The overwhelming popularity of superhero blockbusters this season has revived viewers’ interest in science-fiction stories and themes in cinema.
“Avatar” and new productions like “The Avengers” are usually cited as prime examples of this filmic fascination, but it really had its start at the very dawn of European cinema, with Melies’ fantasticating capers of the inspired imagination such as “A Trip to the Moon.”
When we watched that particular movie in film history class abroad many decades ago, we were blown away by its prodigious achievement, despite the still-evolving nature of film resources and the language when it was shot.
Its amazing flights of cinematic imagination taught us a valuable lesson about the ability even of “primitive” film to transcend technical limitations through sheer dint of creativity and artistry.
Why is sci-fi such a popular film type? Decades ago, it excited viewers with its seductive sneak peek into a future world very different from reality. But, as the years passed, scientific achievements and discoveries have tended to make science-fiction productions less amazing and exotic then they used to be. And yet, the fascination remains because the film type is seminally linked to our desire to see how human nature remains the same, despite the thrilling advances of science.
A leading and visionary writer of sci-fi yarns, Isaac Asimon, was once asked by Bill Mayers, “If it is truth that excites you, what is the value of science fiction, for which you are universally known?”
Asimou’s response is powerfully instructive: “Let’s look at fiction as a whole. In serious fiction, the writer is holding up a mirror to the human species, making it possible for you to understand people better—and perhaps yourself as well. That’s an important thing.
“Now, science fiction uses a different method. It works up an artificial society, one which doesn’t exist, or one that may possibly exist in the distant future, but not necessarily. And it portrays events against the background of this imagined society in the hope that you will be better able to see yourself in your present society.
“I don’t claim that I always succeed at this. To do this properly takes a great man, a guy on the level of—well, at least half that of Shakespeare. But I try, and maybe once in a while I succeed a bit. And that’s why I write science fiction—
because it’s a way of writing fiction in a style that enables me to make points I can’t make otherwise.”
For our part, we love sci-fi books and film because our dad was a certified buff, and had many compilations of sci-fi stories strategically placed all over our house.
We particularly remember being deeply affected and influenced by an Asimov story about future events being drastically changed due to the simple fact that a time traveler who had gone back to the age of dinosaurs had stepped on a moth!
In the movies, we can still remember (and viscerally feel) the impact that “2001: A Space Odyssey” had on our then young imagination. That great film by Stanley Kubrick transcended both reality and fantasy and revealed to us a future timorous with hope and promise, and raging with daunting complexities that mankind had to overcome to complete its enlightened evolution.
Sci-fi rocks!