Top 5 movies you didn’t know were science fiction

Top 5 movies you didn’t know were science fiction

Jul 10

Following on from my list last week about movies that people innocently mistake for science fiction, here’s a list of the opposite: five popular movies that people don’t usually think of as science fiction.

Science fiction hasn’t really been popular since the Golden Age ended forty years ago, but, following in the wake of Avatar, it’s likely that we’ll see a resurgence in the genre, so it helps to know what we’re talking about. What better time to not only help define sci-fi, but also remember some classics of the genre rarely recognised for what they truly are?

On with the list!

5 – 28 Days Later (2002)

Most zombie movies get by without a skerrick of explanatory exposition. “Er, because Hell is overflowing,” floats just as well as “um, because they watched TV for too long” in most zombie flicks — but that wasn’t good enough for Danny Boyle. He needed a semi-plausible scenario for his film, dammit, otherwise Cillian Murphy’s Jim character wouldn’t seem quite so far up the creek when he wakes up in hospital to find the universe abandoned in one of the best opening acts of the decade.

Why nobody thinks it’s sci-fi: Because it’s tense and frightening, and horror has the monopoly on scares, doesn’t it?

Why it is sci-fi: Animal testing is a reality. Diseases are a reality. Animal activists are a reality. 28 Days Later puts all these together not only to scare and entertain you, but to prod the thinking-centre of your cerebellum. The fact that 28 Days Later bases its premise firmly in reality helps it to blur the lines between science fiction and horror, to great effect.

4 – The Stepford Wives (1975 / 2004)

Even if you’ve only seen Frank Oz’s abysmal 2004 remake, you know the premise of The Stepford Wives: a bunch of men become unhappy with their liberal-minded wives and have them turned into robots to serve their every whim. The original film plays out like a thriller as Joanna struggles against the odds to uncover the conspiracy, while the remake plays out like a comedy, partly on purpose, and partly because it’s so bad.

Why nobody thinks it’s sci-fi: Again, the frights often make people think a movie is just a horror / thriller. The fact that it focuses on social issues probably confused people, too — isn’t that what dramas do?

Why it is sci-fi: Because it focuses on social issues, funnily enough; because the men use technology — robots — to solve their problem; and because doing so says something about the mindset of the times: some men would prefer obedient toys to real wives. Now that’s a scary thought.

3 – A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Stanley Kubrick’s nasty masterpiece is an exercise in dread. You just don’t know what Alex is going to do next. Beatings, rapes, verbal abuse, idiosyncratic dialogue and sinister voiceover– it makes for a generally unpleasant time at the cinema. Then there’s that final-shot dream-sequence what-the-heck moment that makes you question everything you just watched — it’s no wonder A Clockwork Orange stays with people long after they’ve seen it.

Why nobody thinks it’s sci-fi: Because A Clockwork Orange is a “classic,” and classics are often thought of as existing entirely without genre. People often forget that classics are also westerns, crime dramas, thrillers, horrors and — yes — science fictions.

Why it is sci-fi: Because it takes elements of modern society and extrapolates them into the foreseeable future, and uses that set-up as a way to comment on the human condition. I don’t know what’s more frightening — teenaged gangs going around beating and raping people on a whim, or the use of audiovisual media to brainwash people into shells of their former selves. It’s difficult to grapple with, ethically and intellectually, and that alone scores Clockwork a spot on this list.

2 – Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)

I’m going to go ahead and let the cat out of the bag up front: I didn’t like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Could be I was too young to really get it at the time, could be the moody aesthetic registered as “wanky” in my brain, or it could be that the non-linear narrative overwhelmed my developing brain and caused it to report an unsatisfactory experience. Whatever the explanation, Sunshine has been on my to-watch(-again) list for some time.

Why nobody thinks it’s sci-fi: Because it’s all, like, indie, and hip, and stuff, and science fiction is many things, but none of them is “hip.”

Why it is sci-fi: The challenges facing Jim Carrey’s character were put there by technological means, and his reactions mirror that of people in general. As such the movie says as much about people as it does about technology; a defining characteristic of any work of science fiction.

1 – The Truman Show (1998)

Peter Weir’s jaw-dropping satire of reality TV ironically came before reality TV became really big, in the early noughties. Besides being a fascinating tale of “what if?”, The Truman Show is also a tightly-wound narrative propelled by Jim Carrey’s breakout dramatic performance. It’s one of the defining films of the 90s, and even though it loses impact with repeat viewings, it’s still a good watch to this day.

Why nobody thinks it’s sci-fi: Because it’s so full of warmth and humanity, and science fiction is all about aliens and robots, right?

Why it is sci-fi: Because it’s an extrapolation of our current environment into an exaggerated future. As technology progresses, what’s to stop us from putting a man in a fishbowl and filming him 24 / 7? The Truman Show answers that question with enough emotion to break the heart of a convicted serial killer, and tells a ripping yarn to boot.

Looking back over this list, every single one of the films listed takes place right here on Earth, in the not-too-distant future; they all feature strong human characters, exhibit strong plots, and feature in pop culture consciousness to some degree or another; but they don’t get lumped into the same category as 2oo1, Blade Runner, The Thing, Starship Troopers or Children Of Men.

I often wonder why that is, and the only reason I can think of, as hinted above, is that sci-fi just plain isn’t cool; all those naff 80s and 90s budget flicks, Alien knock-offs, and Transformers films have given sci-fi a bad name. So when a great film comes out with elements of sci-fi in its framework, people ignore the sci-fi and focus on the film’s brilliance.

The best thing about Avatar, for me, has been the veritable deluge of sci-fi film projects announced in the wake of Avatar‘s impressive performance: Dune, Flash Gordon, The Forever War, Foundation, Neuromancer, John Carter of Mars and The Martian Chronicles are all in the works, and that’s just the beginning; who knows what other new or classic sci-fi flicks we’ll see on the silver screen in the decade to come?

I can just see it now … in eight years’ time, on the original film’s 50th anniversary, they’ll reboot 2001: A Space Odyssey. It will be directed by Brett Ratner, and it will star Kevin James (who by then will be one of the biggest action stars in the world), and it will be the first in a planned trilogy. Oh, but it won’t be in 3D, because that was SO 2010 …