# First Few Sci-Fi Movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 16, 2002, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629 "2002-03-16T17:09:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Diff\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@Diff\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diff_T)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2002, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/1 "2002-03-16T17:09:55Z")
ok, so A Trip to the Moon was one (the first?). Any other early movies you can add? Doesn’t have to be the first, or close to it… just the first of it’s kind? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2002, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/2 "2002-03-16T18:00:22Z")
Just a WAG, but I think _Metropolis_ had the first android. ---
**Author:** ![Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bren_Cameron_1)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2002, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/3 "2002-03-16T18:10:11Z")
I’ve heard that Aelita Queen of Mars is likely the first SF feature film (A Trip to the Moon was only a quarter of an hour long, I read). It was certainly the first Soviet science fiction film… ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2002, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/4 "2002-03-16T18:45:35Z")
It becomes a problem of definition. Geoge Melies did _L’Homme à la tête en caoutchouc_ in 1901 – the year before _A trip to the Moon_. It had a science fiction theme. Some of his earlier films had fantasy elements. The first science fiction musical, though, was _Just Imagine_. The first android (depending on your definition) was probably Edison’s version of _Frankenstein_ in 1910. ---
**Author:** ![Diff\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@Diff\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diff_T)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2002, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/5 "2002-03-16T20:44:11Z")
Ok, what would you consider being the LAST “the FIRST” in Sci Fi? meaning, when was the last time we a a first for Sci Fi. I would figure Sci Fi genre would be the last to run out of ideas. Most Jokes have already been told in some variation or another. Love has long been portrayed and used in story telling. War… you know, we’ve been there. Sci Fi can go on with are Sci discoveries like OXI CLEAN, the stain specialist. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2002, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/6 "2002-03-17T16:52:10Z")
Here’s a quick walk through the first chapter of John Brosnan’s _Future Tense: The Cinema of Science Fiction_. Melies also did Le Voyage A Travers L’Impossible (An Impossible Voyage) [sorry for the lack of accent marks] “in which a high-speed train takes off from the summit of a mountain, travels through space and fall into the sea before returning to dry land.” In 1907 he did a version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The first English sf film seems to be _The Airship Destroyer_, "a mystery attack on London by a fleet of airships"made by the American Charles Urban in 1909. There were two sequels, _The Erial Anarchists_ and _The Pirates of 1920_, both made in 1911. Editson’s 15-minute 1910 version of _Frankenstein_ has already been mentioned. 1913 saw_A Bolt from the Sky_ an American one-reeler "about a scientist who is killed by a meteorite, and one of the few films in which a scientist is victim rather than instigator of catatrophic events. Germany got into the game in 1915 with _Homunculus_, a six-part serial. _Alraune_. German, 1918, is the first film about artificial insemination. The American version of _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ in 1916 was the first one to use real underwater scenes – with a real sub since model shots were considered cheating. Willis O’Brien’s first movie was _The Dinosaur and the Missing Link_ whose five minutes of stop-motion animation took two months to film. Brosnan doesn’t say whether 1924’s _Aelita_ was the first full-length sf movie or not. There may have been an earlier one – Bosnan often doesn’t give lengths and I’, skipping a lot here – but if not, then Fritz Lang’s _Metropolis_ in 1925 definitely is. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2002, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/7 "2002-03-17T17:06:25Z")
Unless it isn’t. [I swear the preview button used to be on the left.] Anyway, to continue, with some help from John Baxter’s _Science Fiction in the Cinema_. 1925’s _The Lost World_ preceeded _Metropolis_, whose release Baxter has in 1927. And the German _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_ was way back in 1919, but even that was after 1916’s _Der Golem_. And release dates vary from book to book, making precedence difficult to determine. Not to mention the problem of defining what is a science fiction film to begin with. Oh yes, the sequel to _The Airship Destroyer_ was _The Aerial Anarchists_. Sorry for the earlier post. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2026, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/8 "2026-03-01T18:48:06Z")
Here is an 1897 very, very short one with a robot by Georges Méliès- [_Gugusse et l’Automate_] – _Gugusse and the Automaton_: **Found: The 19th century silent film that first captured a robot attack** [https://www.npr.org/2026/02/28/nx-s1-5730373/georges-melies-robot-film-1897-library-of-congress-gugusse-automate](https://www.npr.org/2026/02/28/nx-s1-5730373/georges-melies-robot-film-1897-library-of-congress-gugusse-automate) ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2026, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/9 "2026-03-01T20:15:48Z")
Fantastic (in every sense)! Maybe the automata = robot equation is a bit overdrawn, but a genuinely excellent find regardless. And if, as the article says, > “Today, many of us are worried about AI and robots,” said archivist and filmmaker [Rick Prelinger](https://www.panix.com/~footage/), in an email to NPR. “Well, people were thinking about robots in 1897. Very little is new.” we still have recourse to giant novelty robo-mallets. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/10 "2026-03-02T11:43:33Z")
Good Lord, there are tons of really short and really obscure SF films from the early years. There’s _The ? Motorist_, lots of stop-animated shorts by Willis O’Brien, _The Ghost of Slumber Mountain_ (another O’Brien stop-motion animated dinosaur film). There are the various cartoons of Winsor McCay, including _Gertie the Dinosaur_ and a couple of other Gertie shorts, _The Giant Pet_ (which has the first kaiju-like monster galumphing through a city). And there are plenty of Lost Films, some about Dracula and Frankenstein. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/11 "2026-03-02T11:56:53Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > And there are plenty of Lost Films, some about Dracula and Frankenstein. And Doctor Jekyll! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/12 "2026-03-02T12:38:02Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > And Doctor Jekyll! A surprisingly large number of these. _Famous Monsters of Filmland_ published a list of early versions – mostly lost – back in the 1960s. I’m sure they’ve added a few to the list. One of the more intriguing “non-lost” films is _The Frankenstein Trestle_. It’s a very short film showing a railroad train passing over the aforementioned trestle in the White Mountains in NH. The title has nothing to do with Mary Shelley’s monster – there’s a German family of artists that immigrated to America shortly after the novel came out, and were probably unaware of it for decades. One member of the family was particularly well known for his paintings of the White mountains, and one of the peaks got named after him. And also the trestle, when it went in. The trestle has been rebuilt, but it’s still there. The film, I believe, still exists to. About the artist, Godfrey Frankenstein, have a look at this YouTube video, **Frankenstein’s Niagara on Broadway** : > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKR7wx60bes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKR7wx60bes) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2026, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/first-few-sci-fi-movies/98629/13 "2026-03-02T12:43:46Z")
Here’s McCay’s **The Giant Pet** , by the way. Based on an episode from his comic strip “Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend”. It’s the first “Monster-on-the-Loose” _kaiju_ film that I know of (although not quite the first embodiment of that trope.) It’s even got biplanes attacking the giant monster in the city, a dozen years before **King Kong.** It also predates O’Brien’s stop-motion movie of **The Lost World** , with its brontosaurus running amok in London. > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s39jimMyAFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s39jimMyAFI)