kid or Jim Carrey as old Scrooge.
Speed Racer
It’s unfortunate that this didn’t change things because it’s really quite good. The Wachowskis used green screen to create a wildly creative vision, based on anime but not like anything that’s ever existed. Three dimensional pastel environments with their own physics came to life, but more subtly, they used the technology for impossible camerawork. Study the scenes where characters circle ever changing background montages. That’s the sort of mise en scene that film scholars should love.
Watchmen
Another unfortunate disappointment to the world of sci-fi, Zack Snyder’s long-awaited adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel was intended to shepherd the age of thinking man’s comic book movie. In the end, it couldn’t please anybody. The intellectuals thought it was too much yet it was still too confusing to the masses. Alas, there will be no imitators of the big blue schlong.
Grindhouse
Powerhouse directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez set out to bring back the double feature, but they went too far. Beefing up their original plan for two one hour segments, the overblown 3+ hour Grindhouse was too much for even The Weinstein Company to sell. Fans who saw the full presentation love the overall experience, but now it only exists as separate DVDs. The best part, the fake trailers, are hitherto lost to the ether.