Cosmic journeys through classic cinema
By Will Ross
Movies set in the wild black yonder of space are a rare thing. Good ones are even rarer. But the sci-fi sub-genre’s traditional association with grindhouse cin- emas and multi-part epic franchises makes marathons a rewarding prospect.
So here are five space opera pairings to satisfy anyone’s starry eyes. Some of them are franchise pairings, some are unrelated but fitting companion films, but whichever you watch, expect luscious visuals, cosmic sound- scapes, and oodles of bewon- dered faces.
1. Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986)
A space-mining crew bring a newly-discovered alien onto their ship. Soon it grows into a murder machine, and hunts and kills off the crew one by one. What makes Alien really scary (besides the extremely dark and moody atmosphere) is that the crew are far from the derring- do adventurers of space operas gone by; they’re little more than menial workers who have to im- provise to kill their hunter.
Aliens takes an almost-identical plot structure and punches it up with guns, a little girl to protect, and a hell of a lot more aliens. It’s still a gruelling ride, but a satisfying one, and its de- piction of marines in space has been copied by just about every military sci-fi ever since.
2. Star Wars (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
This one’s a given, but watch- ing these back-to-back reaffirms both their amazing scope and emotional vice grip. Star Wars was a pastiche-terpiece extravaganza that at once felt gritty and lived-in (the Millennium Falcon really is a hunk of junk) and spiritual, and the good humour and surge of the editing still make it fly by like no other epic.
Though Empire dropped the original’s escalation of B-movie nobilities, it more than made up for it by asking harder ques- tions and drawing from an even deeper (and darker) reservoir of feelings and character drama. And the music is still the crown jewel of John Williams’s career. Find the original versions if you can; they’re floating around on the internet.
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Solaris (1972)
Still rightly hailed by critics as the greatest sci-fi film ever made,
2001’s tale of man’s journey from prehistoric apes to technology- dependent colonizers to — er, something else — is still as brac- ing as ever. HAL, the ship’s com- puter gone inexplicably homicidal, is a chilling villain, all the more so because he is more sym- pathetic than the flesh and blood protagonists, and Stanley Ku- brick’s groundbreaking special effects imagery still drops jaws.
Though Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris was billed as the Russian answer to 2001, Tarkovsky was unimpressed with its icey view of human nature, and his is much more concerned with metaphysical suffering. Pyschologist and widower Kris Kelvin investigates a space station whose scientists are being driven mad by visions of loved ones long deceased, ap- parently animated by the nearby planet Solaris — which then res- urrects his dead wife, to his great anguish.
4. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
No prior experience necessary here: Star Trek had never been and would never again be so bold and intelligent as these two films. The Motion Picture’s lengthy docking sequences and tribulations over the mysteries of the universe and ever-humanizing technology owes a clearer debt to Kubrick than the original series, as it slowly unfolds a plot concerning an almost-ab- stract threat to Earth with self- conscious beauty. And for my money, Jerry Goldsmith’s score is the greatest in movie history.
Khan is a fleeter palate cleanser with plenty more pew- pew kapow. An aging, disillusioned Kirk and his crew are hunted by an old nemesis, and face a no-win scenario that ends in a heartbreaking loss. Nonethe- less, the ending is not depressing, but life-affirming, crystallized by a performance of enormous emo- tional depth and nuance by — get this — William Shatner.
5. Forbidden Planet (1956) and Duck Dodgers in the 24½th century (1953)
Forbidden Planet, the first major feature set entirely on another planet, is a sort of interstellar ver- sion of Shakespeare’s Tempest.
Twenty years after an expedition to planet Altair IV disappears, a United Planets cruiser visits to find only two survivors, Dr. Mor- bius and his attractive daughter Altaira. The crew’s suspicions of Dr. Morbius (and sexual tensions with Altaira) mount until the ex- pedition’s fate is explained in the nervy climax: a monstrous, com- puter-enabled (and accidental) physical manifestation of the doctor’s own id.
And the second feature is okay, Duck Dodgers is far from a “feature,” but besides exploding the psychology of the sci-fi hero just as thoroughly as Forbidden Planet, these seven minutes of Daffy Duck’s spacefaring alter ego are packed with as many laughs and ideas as you’re likely to see in anything. The backgrounds are as fresh and inventive now as they were in 1953, and its satire of cold war posturing and technological redundancy (e.g. Dodgers using a teleporter to go to the airport) is as smart and funny as cartoons get.
