Science-fiction Cinema’s Richest Era Began with Two Films That Use the Future to Talk about the Present

Keith Phipps explores the rich age of science fiction cinema  which began in the late 60s and faded away by the mid 80s.

Look up in the sky, and consider for a moment that everyone living today thinks about what’s up there much differently than people just a century ago. The years between have brought us manned flight, satellites, moon landings, Mars rovers, the Hubble Space Telescope, and more. With a greater understanding of where we stand in space, and—thanks to Charles Darwin—a greater understanding of where we, as a species, stand in time, we’ve also gained a flood of new hopes and new anxieties. For every question that’s been answered, an old comfort has disappeared. And some big questions remain unanswerable, simply taking on new forms as science has deepened our understanding of how the universe works: Where are we going? Where have we been?

In this span of time, science fiction became one way of discussing those questions. The genre’s rise alongside advances in science and technology is anything but coincidental; science fiction first flourished in the early 20th century, making its way from the work of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne into pulp magazines, radio shows, comic books, and films. Pioneering fantasy filmmaker Georges Méliès sent a crew to the moon, and the movies have never stopped making variations on that trip. 

Some eras of science-fiction moviemaking are richer than others, however, and this column will examine a particularly rich stretch of filmmaking, ushered in in the late 1960s with the twin successes ofPlanet Of The Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and shown out by the mid-1980s, when the poor financial performance of films like Blade Runner, Tron, The Thing, and Dune marked the end of a period rich with idea-driven science fiction. Yes, there have been great science-fiction films made since. And the sorts of science-fiction films that immediately followed what I’m calling The Laser Age—which tended either to be sentimental efforts inspired by E.T. The Extra-Terrestrialor action hybrids inspired by The Terminator—were often great as well. They just belong to a different time.

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See the complete series of articles on Science Fiction Cinema at the Laser Age section of The Dissolve.