My choices – they alternate day to day – are Forbidden Planet and 2001. The former is the best cinematic translation of 1940s science fiction on the screen, the latter the best cinematic depiction of 1950s science fiction. Since they were made in 1956 and 1968 respectively, this shows that even the best science fiction film is a decade behind the times.
Forbidden Planet has all the elements that make up good wriiten science fiction, mixed in with extraridinarily good special effects for the era (most of which still stand up today), and an emphasis on the Science aspect. It broke a lot of stnadrad ideas when it came out (and therefore established its own cliches, but, as they did it first, they weren’t cliches then). In a time when movies were still gingerly titoing around the idea of putting people into space and going interplanetary, FP gave us people going faster than light and travelling interstellar distances, flying for the first time (in cinema anyway) in ships that didn’t look like cigars. (People can use flying saucers, too!) The opening dialogue doesn’t really need to be understood to give the impression of methodical and regular military precision, but if you pay close attention, it’s all about decelerating from lightspeed to subliminal speed, using some sort of stasis device to prevent the crew being killed, and it’s not belabored or spelled out in elementary terms (you just have to catch on that “DC Point” stands for “deceleration point” and the like. I’ll bet most people who have watched the film don’t really know what’s going on, or care. But those of us who do love it.)
The film deals with Lost Civilizations, weird extraterrestrial menaces, super science, robots (who actually obey Asimov’s Three Laws!, although it isn’t explicitly stated). It takes an idea that is pretty common coin and follows it through to a logical and unexpected conclusion. The film clearly bases itself on Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, but anyone who thinks it’s just The Tempest dressed up in science fiction drag isn’t paying attention. (The characters, plot, and motivation are completely different. And if you don’t think so, then explain how Caliban is the main element driving the action in Tempest)
The film avoids cliches – Robby the Robot has an emergency override, that is used. The Three Laws aren’t just for show – they fit into the logic of the plot, and are used to dribve home a point at the end. Morbius’ being a philologist works beautifully in fittiong parts of the plot together. And the one point in the film that works best is Doc Ostrow’s logical analysis of events after the attack on the ship. It’s the kind of logical reasoning that characterizes the best science fiction, and makes science fiction what it inherently is – fiction about science and its uses and how people interact with it – rather than just a specially effects extravaganza or a horrorshow. George Bernard Shaw once observed that a story about an earthquake is just spectacle, and he could’ve said the same thing about a movie about a monster. Real drama is about how people interact, and that’s what Forbidden Planet is.
2001 is the artsiest and most “cerebral” science fiction film. It’s effects, too, stand up after all these years. The spectacle is shown soberly, with people interacting with it in a matter-of-fact way. The spaceflight sequences are superb, using classical music instead of the usual “weird” theremin scores or (more recently) blasting fanfares. For once, spaceships moved as if they obeyed Newton’s laws (not zooming and swooping, although the camera movements, along with The Blue Danube suggested graceful flight), something still rarely done. Space, for once, really was silent, a feature used to dramatic effect when Dave Bowman blows the hatch of his pod, or when travel in pods or suits has only the “score” of the astronaut’s breathing.
Despite all the accuracy, or perhaps because of it, the film is about something totyally weird an unexpected, and how we react to it, all of which is in the best traditions of science fiction. (Some of it hasn’t aged well, of course – fossilized fashions and attitudes towards the sexes look oddly out of place. And, of course, it’s well after 2001 now, and we still don’t have a space station or a base on the moon. Or a Cold War, thank Og). But if you want to convince people that Science Fiction film can be a thing of beauty, a mature thing, the first film you show them is 2001.
the Day the Earth Stood Still is high on my list, for many of the same reasons (very mature treatment of the theme. Excellent special effects, that still stand up. Avoiding obvious cliches. It’s a helluva lot better than the Harry Bates story that inspired it), but those two just rank higher overall.
I like a lot of the other suggestions – there aren’t enough good science fiction films – but don’t like them anywhere near as well as these. Bladerunner I found interesting but flawed and ultimately unsatisfying. Star Wars and its sequels and prequels are fantasies/fairy tales, as George Lucas has always maintained (Lucas says his contribution to SF is THX-1138) It’s filled with princesses and gurus, and all the guys in the military seem to be generals. It put a LOT of old SF ideas and setttings and tropes unashamedly up there on the screen at a time when the major studios still tiptoed around such ideas for fear of aluienating the public, and for that we owe him as big debt – frontier planets and spa ceports and bars full of aliens and the like. Dammit, science fiction fans were LUSTING after that stuff, while movies were giving us dumb stuff like Damnation Alley and Logan’s Run.
I don’t understand the appeal of 12 Monkeys at all. I thought La Jetee was an interesting flick with a cute gimmick.
But ow about:
**Metropolis
The Quatermass Xperiment
Quatermass 2
Quatermass and the Pit
The Andromeda Strain
The Terminator
2010
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
The Hidden
Robocop
The Thing** (both versions)
Dune (overall)
Bicentennial Man (yes – for all its flaws, it’s still the best Asimov adaptation out there)
**Destination Moon
The Puppet Masters** Heinlein has fared the worst of The Big Three, and I have problems with both of these, but they’re worth watching. Certainly more than Starship Troopers
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the original)
Panic in Year Zero
The War Game (the best of the “after the Bomb” films, followed closely by Threads and The Day After)
The Day of the Triffids (the BBC version, not the 1960s movie)
Enemy Mine
…
