Not only does Prometheus mark the director's return to the Alien universe, but also his return to the genre of science fiction since 1982's classic Blade Runner. As anyone reading this may have gathered, I'm a bit of a sci-fi geek (of both the 'hard' kind, and the more fantastic kind), and a lot has happened in the genre in these last 30 years. I thought I'd take a bit of time to talk about some of my favourites...
Return Of The Jedi (and the prequels)
By 1982, the two most critically lauded of the Star Wars movies had already been released, and Harrison Ford had just started to make even more of a name for himself as Indiana Jones (probably his most iconic role... it takes a lot to have something else be your most iconic role when you've already been Han Solo), before signing up to star in Blade Runner as Rick Deckard. I may get a lot of shit for saying it if any "real" Star Wars fans read this, but The Empire Strikes Back was always my least favourite Star Wars film, with Return Of The Jedi easily trumping it as my favourite.
It's not only because of Leia in that bikini either. It simply comes down to two points, the first being the culmination of the story with the eventual redemption of Darth Vader and the final battle between the Rebels and the Empire. It's exciting stuff with hardly a break for a breather, which brings me to the second point... more impressive set-pieces. Luke vs. the Rancor. The battle on Jabba's ship above the Sarlacc. The speeder bike chase. The battle on Endor. The Rebels vs. the new Death Star. Luke vs. Darth Vader vs. the Emperor. The movie is just chock-full of excitement, where The Empire Strikes Back left it all for the first and last half an hour. It was a fitting end to the trilogy. And yes, I do like the ewoks.
Of course, it wasn't really the end, because 1999 saw the much maligned prequel trilogy. There are some valid complaints about those movies, like the over-reliance on CGI, the script having some truly awful dialogue, and the performances of most of the principal cast, excluding Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson and Ian McDiarmid, but most notably including Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman (how George Lucas managed to get a performance so bad out of such a great actress, I don't know). But a lot of the complaints I feel are quite unfounded. People are annoyed that they focused so much on politics. The movies were always going to be about the eventual downfall of a Republic, a massive war and the rise of an Empire. How do you think they were going to do that without focusing on politics? And for every Jar Jar Binks, I'll raise you a Darth Maul and Mace Windu. People also tend to forget that some truly impressive action scenes were hidden amongst the awful dialogue including the podrace, Qui Gon and Obi Wan vs. Darth Maul, the final battle in Attack Of The Clones, and pretty much everything that happens in Revenge Of The Sith, which thanks to Ewan McGregor manages to be heartbreaking, too.
At the end of the day, despite Harrison Ford's awesome sarcastic take on Han Solo, Star Wars has never been about the acting or witty dialogue. It's always been about just sitting back and enjoying the spectacle. The prequels offered more of that, and they delivered. It may be shallow, but Star Wars never pretended to be anything else.
The Terminator saga (also, Aliens)
In 1985, a former B-movie director whose most recent work was as writer and director of Piranha II: The Spawning revolutionised the sci-fi genre by combining a story of robots from the future with the kind of action that had been becoming popular in that decade. The Terminator made a star out of both Arnold Schwarzenegger (unfortunately an actor only convincing when he is playing an emotionless killer robot), and James Cameron (the director who would go on to spend increasingly ludicrous amounts of money on continuously revolutionising special effects, and making even more money back for it).
On the face of it, the story is pretty simple. An advanced robot made to look like a human from a future that has been overrun by a war between human and machines that the machines are losing is sent back to 1985 to kill the mother of the leader of the human resistance before said leader is born. Kyle Reese - a young man who is a protege of the human resistance leader named John Connor - is sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor from this Terminator. From there, people get shot, things explode, and the Terminator turns from gun-packing bodybuilder to terrifying skeletal monster before getting crushed... literally. Also, for an added mindfuck, Kyle - who is killed during the course of the movie - turns out to be John Connor's dad. Surprisingly with all of the carnage going on, without the pace ever slowing down for exposition, the nature of the future the Terminator and Kyle come from is extremely well-explained. Usually whilst on the run.
In 1991, Schwarzenegger, Cameron and Linda Hamilton returned for round two, this time with Edward Furlong along for the ride as the juvenile delinquent John Connor. But there's a twist... this time around the Terminator is the one sent back to protect the Connor's, whilst an advance liquid metal shape-shifting version that looks like the brother of then Nine Inch Nails guitarist/future Filter frontman Richard Patrick is the one sent to kill them. This movie had even more impressive action than the last, and there was even more of it. And again, they still found time to give you all of the details, as well as some career best performances from the entire cast (unfortunately not difficult when you're Edward Furlong, whose only other decent movie is American History X). It's not many sequels that manage to be better than the original, but Terminator 2 is one of those examples.
But then, James Cameron had experience of making a more action-packed sequel. Between those two movies, he also tackled the sequel to Alien with an entire nest of the vicious bastards attacking Sigourney Weaver's Ripley and a squad of marines. Imaginitevely called Aliens, James Cameron not only managed to become just as iconic as the previous film ("Get away from her, you BITCH!" and "They mostly come out at night. Mostly." are still two of the most quoted lines from movies), but also inadvertently invented most of the videogames available today. You know. The ones where you play a space marine fighting of hordes of alien attackers with huge guns? Sounds familiar, right?
Unfortunately, both the Terminator and Alien franchises went downhill after their second entries, both of which receiving two further sequels that whilst not entirely unsuccessful (there are some great moments in all of those movies, and I actually think Terminator Salvation is pretty good), suffered from being more of the same. Hopefully the Alien universe is back on track now that Ridley Scott has returned to the driving seat.
The Matrix trilogy
I've just realised that I love a lot of science fiction that have sequels or prequels that have been critically mauled. What a great time to talk about The Matrix trilogy... for a long time my favourite franchise ever. Just as George Lucas managed to get an appalling performance out of Natalie Portman, the Wachowski Brothers managed to get a great performance out of the usually laughably bad Keanu Reeves. Mainly thanks to the fact that The Matrix is the only material that he's been given that it seems like he believed in.
It's that battle between humans and machines again, except this time the machines have found a way to use us for energy whilst making us believe that we're living in the late 20th century in an extremely advance virtual reality program. There are those who've managed to be broken out of the Matrix into the real world by those humans who managed to escape to the city of Zion, though. And with the help of the Oracle, and various training programs, these escapees are turned into warriors that battle the machines from inside the Matrix, breaking others free. Aware of this, the machines have what is effectively antivirus software known as Agents that track these rebels down.
Cue an action movie that uses the budget available to Hollywood productions, combined with techniques from the world of Hong Kong cinema, as well as some brand new video technology that allows you to do a 360 around a character whilst they're in slow motion. All of these elements, combined with the philosophical themes present throughout helped make The Matrix one of the most impressive action movies ever made, and is easily my favourite movie of the 90's.
Unfortunately, the sequels didn't receive as much praise as the original entry, but I really don't know why. The only reason that most people give is the Architect. Which is true... it would be boring if you're only interested in the action scenes and not the mythology of the movie. But if you're not interested in that mythology, why would you be watching it anyway? It could just be that I'm a fan of the kind of thing that the Wachowski's were influenced by when writing the trilogy (namely, science fiction anime), and though in the first movie it was very evident but didn't overpower the rest of the movie, the sequels made those influences very overt. Or maybe people wanted to know exactly what was going on, and the ending of The Matrix Revolutions was so ambiguous that you have to really come up with your own interpretation of what the hell happened (kind of like the ending of Lost, which I also thought was amazing). Whatever the reason, I believe the only bad point about the entire trilogy is the part in The Matrix Reloaded which is basically a music video and was just completely unecessary other than to give Neo and Trinity time to have sex. Other than that, they included everything I was looking for.
The Fifth Element
Finally! A movie I don't have to defend! In the realms of science fiction, this definitely falls on the more light-hearted, action-oriented fantastic side of things. It's pretty much the furthest thing from the likes of Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey that you can find. But it has no pretensions. It knows it's just a stupid big budget action movie, and it revels in it.
Bruce Willis stars as a flying taxicab driver who is thrust into a plot to destroy the universe by an amazingly over the top Gary Oldman when a half naked Milla Jovovich lands in his cab from a great height. That's pretty much all you need to know about the plot, as it's ludicrous, mindless and bizarrely fun. This movie cemented Milla Jovovich's role as an action-girl, which she has made great use of in the Resident Evil movies since then, and that's about it. The aliens and costumes are mostly at the Doctor Who level, but the CGI is mostly impressive, especially for the time. The only thing that nearly makes this movie unbearable is Chris Tucker. If you haven't seen this film yet, be warned... you will want to press mute every time this man opens his mouth. If you got annoyed with him in the Rush Hour movies, you ain't seen nothin' yet!
Ghost In The Shell (and Akira)
As I said before, I'm a big fan of science fiction anime. Specifically, I'm a big fan of the Ghost In The Shell franchise. Probably the most directly related to Blade Runner of any of these movies, Ghost In The Shell focuses on a future Japan in which cybernetic replacements for body parts have become commonplace. You can even have a cybernetic brain, but still be considered human thanks to your "ghost" - an intangible thing that defines a human being that is usually referred to as a soul in everything else. Of course, there is a problem with the potential for "ghost-hacking"... a hacker can take control of the human mind and implant artificial memories (such as that of a wife and children, etc.).
Enter Public Security Section 9, a secret government agency with agents ranging from the 100% organic Togusa who has an inferiority complex due to his nature as a completely unupgraded human, and the 100% cybernetic Major Motoko Kusanagi (the heroine of the franchise) who has issues reconciling whether or not she's really human any more, or even if she's always just been an android who's been programmed to believe that she was once human. What follows is a movie that questions the very definition of life whilst still finding time for some kick-ass action.
In 2004, director Mamoru Oshii returned to the world of Ghost In The Shell with the even more visually impressive, even more thought-provoking and even more confusing Ghost In The Shell: Innocence. Whilst the first movie focused on the partnership of Kusanagi and her best friend Batou, Innocence focused on Batou and his new partner Togusa. To tell you why Kusanagi isn't around would be to ruin the ending of the original movie, but her presence is still felt without her physically being there. This one begins as an investigation into why sex-bots (called gynoids) are starting to malfunction and kill their masters, but eventually evolves into something a lot darker and disturbing.
There is also a TV show called Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex, which is unrelated to the movies despite focusing on the same characters. The TV show is generally more light-hearted than the movies, and tends to focus more on action, but both seasons of the show have a season-long story arc that turn out to be every bit as smart and interesting as those of the movies. I prefer the second season, myself. To top it all off, the TV show has a movie spin-off of its own called Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society.
Any talk of science fiction in anime would be incomplete without talking about Akira, the movie that first brought anime to widespread consciousness in the West back in 1989. Unfortunately, a lot of the press liked to focus on that film's violence (which is admittedly there is a lot of) without focusing on the story which weaves together delinquent biker gangs, a corrupt government, super-powered children and a resistance movement in post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo. One of these superpowered children - Akira - was the cause of the nuclear explosion that destroyed the original Tokyo, and now Tetsuo - the lead character's best friend - has managed to gain the same kind of power. Being a Japanese movie it's a lot more complicated, confusing and insane than that, but it's difficult to explain it any better without it sounding a lot worse than it really is. At the time it was the biggest budget anime movie in existence, and without it, I doubt very much that Ghost In The Shell would exist.
Avatar
James Cameron again, once again revolutionising cinema, if not science fiction. This movie is currently the most successful movie ever made (there's a chance The Avengers may beat it eventually, but it's unlikely), so you probably don't need an explanation.
I realise I'm going to have to go on the defensive here again, so here it is. Some stories are so timeless that they keep coming up again and again. The story of a man sent in to an indigineous population to infiltrate them only to take their side come the climax is one of these stories. This is why you can find so many movies that follow this formula. In fact it may go further back than this, but the first instance I can think of is Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book - in the book, Mowgli ends up killing everyone in the human village as revenge for them torturing the animals that raised him. What matters isn't that the story is unoriginal, but if it's told well. And James Cameron is a master storyteller. Unlike George Lucas who uses technology to disguise poor writing, James Cameron puts the story first and then worries about how he's going to put it onto the screen.
So yes, whilst what most people were talking about was the flawless motion capture technology, and the first time 3D has been used even moderately well, it is still a great movie in its own right that is actually enhanced by the technology (if the Na'vi were just people in blue prosthetics, no one would be able to take it seriously). Sure, it's lacking in originality, but I challenge any of you to write a story that is completely original with no elements used in previous stories. Then I'll direct you to TV Tropes.
Star Trek
The previous film that was universally applauded as the best Star Trek movie ever made was The Wrath Of Khan, that was actually released a couple of weeks before Blade Runner, so isn't something I'll be talking about here. After that, Star Trek movies just kept on coming for the next 20 years, wildly ranging in quality from very good to appalling. Unfortunately, none of them ever reached the status of "great movie in its own right" that Wrath Of Khan did.
Eventually, interest in Star Trek waned and after Star Trek: Nemesis (featuring a pre-fame Tom Hardy as a clone of Jean-Luc Picard) the entire series was pretty much laid to rest. A couple of years later Batman Begins happened and made a ton of money, thus showing studios that they could keep even their retired franchises alive by means of a "reboot" wiping out all that had gone before and starting again. Generally, this idea has proven to be a bad thing, but like Batman Begins, with Star Trek it actually worked.
The first major obstacle was "how to wipe out all that had gone before without enraging all of the obsessive fanboys?". The answer, was of course alternate reality! Everything that happened from the Original Series all the way up to Nemesis (possibly including the prequel TV-show Enterprise, too) did happen. But then something happened to send the villain and Spock back in time to change the past and now an alternate reality has been created! A reality where James Kirk is an orphaned juvenile delinquent without any sense of responsibility. Where he and Spock can't stand each other. Where the plant Vulcan is about to be destroyed making Vulcan's an endangered species. Yes... with that last move the writers proved that now anything can happen.
And it's all the better for it, with the tone of the movie veering closer to Star Wars than the Star Trek most of us have grown up with, this rebooted Star Trek is a fun action-packed blockbuster that manages to entertain despite a few flaws (like what have Nero and old Spock been doing in the 19 years since they entered this timeline. Waiting for Kirk to grow up?). Of course, despite anything having to happen, one thing has to happen. The crew of the original series (Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhuru, Scott, Chekov and Sulu) have to meet. They have to become friends, and they have to win. But other than that, there are quite a few surprises (and coincidences that push the realms of believability). As a reboot of one of the most beloved creations in sci-fi history though, it managed to mostly please casual fans and hardcore nerds alike... something that a few years before was thought to be impossible. Well done J.J. Abrams.
Minority Report
Minority Report is the movie most closely related to Blade Runner in that both movies are based on stories by Philip K. Dick. In pretty much every other way, though, the movies are pretty different. Blade Runner's grim grimy city is nowhere to be seen in Minority Report's generally new-looking world.
Set in a future where Tom Cruise works in the "pre-crime" department of the police, a murder hasn't been committed in years thanks to the precognitive skills of three psychics predicting the murders and the pre-crime department tracking down the killers before the murder happens. Unfortunately for Tom, he is identified as the killer in a future murder and he is forced to go on the run to prove his innocence. This puts the movie firmly in the highly specialised sub-genre of "Tom Cruise running from things" (see also: the Mission Impossible series, The Firm and War Of The Worlds).
On his quest, Cruise uncovers a conspiracy that threatens the precog programme, and includes demons from his past. This movie is great, despite a couple of unecessary gross-out moments.
Inception
Directed by the flawless Christopher Nolan, and starring Leonardo diCaprio, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Lovett and Ellen Page, Inception is one of the most critically acclaimed movies of the decade so far. In between Batman movies, Nolan likes to work on more personal projects (such as the also brilliant The Prestige), but nobody could have prepared us for what he was cooking up for the time between The Dark Knight and the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises.
Leonardo diCaprio stars as the leader of a group of criminals that create a dream world for their victims in order to steal vital pieces of information from their minds. Their latest client (played by Ken Watanabe) however wants them to do the opposite, and plant an idea in the mind of Cillian Murphy. Although this is theoretically possible, it's extremely difficult and is going to involve a newly formed team having to go further into the dreamworld than ever before. And then there's the problem diCaprio's past coming back to haunt him in the shape of his dead wife, Mal, who invades on his dreamworld missions at every opportunity.
It's hard to pin down Inception as just a science fiction movie, as there are elements of James Bond movies, and psychological thriller thrown in, as well as some truly impressive and mind-bending special effects (both physical and CGI). Although the emphasis is on the action, including an attack on an Arctic secret base - in their minds of course - and that infamous spinning hotel corridor fight, I consider this movie to be the first "hard" sci-fi of the 21st century. It's exciting, thought-provoking and revolutionary in all of the same ways The Matrix was 11 years earlier, but with a more realistic (though definitely not real) take on the genre. This is what Christopher Nolan does so well, and why his Batman films are so fantastic... taking a fantastic concept and grounding it in a reality with well-defined rules that make it all seem like it's actually possible somehow. It's going to take Prometheus doing something really special to beat this (to date this decade, in my opinion only The Avengers has).
Prometheus
For anybody who doesn't know about Prometheus, as I've said before it's set in the Alien universe, roughly 30 years before that movie, but is apparently not really a prequel.
The movie stars Noomi Rapace (the original Lisbeth Salander), Michael Fassbender (who was fantastic as Magneto in X-Men: First Class), Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green and Charlize Theron as a science team aboard the Prometheus following a map found on ancient artefacts that lead to what they believe is the genesis of the human race.
Naturally, things don't go according to plan, not everyone aboard the ship is going to survive, but up until this point, that's all we've really been told about the film. Still, from trailers and images I've seen, it looks like it's going to be one of the highlights of the cinematic year.
I've got a busy weekend ahead of me, so it probably won't be until next week, but I'll get a review of both this movie and the Guns N' Roses show I'm going to tonight as soon as possible.
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