Society and Science Fiction

In terms of story, Gravity and Conquest of Space are two very different ideas. Gravity is more about the individual and self-reliance while Conquest of Space becomes more about humanity as a whole. Conquest of Space therefore makes use of an ensemble cast while Gravity focuses almost exclusively on one individual (George Clooney's brief role the only exception). Conquest of Space involves a mission to Mars, while Gravity remains closer to Earth. In many ways, both films are products of very different eras, with different social standards and views on space travel, something especially evident in how they address the subject of gender.

Conquest of Space, as I have discussed before, utilizes an all-male cast. Producer George Pal also made a similar choice in his earlier science fiction film Destination Moon (which, interestingly, corresponds to the fact that even today we still have yet to put a woman on the moon). The film constantly uses the word "man" in place of humanity.  The trailer proudly boasted that the viewer would live "a strange topsy-turvy life of men who live as no other men have lived before" and the opening narration describes how "men" have built the wheel. When we get to see inside the Wheel, it quickly becomes clear that there are no women aboard. There are only men (though there does seem to be racial equality among those men).

The only women seen in the film are back on Earth, wives, girlfriends, and relatives of the astronauts sending them goodbye messages like the old stories of soldiers' wives saying goodbye before they were sent off to battle or sailors' wives saying goodbye before the start of a long voyage. Basically, female astronauts don't seem to exist in this world, and it is very likely that the space program has restrictions against women serving as anything other than nurses and secretaries (if even that, considering none appear in those roles on the Wheel). That is not to say the film was intentionally sexist. In fact, technically in 1955 there were no female astronauts, at least none of American birth who actually went into orbit. It would not be until almost ten years later that a female astronaut, Valentina Tereshkova, would be launched into orbit, and the first American woman in space, Sally Ride, did not happen until 28 years after the release of Conquest of Space. It is therefore likely that the idea of female astronauts simply never occurred to the filmmakers.

This detail is somewhat ironic today, as there is a small amount of evidence which actually suggests that, at least on average, women are often better adapted physically and mentally to living in space than men, but there was a reason the filmmakers made these choices. In 1955, the space program was still under military control and in those days it had a very specific list of where women were accepted, which was greatly outnumbered by the positions that were willing to take men. Early experiments in space travel were overseen by the army and the air force, and most early astronauts had experience serving as one of those two groups. For this reason, the space program is still shown as being run by the military, and thus all-male as it is not likely that George Pal anticipated the gender integration that would occur in the military decades later.

This was also a time when women were expected to cook, clean, and make babies, thus the idea of female astronauts may have seemed unlikely for the era. As a result, the space program is seen as militaristic and being an astronaut is treated as "men's work". The first mission to Mars is treated like a naval expedition to explore a new world, a group of brave men going on a daring mission to find new resources for humanity. The few women that do appear stay behind and wait for the return of their men, much like the wives of sailors in the olden days. Though this line of thinking may seem backwards today, it would have made perfect sense to filmmakers of the era, who lacked the foresight to recognize future social developments.

Gravity, released 58 years later, has precisely the opposite treatment of gender due to being released under very different social circumstances. In 1955, feminism was making progress, but still was seen as little more than a passing fad by many men of the era. By 2013, it was more widely recognized by people of both genders, and audiences were ready to accept a female astronaut taking on the central role in a science fiction film. Throughout the film the heroine, Ryan Stone, is the only character given any real focus. The only other character whose face is even seen (at least, before his death) is her partner Matt Kowalski. In fact, the movie literally begins with Ryan being cut off from just about everyone. Fifteen minutes in, three of the five astronauts are killed and contact with mission control is lost. The only other person Ryan can turn to is Matt, who is lost soon after.

Ryan stone is therefore forced to rely on herself for the majority of Gravity's narrative. Matt's only role is to help put her on the right track. When Matt "returns" late in the film, he serves a similar function, helping Ryan to regain her confidence. However, what distinguished Matt in this later scene from his earlier role is that his appearance here is nothing more than a dream. There is no way Matt could have caught up with the Soyuz after being left in orbit, and by this point in the film he was likely either already dead or slowly dying of asphyxiation. Matt is instead merely a construct of Ryan's frightened mind, or more accurately her survival instincts.

The conversation they engage in is actually a mental conflict occurring in Ryan's own head between two different sides of her personality. Ryan herself plays the suicidal part of her character, since in a moment of despair she has proven herself ready to accept death by asphyxiation, while Matt represents that small part of her that still wants to survive. The conversation between Matt and Ryan is therefore a symbol of her thought processes as she falls asleep in the Soyuz. The solution that she finds to her problem (using the launching gear to propel the Soyuz toward the Chinese space station), was all her idea, continuing the theme of self-reliance.

The scope of the movie's themes shift. It no longer becomes about the survival of humanity or even humanity in general, just about her own struggle to survive. She has no simple solution or procedure for dealing with the situation as the men seen in Conquest of Space did. Ryan has very little experience as an astronaut to begin with, with this mission being explicitly identified as her first, and this in turn contrasts the militaristic aspect of the space program depicted in Conquest of Space. In that film, the space program is depicted as an organized branch of the military, with spaceships and space stations being run like navy crews. Gravity was affected by one development in space travel that went completely unnoticed by the filmmakers of Conquest of Space.

In 1955, the assumption that the military would still be running the space program in the future would have made sense. However, George Pal and Byron Haskin failed to anticipate the biggest flaw in that system, and the reason why the army is no longer in charge of space exploration. The American army and the American Air Force were both involved in early rocketry experiments, but they became very competitive about it. Both sides were trying to best each other, and neither wanted to share their results. They were wasting money and resources to the point where it started to cause trouble for the government. The solution was therefore to no longer allow the American Armed Forces access to rocketry. Instead, a civilian organization was assembled to take charge of space exploration, this being the origins of NASA, which is still in operation today.

Gravity therefore eliminates the militaristic qualities of the space program. None of the characters are explicitly identified to have any military background. Ryan Stone herself is even established to be a doctor, precisely the opposite of what soldiers are expected to do. In Conquest of Space, the men are established as a unit, or as a team, with each one having something valuable to contribute to the mission. There is a certain unifying quality among them. When something goes wrong, such as their commanding officer's breakdown, everyone has to stick together to continue the mission. For most of Gravity, Ryan Stone has nobody to turn to. She has to rely purely on herself to survive and return home.

The one thing both films have in common is that they aimed to create a realistic vision of outer space. Conquest of Space had to work with extreme limitations compared to Gravity. The former was made in the early days of space travel, long before even the Apollo Missions. Most of the information that was available would have been theoretical, extrapolations based on what could be understood from Earth. By the time Gravity was made, NASA had been functioning for decades: they had successfully put men on the moon, launched probes to other worlds and, through satellite technology like the Hubble, developed the beginnings of a map of the universe.

The models used in Conquest of Space are still very impressive today, but in other areas its limited information shows, particularly in the matte paintings used to depict Earth, and the scenes depicting Mars. When Conquest of Space came out in 1955, there were no clear images of the Earth as seen from space. Even 2001: A Space Odyssey, made a year before the first moon landing, had to take an educated guess on what the Earth looked like. The filmmakers were fortunate to come as close as they did. Meanwhile, the shots of Earth depicted in Gravity could pass for actual photographs taken from orbit, at least by today's standards (the effects in Conquest of Space were cutting edge for its day, it is not inconceivable that decades from now Gravity's special effects might look a little dated to a future audience).

The scope of both films naturally shifts with regards to their respective social climates. Conquest of Space attempts to present a grand narrative of humanity's future. It envisions space travel as the next step forward. The opening narration describes space travel as "the last and greatest adventure of mankind", implying that something amazing is in store. The story centers on a mission to Mars but the film suggests that humanity will go on to explore other worlds in "the vast universe itself". Gravity has a more mundane look at space travel, with a group of civilians who have been living in space for some time but show little enthusiasm for their job. Matt is more interested in breaking a spacewalk record than he is about being in space. Ryan seems more interested in her immediate task of installing a new piece of equipment onto the Hubble Space Telescope than she is in the possible new discoveries it might allow.

Space seems to have lost the excitement that was portrayed in Conquest of Space, and instead living in space has become dull and routine. In the case of Gravity, the crew are confined to Earth's orbit. They have no chance of even visiting the moon, let alone other planets. All they are doing is venturing into orbit to install some equipment into a satellite. When Conquest of Space was produced, it was still in the early days of the space program. Sputnik would not be launched for another two years. Nobody knew for sure where the space program would go, but many science fiction stories envisioned an exciting future of space travel in the near future. It therefore came as a surprise to everyone when that vision did not come true after the moon landings.

Today, "space travel" is largely confined to Earth's orbit in the form of space stations, though probes have been launched to other worlds (and outside the Solar System, in the cases of Voyager 1 and 2) and orbital sattelites such as the Hubble Space Telescope have proven crucial to developing a modern understanding of the universe. This is reflected in Gravity, in which the Explorer's crew is merely a group of civilians doing their job. At best space is dull, and at worst it is a living nightmare. This element is not entirely absent from Conquest of Space, where some of the crew talk about missing their families back home, but they simultaneously recognize the significance of their mission. Gravity refrains from addressing any potential significance of the protagonist's mission. If anything it is nothing more than a routine job, probably not much different from anything that many other astronauts before Ryan have done.

Looking at these two films, it becomes clear that science fiction is a genre that has evolved drastically over the years. Conquest of Space may have been intended as a look into the future, but it also works the other way, as a window into the past. It shows the universe as it was understood in the 1950's, and what men of the time thought space travel might one day look like in a way that seemed to make the most sense to them. By comparing it to a contemporary science fiction film like Gravity, the social changes start to become clear. In both films there was a similar aim of realistically envisioning outer space, but ultimately they are both simultaneously reflections of the eras in which they were made.

This Post was written for the Film Preservation Blogathon hosted by This Island Rod, Ferdy on Films, and Wonders in the Dark

Torture and Terrified Women

In many ways film is about spectacle, and in no area is that clearer than in its many ways of treating the human body.  The history of putting a body on display for the viewer goes back a long way, long before cinema. It goes at least as far back as the "strong man" acts of 19th century circus shows, which would feature a large musclebound man performing "unusual" feats of strength to amaze the viewers. The earliest cinematic example I have found is one of Edison's Kinetoscope films, Sandow the Strong Man. The display of a muscular body (usually male, though female examples are becoming more common) would become an important element of the action film, and the same basic principle is still present in many contemporary works (Taylor Lautner in the Twilight series, for instance).

However, there are other ways to create a spectacle using a human body of either gender. On one end, there is the display of an impressive muscular build, and the display of the body in motion. On the other, there is precisely the opposite, something much darker and more disturbing. Instead of contriving situations to show off the body, situations are instead developed to show its destruction. The appropriately-named The Wizard Of Gore emphasized this very idea. The titular character, Montage the Magnificient, would create "illusions of illusions".

In one scene he performs an inversion of the classic "sawing a lady in half trick" wherein he actually saws a female audience member in half (with a chainsaw) but makes it appear to be an illusion. In the same scene, Montag delivers a speech in which he explains that "terror and torture have always fascinated mankind". He likens it to the pleasure experienced by spectators of Gladiatorial shows in Ancient Rome, which while perhaps not as violent as often depicted in the movies (the fights weren't always to the death) was still based around people harming each other to entertain others.

Indeed, there does seem to be a sort of sick, twisted pleasure to be found in observing the abuse inflicted on another person's body. This makes up an entire sub-genre of horror commonly known as "body horror". The idea behind it is simple, to frighten the viewer by mutilating or distorting the image of the human body. When done right it can be a very effective tool for horror, but in a strange sort of way it also serves precisely the opposite. The abuse or distortion of the body becomes less a mere source of fear and becomes itself a source of spectacle.

The Wizard of Gore gives the viewer a unique view compared to the fictional audience within the film, in that we get to see the violence in its excruciating detail, while we also see the perspective of the film's audience (that watches oblivious to what is really happening). When the viewer watches a body (often female, for some reason) being mutilated in this fashion, it creates a bodily response of sorts, much like watching a martial arts movie.

When watching a movie like Enter the Dragon, there is a feeling that the viewer experiences. When they watch Bruce Lee beating up one of the antagonists, there is a feeling of tension that excites them. It makes the viewer feel as though he or she is part of the action, right in there next to Bruce taking out the bad guys. This concept is known as "muscular sympathy", and has a major role in the popularity of action films featuring martial arts, though it does appear in other forms of action movies as well.

Just as martial arts films rely on the spectacle of bodies in motion, the horror genre relies on the spectacle of bodily abuse. The same basic principal of muscular sympathy applies to the horror genre as well, if in a different form. In a similar vein, the viewer is excited by a tense feeling (which I shall refer to as "muscular repulsion") that makes them feel like they are experiencing what is on screen. The difference is in precisely how the viewer feels. Instead of feeling like they are right next to Bruce Lee beating people up, it becomes more as though they are the ones taking a beating at his hands. More accurately, the viewer feels as though they are experiencing the pain of whatever horror is being inflicted.

A perfect example would be David Cronenberg's The Fly, in which Jeff Goldblum's character, Seth Brundle, accidentally has his DNA merged with that of a fly. What makes this particular film so terrifying is watching him slowly transform into something that seems less human. We see the process over several weeks, perhaps months, as he slowly transforms into a disturbing hybrid. As he does, his body becomes distorted, and it becomes increasingly harder to tell where he ends and the fly begins. When watching The Fly, the viewer experiences a sense of pain, because they feel as though they are experiencing the transformation as well. It seems as though the viewer knows what it feels like to be transformed in this way.

This feeling is also especially prominent towards the end, when the final stages of the transformation are taking place. First there is a spectacle of the harm inflicted on a supporting character, Stathis Borans (John Getz), who loses his hand to the titular monster. In this moment, the viewer feels as though they too are experiencing the same pain (and of an especially excruciating sort, seeing as his hand appears to be slowly corroded off his arm). Later on, when Brundle (or "Brundlefly" as he is often known at this point) is merged with the teleporter itself, he crawls out in excruciating agony. The viewer once again gets a sense of the horrendous pain that comes from his final transformation. Just like in the martial arts film, it feels as though they are part of the action.

Muscular repulsion is certainly a major part of the experience in watching a horror film of any sort, especially one with large amounts of gore. Just muscular sympathy makes the viewer feel like they are fighting alongside the hero, muscular repulsion makes the viewer feel as though they are on the wrong end of the action.  It is a major part of most horror films, especially ones that feature large amounts of gore. In a similar vein, The Thing features the same experience of muscular repulsion in specific moments. 

The outdoor scenes make the viewer feel as though they are in the freezing wasteland of Antarctica, while indoors they get the same sense of paranoia, but it is in a few select moments when moments of true muscular repulsion happens. These include scenes such as the infamous scene where Copper (Richard Dysart) attempts to use a defibrillator on his fallen colleague Norris (Charles Hallahan), only to discover the man in question was infected. Nobody (including the viewer) realizes this until Norris's chest opens and slices Copper's arms off, leaving him to die presumably from a combination of shock, blood loss, and smoke inhalation. 

Like in The Fly, the viewer is excited by a bodily response in that they seem to feel the same pain as Copper. They experience a sense of shock and experience muscular repulsion in that they feel as though they have just been through the same experience. This is one of the best examples, but muscular repulsion is present at numerous other moments, such as when Bennings (Pater Maloney) is assimilated, and Windows (Thomas G. Waites) is killed by the Palmer-thing. The simplest case arguably happens just prior to the blood test scene, when Clark (Richard Masur) is shot in the head by MacReady (Kurt Russell), when the viewer feels as though they too are on the wrong end of revolver he is holding at the time.

The Thing also provides another method of using bodily abuse as a spectacle, in the form of distorting and transforming the body. In this case, it happens when the characters who have been infected are exposed. With each one, they begin to transform, usually still somewhat resembling the victims but in a mutilated form. During the scene where MacReady performs the blood test, Palmer (David Clennon) is exposed as a Thing and immediately his body begins contorting. His face becomes elongated, his skin shrivels, and turns into a sickly reddish-brown color that almost looks as though he is decomposing. Once the Palmer-Thing breaks loose of its restraints, its head splits in half and turns into a mouth.

Similar approaches happen with the other cast members that are exposed as well. Norris opens his chest like a mouth full of sharp teeth and then proceeds to disconnect his own head (which then drags itself along the floor with an elongated tongue before growing legs and a separate pair of eyes), while the body grows a new one out of the torso (that resembles Norris with fangs). When the Blair-Thing transforms in the film's climax, only half of his face still remains visible (attached to the back of a sideways head filled with sharp teeth). Even Bennings, who is infected much earlier in the film, is shown first in the process of assimilation (his body is coated in a sickly red and wrapped in tentacles), and then partially assimilated just enough that the viewer can recognize him while also seeing clearly that he is no longer human.

At its core, the principle is basically the same as in the action movie. Much the hardbodied heroes of the 1980's or even Sandow the Strongman, the human body is displayed as a spectacle for the viewer to admire. The difference is in how. Much like how a film such as Predator impresses the viewer by displaying the extremely muscular bodies of its actors, movies like The Wizard of Gore, The Thing, and The Fly attempt to impress the viewer by doing the exact opposite. Instead of displaying a muscular build, they display the body being destroyed, mutilated, distorted, or in some other way being abused. This in turn becomes a major part of what makes a lot of horror films work, and how they affect their viewers.

Dredd to Judge

You remember that one time I wrote about buddy cop movies and noted how such movies almost exclusively paired up two guys even in more modern incarnations like Hot Fuzz? The Heat is one of the few exceptions as it turned things around by introducing a pair of female cops, and before that you have the TV series Cagney and Lacey. Either way they still seem to be very gender-exclusive. You'll see plenty of white/black pairings but very rarely any male/female buddy cops, at least not any good ones. The closest things I had to exceptions were The Enforcer (which might have worked if not for that horrendously disappointing finale, and they didn't insist on putting her in heels) and Theodore Rex (in which Whoopi Goldberg's male partner is a talking dinosaur... I SWEAR THIS REALLY HAPPENED!)

Well, I might just have finally found a good male/female buddy cop film, among other things in Dredd. I've never read the Judge Dredd comics on which it was based and know little beyond the extreme basics of its premise. What I do know is the character was completely botched thanks to the work of Sylvester Stallone who made infamous the line "YOU BETRAYED THE LRAW". After going in to see 2012's Dredd for the last week of one of my classes, all I knew was a vague idea of its premise and assurances from people who had seen it that this would be better than the Stallone version. After having to sit through Rambo: First Blood Part II for the same class, I quickly realized that "better than Stallone" wasn't a very high standard to meet. Fortunately, it didn't disappoint.

Dredd was a pretty fitting way to end a class about action films, not just from a chronological perspective (we looked at the history and development of action films) but also because it combined a lot of concepts we'd discussed over course of the semester (and by extension on this blog). Urban vigilantism is in there for sure; imagine if all cops acted like Dirty Harry and you get a pretty clear sense of the setting. Even with that change in tone, Dredd still has to take the law into his own hands for much of the film if for slightly different reasons than usual (being cut off from police headquarters rather than fed up with their bureaucracy). Also bringing in some of the "gun fu" action, the climax does have a bit of resemblance in part to that of John Woo's Hard Boiled, though Dredd is still a far better movie.

The premise of the heroes being trapped in a tower overrun by gangsters is reminiscent of the "Die Hard on an X" formula popularized in the late 80's and continuing into the 90's (the villain is even dispatched similarly to Hans Gruber), but it also breaks a lot of rules about that same trend. As I've discussed earlier, "Die Hard on an X" films generally center on a single protagonist working to outwit a group of terrorists who have hijacked a confined environment (i.e. a mall, an airplane, a boat, etc.) and generally emphasize outdated masculine values. With perhaps Red Eye as a partial exception, the heroes of these movies are almost always male.

In Dredd? Not only are the conventions subverted by having two characters working together instead of one working alone, but Anderson also serves as a co-protagonist and is far from being a hostage. Even when she does get captured, she doesn't sit around waiting for her male co-star to come to the rescue. She tricks her executioner into blowing his own arm off and proceeds to easily escape on her own. Even better is that when a corrupt cop tries to trick her into letting her guard down, Anderson sees right through the deception within seconds. In fact, Anderson ends up saving the life of Judge Dredd. Also great is that she has an unusual psychic ability and she is constantly taking advantage of it. We got a strong female lead here... but wait a minute what's this? There's another one.

Yes, I couldn't go through discussing the women in this film without bringing up the final boss. This is a women with an extensive amount of power and who knows how to use it, which should hardly be surprising considering she is played by Lena Headey A.K.A. Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones. When I say that she has power, I don't just mean she's a femme fatale who is good as seducing men. I mean she is in control of everything, with full command over a gang made up primarily of men. Such a display of power was a refreshing change.

What's worse than pissing off Cersei Lannister? Pissing off Cersei Lannister when she has access to three miniguns.

The Dirty Harry parallels are numerous throughout Dredd. Aside from the lead character himself, the four corrupt judges resemble the four young officers who serve as the antagonists of Magnum Force. More prominently is that the dynamic between Dredd and Anderson is reminiscent of what was attempted in The Enforcer. Anderson's introductory scene in which Dredd admits his concern about working with her calls to mind the scene where Harry Callahan first meets inspector Kate Moore. Similarly their relationship grows from her tagging along to please their superiors to Dredd gradually coming to respect her. Even the climax in which Anderson is wounded bears some resemblance to Moore being shot. Fortunately, Dredd allowed Anderson to wear practical gear instead of forcing her to do chase scenes in heels and skirts and she didn't have a pointless and contrived death scene shoved into a disappointing climax.

Slow motion is also something that's been really big in action movies lately, and here it is used to interesting effect. It was used a lot in John Woo's early action movies and later popularized by The Matrix, but what is really odd here is that it has a diegetic quality not usually present. The slow motion sequences literally have an in-universe explanation (a major part of the story is a drug that causes people to perceive the world in slow motion). This leads to a curious approach in a lot of the action scenes. They will frequently allow us to see the violence as through we are junkies getting high on this drug and frequently jarring us by abruptly bringing returning to a more normal speed. This film is definitely not for the faint of heart, as the slow motion allows the violence to be seen in extremely gory detail.

The character of Dredd also has some resemblances to the hardbodied action heroes of the 1980's. This is the type of character that becomes less a human and more a machine that may need maintenance. Hardbodied heroes rarely get injured and when they do, it takes little to put them back in action. Dredd shows himself to be slightly more vulnerable when he takes a bullet and has to be saved by Anderson, but once he's safe all it takes is some quick first aid to become a formidable threat again. Dredd does have a machine-like personality in how strictly he adheres to his rules, and the fact that we learn little about him.

Unlike Stallone's version, who couldn't let his handsome face be obscured for too long, Dredd never removes his helmet meaning we never get a good look at his face (which I've been told fits more in line with the comic). We also find out nothing of Dredd as a person. There is not so much as a single hint to his backstory or personal life. He is a character who seems to be programmed for the job, strictly following the rules he has been designed to obey and incapable of breaking them. This in turn makes Anderson a perfect foil as the inexperienced rookie cop who appears more human insofar as she actually displays emotion. It ties back to the buddy cop formula in an odd way, as Dredd puts a dark twist on the "by-the-book" cop while Anderson seems to be the "wild" cop by comparison.

Story-wise, things could get a bit disorienting at first, but it won me over by the end. Judge Dredd might just be the ultimate action movie; every major subgenre of action (or at least as many as would fit): urban westerns, "Die Hard on an X", buddy cops, "gun fu", hardbodied heroes, "wise-guy" heroes. You name it, it's in here, all rolled up neatly into one tidy little bundle of exciting action and suspense you won't want to miss. Dredd is definitely a lot better than the Stallone film, but it is also a very good film in its own right. Certainly worth seeing if you can take the gore and a little bit of disorientation.

The Insightful Fifth Dimension

Warning: This article includes spoilers for several movies. Read at your own discretion.

So I finally saw Interstellar and it is an amazing movie. Matthew McConaughey was great in the lead role, with Anne Hathaway a wonderful co-star. Jessica Chastain might not have been playing an astronaut, but as is normal for her at this point she still plays a very strong character who ends up being vital to the plot in unexpected ways. If you haven't already seen my Voyage to the Stars Blogathon, which I started to celebrate the film's release, I would strongly recommend you take a look, let me know what you think, and perhaps try your hand at the challenge I pose to you. It certainly is a challenge in many ways (I made the blogathon and even I'm having trouble with my own entry). Hopefully I'll be seeing some entries soon, and perhaps I'll even get my own up somewhere in the next few weeks.

Still, one thing in particular stood out to me about this film, and that was the ending. It was executed brilliantly here, but it got me thinking about how popular this type of ending has become, especially from a movie that I was pleasantly surprised to see had for the most part managed to avoid a lot of obvious science fiction cliches (the first time I saw the astronauts going into suspended animation I seriously half-expected one of them to be found dead in their pod). Interstellar's big climax involves a surreal experience that begins when the spaceship is forced to enter a black hole. Cooper finds himself drifting into a strange location that looks like it would fit right into one of the dream worlds of Inception where he is left to contemplate humanity's greater purpose. Does that sound familiar?

Well, it should, because this isn't the first time such a climax has been used in science fiction. The idea of a protagonist, usually alone (though cases with small groups of characters are not unheard of) entering an uncharted environment with no idea of what to expect followed by a mysterious passage through space and a strange encounter in what seems another dimension has been around for decades. Contact had something similar, as did The Black Hole, Mission to Mars. In all these films, the characters have no prior understanding of what they are getting into, but the experience proves vital to the narrative as it often provides some sort of insight into a much broader topic, generally about the universe or human nature, before the protagonist is whisked back home.

So where did this whole ordeal come from? Why is it so popular? Well, they say that art imitates art, and indeed this trend probably one of the best examples you can get. In order to understand what is really happening, we will have to go back to the origin of this concept. So far as I'm aware, it all originates with the work of one Stanley Kubrick. Interstellar,  Mission to Mars, Contact, The Black Hole, and numerous others were all imitating his film 2001: A Space Odyssey, specifically the famous star gate and hotel room sequences from that film.

By this point David Bowman is the lone crew member aboard Discovery and the ship has reached its destination of Jupiter. He encounters yet another monolith in orbit around the planet, and takes one of the remaining EVA pods outside to get a closer look, only to find himself pulled into some sort of strange passageway. It's not clear exactly what it is (though the novel hinted it to be some form of interstellar highway), but what we see is a bright stream of bright colors and strange shapes culminating in a series of distorted images of what look like Earth landscapes.

After the peculiar sequence involving the infamous "star gate", the camera begins to cut rapidly to closer and closer shots of a human eye, until finally the distorted colors disappear and it appears normal. We then see that Dave has emerged in what appears to be a hotel room, but it still seems off. Weird and haunting voices can be heard from somewhere outside, and lighting comes up through the floor instead of the ceiling.

Dave keeps ending up in a situation where he sees older versions of himself with the younger version inexplicably vanishing each time, ending with him lying on a bed and with his last breath pointing toward the monolith that has materialized in front of him. He then transforms into something resembling a fetus, symbolizing the next stage in human evolution. This is quite a bit different from many of its imitators in more than a few ways, however.

One thing that is of particular note is that out of all the different incarnations of the insightful alternate dimension, 2001 is the only one where dialogue is not incorporated in any way. As strange as the later incarnations can get, the original scene was played subjectively and to this day people still dispute over precisely what happens. Although the outcome of this sequence is clear, the precise details are never explained. The closest thing to a clear description of what happens is in the novel, where it is implied that Bowman is being observed by the aliens and the hotel-like environment is supposed to keep him comfortable until he is ready to be transformed.

Many of the imitators tend to be a lot more explicit in their meanings, even if they incorporate extraordinary images with the possible exception of The Black Hole (which was in general a very confusing and not very well executed film anyway), and generally most seem to end with the main character being sent home although I have yet to find one that involves them going through a physical change as in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Generally the context for the situation is made a lot clearer and, unlike the original sequence that inspired them, expository dialogue is included.

In the case of Contact, for instance, it is established that Eleanor Arroway is in some kind of computer simulation created by the Vegans with the intent of making it easier for her first confrontation with a representative of their species to play out more comfortably. Interstellar is even more explicit. Cooper deduces that what he is seeing was created by some distant decedent of humanity with the intent that he would be able to learn a crucial piece of information (about the singularities of black holes) and send it back in time to his daughter so that she would be able to save humanity from extinction.

So aside from the extreme influence of 2001, why is this idea so popular? What is it about the the idea of this other dimension, a world that apparently transcends what we understand of space and time? Perhaps it is simply our innate curiosity as a species. Science fiction is a genre that is all about exploring the unknown and conquering the vast mysteries of existence as we know it. These characters: David Bowman, Eleanor Arroway, and Cooper were explorers who tried to conquer the limits of human capability, and they succeeded for greater than they could have expected.

The truth is that the universe is so mind-bogglingly complex we are only just beginning to understand it. All of these movies seek to explore the theme of what lies beyond the realm of human observation, and that means to look beyond the mere boundaries of space and time. 2001 was a film that looked to the future, and in the end it did just that by showing us not simply where humanity could go, but also how much further it could go: a future stage of evolution we cannot begin to comprehend. This same theme returns in Interstellar with the notion of humanity evolving to a point where time itself is perceived as a physical dimension, far beyond the limits of contemporary science.

Visions of the Planets

After I wrote my article on visions of Mars, I thought it would be a neat idea to do the other planets as well. Unfortunately, I had some difficulty finding enough different films to give each planet its own article, so I've decided to combine all the remaining planets into one article where I go through them each individually and discuss the films that I have been able to find.

One scene that I will be referring to throughout is the opening of 1953's The War of the Worlds where we see a series of paintings by Chesley Bonestell (an artist known at the time known for his space-themed paintings, you can see a few of them here) which attempt to depict each of the planets with the exception of Venus. I will put this clip at the very beginning here so that you can refer back to it if necessary:

Venus

Venus is the second-closest planet to our sun, as well as the closest planet to Earth, to which it is a similar size. There was once a time when, like Mars, Venus was a popular setting for science fiction stories, largely because of a few slight misunderstandings. You see, at some point in the 19th or 20th century some astronomer pointed a telescope at Venus and saw clouds, initially assuming them to be proof of the existence of water which therefore meant an Earth-like environment and possibly even the presence of an intelligent civilization.

Eleanor Arroway sums up the reality in one scene of Contact. Basically, the planet is exactly the opposite of what that astronomer initially thought: a dry, desolate landscape. The clouds turned out not to be water vapor but sulfuric acid, with acidic rain being a major part of the climate (though it never hits the ground). Atmospheric pressure is similar to the deepest parts of the ocean, the atmosphere is made up almost completely of Carbon Dioxide (in other words, extremely toxic), and for any human being landing there that would all be the least of their problems considering the thick atmosphere traps enough heat to create temperatures hot enough to melt lead; making it the hottest planet in the solar system, even hotter than Mercury despite being further from the sun.

However, that was a very recent discovery, and we had plenty of time for science fiction to make its own claims that may seem insane by modern standards. Ray Bradbury wrote a short story called The Long Rain which sees a group of astronauts stranded on the planet after their spaceship crashes, leaving them to navigate a tropical environment where it rains endlessly. In the Walls of Eryx was a collaborative story between H.P. Lovecraft and Kenneth J. Sterling which envisioned an Avatar-like tropical environment with a seemingly primitive race of "lizard men" who are implied to actually be quite intelligent.

That said, so far I have only seen one film to actually take place on Venus, and that was the East German/Polish science fiction movie Der Schwegende Stern or The Silent Star (a rough translation of the title) as we learned to call it in my science fiction class, or better known in English as First Spaceship to Venus. With this film we get a vision of the planet that correctly assumes it to be inhospitable for humanity... but all for the wrong reasons as it is blamed more due to nuclear fallout than extremely high temperatures. This does, however, provide a slightly different take in that the planet itself is currently uninhabited; it's original population having nuked themselves to oblivion and ultimately posing a few dangers that end up stranding three of the crew to die on the planet.

Mercury

Mercury seems to be a less common choice, probably because there aren't many reasons people would want to go there. It's the closest planet to the sun, and once thought to be tidally locked. This is not actually the case; it does rotate, but the planet always has one side facing the sun and subsequently very hot while the other side faces away and subsequently has freezing temperatures. So far I have only found two movies that offer any depiction of Mercury at all, neither of which use it as a primary setting. 

The first is the opening of The War of the Worlds. The image they show of Mercury is reasonably close to the real thing, as a rocky surface covered in craters, although the narrator isn't entirely correct in saying that there is no air, as a thin atmosphere does exist.

The one other film I've found is the 2007 movie Sunshine. Mercury is only in it briefly, and the characters never actually land on the planet itself so all we have to go on is what is seen while its in orbit. As a result I cannot say with certainty how accurately it depicts the planet, although at first glance it does seem to more closely resemble the sun.

Saturn

Saturn meanwhile is an impressive world and one that in theory you would expect to be a great setting for science fiction movies. So far I have only found one to incorporate it. Like the other planets it is referred to in the opening of The War of the Worlds, complete with a rather impressive painting by Chesley Bonestell. I'm not entirely sure about the presence of clouds but what they show of the rings is depicted with some impressive detail for 1953.

That said, the rings, or at least the ones we can see (Saturn has several that are harder to observe) are made up more of ice particles than "cosmic dust"; in fact this is the main reason why Saturn is the only planet with rings we can clearly see (the rings of Jupiter and Uranus are made up of dust and rock, respectively, while nobody is certain what Neptune's rings are composed of). However, the narrator also claims that ice "lies 15000 miles deep on its surface" even though Saturn doesn't really have a "surface".

2001: A Space Odyssey was originally supposed to use Saturn as the destination of the Discovery crew (and this remains the case in the book, written while the film was in development). Unfortunately there were some problems in creating a convincing model of Saturn's rings so it was changed to Jupiter. The one movie I did find, however, to use Saturn as a setting was Silent Running, directed by Douglas Trumbull who also did the effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey. We do not see much of the planet itself, but we can see its rings (and at one point the main character faces serious danger when his ship goes right through one of them) . The model is a fairly convincing representation of the planet, although the coloring is a bit different when compared to the Cassini photographs.

Jupiter

The only thing The War of the Worlds got even remotely correct about Jupiter was that there would be an abundance of hydrogen and thick atmospheric pressure. Aside from a rocky core there is no solid layer to the planet, which has a surface of liquid hydrogen and an atmosphere of the same substance in gas form. There are no "Titanic cliffs of lava and ice with hydrogen flaming at the tops" anywhere to be found on the planet as the movie claims.

I have found three movies to use Jupiter as a setting or at the very least a backdrop (to actually have a story take place on the surface of Jupiter would be impossible using modern science). The first two are, of course, 2001: A Space Odyssey and the sequel 2010, along with the more recent science fiction story Europa Report. In addition, the movie Outland is set on (an extremely inaccurate depiction of) Jupiter's moon Io.

With both the Space Odyssey films and Europa Report, we get something reasonably close to the actual planet. We only glimpse it briefly near the end of 2001, but there is a clear resemblance although we never see the famed "Great Red Spot" (which is presumably on the other side). 2010 gives us more views of Jupiter as unlike its predecessor the bulk of the story takes place there. We also get some really good views of the planet in Europa Report. It is a little jarring at first to see Jupiter appear sideways compared to how it is normally shown in photographs, but it still makes perfect sense when you consider roughly the location at which they landed on Europa.

Neptune and Uranus

I have unfortunately failed to find much in the way of films dealing with Neptune and Uranus. Event Horizon and Journey to the Seventh Planet are the only two movies I have found to use either one as any kind of setting. The explanation given in The War of the Worlds: "Twin Worlds in eternal night and perpetual cold, both surrounded by an unbreathable atmosphere of methane gas and ammonia vapor" provides a fairly accurate (if simplified) description of both.

So there we have it, all of the major planets covered. I am still not aware of anything dealing with Pluto, though technically that isn't really a planet; the short version is that it got demoted because some astronomers decided to try and solidify what exactly defined a "planet" and the criteria they came up with were:
1. It has to be spherical in shape
2. It has to orbit a star
3. It has to have a clear orbit

Pluto met the first two requirements but its orbit goes right through the Kuiper Belt, meaning there are lots of comets and debris and other things in its path, which is why it is considered a Dwarf Planet. These also should not be confused with the term "moon" which refers to any natural object that orbits a planet and may or may not be spherical in shape. Since we don't know much about Pluto right now, I wouldn't be able to do much of a discussion on any films that did take place there until New Horizons arrives and gets some good photographs.

This is about as far out as we can really go for the moment. As fascinating as it would be to discuss visions of planets other systems and maybe even other galaxies, there is not a whole lot of material to go on.

Buddy Cop Movies and Why they are So Popular

This is a genre that has been around for a long time. I can't even begin to go into its full history, but the basic formula is one that has endured at least since the 1980's: A police officer is assigned to his (it's almost always a guy) latest case, during which time he is also given a new partner (often but not always another cop or other law enforcement). Said partner is completely the opposite to him in terms of personality; usually one is more uptight and by the book while the other is more reckless and wild. Naturally the two can't stand each other but they're forced to work together anyway and by the time they've solved the case they are best friends.

It is a simple enough formula, and one that can be taken in plenty of directions storywise (exactly what the case is for example, varies widely between films). There are still patterns that are typically common. For instance, the two "buddy cops" are almost always men. Aside from a one or two exceptions, any female characters present in the story are usually a supporting role such as a love interest for one of them. I have yet to find a buddy cop film where the pairing is between a man and a woman.

That said, the combinations vary widely. Usually you have the dynamic of the uptight professional cop and the reckless wild one, but for a while it became popular with films such as Lethal Weapon to pair up a white guy and a black guy. With Hot Fuzz you have the cop who is so good at his job that he embarrasses everyone around him and the cop who at first has no idea what he's doing. The Canadian film Bon Cop, Bad Cop takes the basic formula but instead pairs together an English-speaking cop from Toronto with a French-speaking Quebecois officer. In a subversion of my earlier comment about how the "buddy cops" are usually men, we recently got The Heat, where the same formula is replicated but this time with both partners being women.

Then we get into weirder combinations. The infamous movie Cop and ½ sees poor Burt Reynolds forced to team up with a kid to track down the bad guys. Osmosis Jones does this kind of story but instead uses the setting of the human body, with a the "buddy cops" being a white blood cell and a cold pill who team up to track down a lethal virus. What I said earlier about having yet to find a pairing between a man and a woman might not be entirely true if you count Theodore Rex, which has the odd pairing of Whoopi Goldberg and a talking dinosaur. Yes, that actually happened.

So what is it that makes this genre so popular? Part of it might be just the creative combinations that different writers can come up (even if at times they get really weird or outright stupid), but a major part of the buddy cop film is in how the two main characters play off of each other. Naturally there's usually lots of action but it may just be that there is something emotional to be found about two conflicting characters who otherwise might have had nothing to do with each other bonding together over a crime, to the point where they often end with both partners getting together to solve another crime.  

In this case, unlike perhaps a regular police-based narrative, such as the old TV series Columbo, the conflict and tension becomes more in how the two "buddy cops" have to figure out how to put aside their differences and work together to solve the crime moreso than the crime itself (although the crooks involved certainly don't help matters). After ;all while the investigation plays a major role in the story, the plots of both Hot Fuzz and The Heat were driven largely by the relationship between the two leads and how they gradually warm up to each other so they can finally take on the bad guys during the climax. The genre is a bit of a cliché now, but really the key to making a good "Buddy Cop" film is simply to have two leads who can really play off of each other.

Fears of Exploration and Discovery

In 1950, American producer George Pal, in collaboration with director Irving Pichel, released the blockbuster film Destination Moon, in which four brave men have to face various challenges in the pursuit of being the first to land on the surface of the moon. This film marked the beginning of science fiction's popularity on film starting in the 1950's. Before that, science fiction had established itself as a literary genre but aside from exceptions such as Metropolis was very rarely seen on film.

With Destination Moon, George Pal sought to capture the imaginations of viewers with a surprising degree of scientific realism (to the point where a lot of the science referred to, at least in theory, still holds up alright today). A few years later Pal would attempt a similar, though perhaps more ambitious project with the 1955 science fiction film Conquest of Space, which was ultimately a box office disaster. In that film, Pal took the idea of a space expedition to the next level, envisioning the first manned mission to Mars.

With both these films there is a clear message to be gained. They provided an optimistic view of scientific progress and suggested that the moon, the planets, and everything beyond could be ours for the taking. It is therefore strange that, despite playing a major role in launching the science fiction genre, very few of the subsequent films seemed to follow the idea of Destination Moon. I have previously discussed the surprising popularity of the "Space Disaster' movie (of which both Destination Moon and Conquest of Space could be considered examples) , and in some ways that concept overlaps here.

So we see with these two films this vision of men (this was still the 1950's) going out and claiming other worlds for humanity. However, many other films seemed to have the opposite view. Also popular in the 1950's was the "alien invasion" concept, where instead of us going out to other worlds, other worlds came to us. 

Movies like The Thing From Another World or Invasion of the Body Snatchers seemed to develop this alternative view that the stars and other planets were something to be afraid of. To be fair, it's not hard to see why. In my old essay Alienation of the Individual in Films About Aliens I discussed how the depictions of extraterrestrial encounters in film reflected major social developments. In this case, the aliens were often allegories for the prevailing fear of communism and the perceived inevitability of nuclear war. Many of these films subsequently involve America being attacked and the government being the ones who have to save the day.

On the flip side of things, we have the Polish/East German collaboration Der Schweigende Stern, also known as The Silent Star or First Spaceship to Venus. Much like the American science fiction films of the period this one presented a somewhat idealized vision of the Soviet Union, and in a surprisingly progressive move involves a crew of mixed nationality, race, and gender (a lot of American films of the time would usually have had the crew portrayed as mostly if not entirely white American men).

With this film, we also have a brave crew of astronauts bravely making the first trip to Venus (this was 1960, they didn't know about the carbon atmosphere or the extreme pressures or the temperatures high enough to melt lead back then), much like the cast of Destination Moon or Conquest of Space, but once they get there they do not claim the planet the same way the cast of Pal's films did. 

Instead, they find traces of intelligent life (again, the filmmakers did not have the information on Venus we do now, just try and go with it) and it becomes more a story about humanity, with the reveal that the aliens destroyed themselves in nuclear war. This then sends the astronauts back home to warn humanity in the hopes that we can avert the same fate. Like Destination Moon and Conquest of Space, the story becomes about exploring new worlds but in the end they're not for us to take.

This can be seen more in American cinema as well. Forbidden Planet begins with a large militaristic space expedition investigating a colony on the fourth planet from the star Altair which they have reason to believe is in trouble. When they arrive, only one of the original colonists, Dr. Morbius, remains, along with his daughter who was presumably born on the planet. 

We eventually find out that what happened to the colony had to do with the remains of an ancient civilization that lived there once before. We never actually see any of the aliens known as the "Krell" (the most we get is a vague hint that on average their heads were bigger than those of a human) but we know that there is something dangerous here. 

This planet is not one humanity was meant to find, as the crew discover the hard way; the colonists who tried to take this world for themselves met their end by way of a "monster from the id" unwittingly created by Morbius by way of Krell technology. In the end, the only way to defeat the monster is to destroy the entire planet and said technology along with it, thus ensuring it is lost forever.

Indeed, we don't seem to see many films that present a positive view of humanity's exploration beyond Earth. More recently we had the film Prometheus, where a search for answers to humanity's origins cost the lives of all but two of the cast and almost caused an angry alien to dump a dangerous goo all over the Earth and most likely destroy humanity. 

We also still get plenty of alien invasion films suggesting the stars are something to be feared. Prometheus provides a bit of both us going out and finding horrifying things and those things coming to us, but we also still have plenty of more modern films suggesting the stars are something to be feared. 

John Carepnter's The Thing is a good example of such a film, wherein a group of scientists stationed at an Antarctic research camp encounter a an alien that landed on the Earth roughly 100,000 years ago. We never find out precisely where it came from; just that it was from some other planet, but once it is on Earth and it is found, the Thing becomes unstoppable. One by one the men stationed at the camp are systematically assimilated and it is very well possible the Thing is still at large at the end (there is an alternate ending in some televised versions that confirms this possibility).

2001: A Space Odyssey is the closest I'm aware of to a movie returning to the themes of Pal's films. In this film we see once again see the idea of mankind journeying out to explore other worlds. There are colonies on the moon that seem to be doing really well with hints that there are aliens subtly guiding us through our evolution, but it seems to have a fairly positive view of settling on other worlds. 

It should be noted that the disaster that later occurs aboard Discovery, specifically the malfunction of the HAL 9000 computer, was entirely due to human error (as were the problems found in Destination Moon and Conquest of Space). When he arrives, Dave Bowman encounters the monolith but there is no reason given to be afraid of travelling to Jupiter or to for that matter begin settling on its moons or any of the other planets. 

However, the sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact has a slightly different story. That film involves the investigation into what happened during the events of 2001, but it also delves into the possibility of life on Europa. At the very end, Jupiter is literally transformed into a star, allowing Europa's icy surface to melt and life to develop. We get this final message at the end:

So contrary to George Pal's vision in Destination Moon, not all the worlds we see are ours for the taking. Many of them are, so long as we leave Europa alone and allow the newly-developed life to begin evolving. 

Speaking of Europa, we also have a more recent effort to explore it with the 2013 movie Europa Report.Here we also have a similar deal of men and women journeying out into space to explore one of Jupiter's moons, this time in the hopes of discovering life. When they arrive, the crew end up facing one problem after another, and they do in fact find life, but ultimately they all die in the process. Once again, this world was not meant for us to explore.

So why is this? We see so many science fiction movies about exploration and yet so few that seem to cast it in a positive light. We frequently see worlds humanity was never mean to visit, or indications that contrary to the visions of Stanely Kubrick and George Pal, the stars are not in fact something we should reach out towards, but in fact something to be feared. 

I cannot say for sure why this is the case, or why we don't see more science fiction films that provide an optimistic view of exploration and colonization of other worlds. Even George Pal hinted at the dangers of the cosmos in The War of the Worlds and When Worlds Collide (both of which concern a desperate struggle to keep humanity from being wiped out by a danger originating from elsewhere). 

What I can say is that it is curious that such a tend exists. Even in the 1950's it would have been known that the universe can be a very terrifying place, and humanity is only a tiny part of a vast cosmos, most of which we can't even see (a large portion of the universe is believed to be made of an invisible substance called "dark matter"), so in that sense it is correct to assume that the universe does not belong to us and therefore that there are worlds we could benefit from exploring and others that we would do best to stay away from.