SCI-FI MOVIES

First of all sci-fi, that is short for science fiction, is a successful genre developed in the twentieth century, which has its roots in scientific novels . Science fiction has heavily extended to other mass media from literature to movies, comics, television and video games.

The fundamental theme of science fiction is the impact that science or technology may have on society or on the individual and it typically deals with imaginative concepts such as futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. The characters besides human beings can be aliens, robots, cyborgs, monsters or mutants and usually this kind of film is set in a context linked to a more or less distant future, but this doesn't mean that it can't be set in the past or in the present. One of the qualities that makes this genre fascinating is its propensity to communicate philosophical or political messages with elegance: the works of science fiction have often been used to face sensitive social issues and current events without giving up, at the same time, offering entertainment to its viewers.

There are plenty of memorable sci-fi movies and an even larger number of mediocre works and it took many decades for science fiction films to be considered as a form of art.

The very first science fiction movie is 1902 "Le Voyage Dans la Lune" which is based on a novel by the father of the genre: "From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne.

Later there were other short films but these movies were fantasy with some pseudoscientific details.

The first true science fiction movies are "Frankenstein" in 1931 and "King Kong" in 1933.

In the fifties a huge diffusion of the science fiction genre occurred and the first masterpieces of the modern "fantacinema" (at that time called scientifilm) were "The Day the Earth Stood Still", which got a remake in 2008, and "The Thing from Another World" both made in 1951. There are many other movies shot during the fifties such as "The War of the Worlds", the Japanese "Godzilla", "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and "Journey to the Center of the Earth".

During the sixties the films with Agent 007, James Bond, begins and also "Planet of the Apes" films. But the science fiction film par excellence and absolute masterpiece of film history is "2001: A Space Odyssey". In 1977 the "Star Wars" series of movies started and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" which definitely conquered a mass audience that science fiction, previously, had never had. In 1978 "Superman" arrives, which was the first major supehero movie.

In the eighties we have several movies from "Mad Max", "Terminator", "Robocop", "E.T.the Extra-Terrestrial" and "Ghostbusters" to "Batman" and "Back to the Future".

The nineties marked the triumph of special effects, with digital technologies that come to full maturity. The most famous movies are "Star Wars", "Jurassic Park", "Terminator 2", "Batman Returns", "Man In Black", "Armageddon", "Godzilla" and "Matrix".

With the beginning of the new millennium science fiction represents almost 90% of the proceeds in the US and in most of the countries in the world. One of the most successful movie is Avatar, but there are also remakes of old movies such as The Planet of the Apes, The War of the Worlds, The day the Earth Stood Still and sequels like Batman Begins, Superman Returns, Star Wars, Terminator.

However, there have been also brand new films like The Hunger Games series, The Maze Runner, The Divergent series, Transformers, The Martian and Interstellar.

But I think the most important movies are those with superheroes, in fact within the science fiction genre in the 21 st century the biggest trend, for commercial success and number of titles, is without doubt that of superhero movies. After the heroes drawn by DC Comics in previous decades, it is now the turn of those of their competitor, Marvel Comics. The first ones are the "X-Men" films, even though, they were preceded by other Marvel movies. The X-men is the film that opens the way to the new trend.

There are plenty of superhero films but the best known are the latest such as Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, who all together form The Avengers. Other Superheroes are Daredevil, Ant-Man, Deadpool, Spiderman, Doctor Strange from Marvel or Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, Batman, Superman and many others from DC Comics.

That’ s all for today’s post. I hope you like it and … thanks for reading!

Do you like Sci-Fi movies? What is your favourite film belonging to this genre?

Karina