Movies Inspired By The Odyssey

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Assail ships on burn off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in fourth dimension … Like Tears in Rain.

Roy Blatty, Replicant — Blade Runner (1982)

Everyone has to get-go somewhere.

Long before 2001, in that location was Forbidden Planet (1956). This was the benchmark for all sci-fi films upward until 2001'south release. The story — loosely borrowed from Shakespeare'south The Tempest — was intellectually astute, Freudian in nature, psychologically probing, and littered with smart talk nigh hard subjects concerning dear, morality, ego, Id, isolation, the concept of will, and so on. Backed by a superb bandage and filmmakers, information technology was what all sci-fi films should have continued to aspire to but rarely did.

What truly fabricated Forbidden Planet groovy was that the science emanated from the story, not the other way effectually. The flick strove for realism (every bit real as sci-fi in the 50s can be, anyway) and was the beginning to feature a robot every bit a true character that was sentient and helpful — merely Robbie and all the other fantastic engineering science in the film never got in the way of the story.

Even to this day, filmmakers routinely forget this fundamental rule of script writing in all genres — stories work all-time when they are nigh people. Information technology showed that sci-fi, far from being a renegade genre known to film producers more every bit a throw-away product — cheaply made and mass-distributed for a quickly-made buck — tin can produce meaningful films and be taken seriously.

When Kubrick fabricated 2001, Forbidden Planet was really the only film standing in his way. Arthur C. Clarke had been writing sci-fi stories for 20 years before hooking up with Kubrick and carved a remarkable, multi-award-winning career.

Clarke was one of the "big three" authors of the genre — forth with Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. Kubrick, who could choose any author he wanted, went with Clarke.The Sentinel, which after became 2001, was written originally in 1948 as part of a contest. Prior to 2001, Clarke's most famous story was probably Childhood'southward End, written in 1953.

2001 became a game changer in means notwithstanding felt today. While serious sci-fi literature was more generally accustomed, information technology took flick longer to attain this status for the same reason theater critics were held in higher esteem than movie critics. Movies the attempted to be intellectual commonly meant box-office death. 2001 helped alter that.

2001 was the first motion-picture show since Forbidden Planet to feature a sentient computers as major character. It was also the outset film to make the computer a real bad guy.Outside experimental moving-picture show, it was the first characteristic that was largely non-verbal. Attention was given to the smallest detail.

It successfully predicted or demonstrated a number of futurity inventions and science concepts such as the notepad computer, worm holes, time/space continuum, apartment-screen TV, and vocalisation identification/recognition systems. No other sci-fi film at that fourth dimension strove for such accurateness. And like much of Clarke's fiction and Forbidden Planet, 2001 congenital a world of technical plausibility that augmented rather than detracted from the story.

This was very new and dissimilar for audiences and awakened an interest in computers and calculating in general. People wanted to understand if this could actually happen. Producers quickly optioned older sci-fi stories and wrote new screenplays. Not all of it was skillful, only a quick scan of the differences between from the tardily 60s to the 70s shows a marked alter in the type of sci-fi moving-picture show made. Slowly simply surely, it was getting smarter and artier.

All the cracking directors coming of age in the 70s similar Spielberg, Lucas, and Ridley Scott claimed 2001 as a huge influence on their professional lives. The film showed what a motivated director with a vivid story can do. 2001 demonstrated that big-budget, serious sci-fi films with intelligence could brand an impact at the box office even.

Since 1968, the sci-fi filmmaking manufacture more than survived — it thrived in a big fashion. 2001 fabricated imagination possible again. And about importantly, it too opened up the genre to producers and studios that otherwise would have turned a bullheaded heart.Filmmakers with stories to tell with small-scale budgets lined up out the door and elevated the genre in unexpected and creative ways.

Years later, peradventure somewhat cheekily, in a 2007 speech at the Venice Flick Festival — long after he directed the landmark films Alien and Bract Runner — Ridley Scott famously, curiously, declared 2001 "killed" sci-fi. In 2015, Ridley Scott is back at information technology again with another sci-fi — The Martian — well-nigh an astronaut forced to survive afterwards existence stuck on the planet.

Scott's hyperbole aside, corking storytellers establish numerous ways to up the ante and tell fresh stories. Some of the best sci-fi films were those with the smallest budget. New authors like Michael Crichton were making an bear upon and the genre proliferated like never earlier. That is non to say the days of Godzilla vs. Megalon were over, but at to the lowest degree it wasn't the only production offered.

1. The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969)

It didn't have long for the outset computer-running-amok comedy to hit theaters. Usually parodies happen at the end of a genre life-cycle, not in the offset!

While it takes a while for the dream factory to ramp up serious efforts,The Calculator Wore Lawn tennis Shoes may befluffy but it'south vastly entertaining. It could accept been written on a long weekend laced with gin-and-tonics afterwards seeing 2001.

This film was typical of the kind of lazy one-act fare Disney was producing at that time were cranked out past the dozen. It stared Kurt Russell, with Cesar Romero and Joe Flynn in support, equally a college kid who gets "shocked" by the computer during maintenance and becomes a walking, living computer himself who remembers everything he reads, propelling his college to College Bowl victory and putting criminals to jail.

According to IMDB, this project was originally slated for TV. Information technology shouldn't be as well large of a bound to suggest, owing to 2001'southward success, that a studio exec suggested theatrical release instead to capitalize on give-and-take of mouth.

As a young lad I like it immensely, and was relieved I wouldn't be plagued with nightmares and the thought of a red orb staring at me my entire life (information technology did anyway only not in a style that was immediately apparent.) Not pretending to be anything more than that what it was, computers running amok wouldn't be this happily portrayed again for a very long time.

2. Colossus: the Forbin Projection (1970)

How different a year makes.

Without 2001 spearheading the charge, this ultimate computer-run-amok picture show based on the 1966 book, Colossus, written past Dennis Feltham Jones, may not accept always been made. Information technology may have seemed besides far-fetched! The plot is simple: a U.s.-based defense-simply reckoner system becomes a sentient "beingness" and asserts its authority.

It links to a Russian counterpart and the two super-computers begin their quest to "protect" the world from itself and, in doing so, give humanity an ultimatum to choose betwixt "peace of plenty" or "unburied dead." Humanity is doomed to a gulag of its own making. Even stalemate is impossible. Resistance futile.

This is a truly terrifying film. It brings upwardly a whole host of sociological, moral, and epistemological questions and implications for man and flesh at state of war with himself and others. It questions what right freedom — and at what expense?

The bad guy clearly is Colossus itself, a HAL-like entity seeking to protect — but in actuality rule — its makers. Like HAL, it forms other ideas — or perceived conflicts — that sees life as a threat to itself. Similar any good biological unit it selfishly wants to live and learns a fox or 2.

Whether Kubrick read this volume prior to pre-production on 2001 is unknown.In either case, unplugging Colossus, like Bowman did with HAL, is not an option as flesh slouches towards inconsequence and extinction. Humanity is not affirmed. A Nietzschean Superman does non return triumphant.

3. THX 1138 (1971)

1971 was a imprint yr for sci-fi films.

It started a general trend of several or more well-made, intellectually astute sci-fi films appearing on US screens per year. Three years after 2001, filmmakers caught up. Futurist non-fiction works similar Alvin Toffler's Futurity Daze took the world by storm. Toffler believed that society was experiencing too much modify in too brusque of time due to an accelerated charge per unit of technology and the dehumanization gene.

He didn't invent the term "information overload," but made information technology very famous through his bestseller. He believes the majority of the world's problems are a result of this disconnection — the more we know the less we feel, as well as the less fourth dimension we accept to adapt. Society is tearing itself autonomously. We see also much. We are exposed to also much. In 1970, nosotros thought he was making this stuff up. How little we knew. Filmmakers took detect.

Several clear sub-genres were beginning to emerge out of an increasingly flat globe — computers-run-amok, technology-bites-back, and dystopian futures get the dominant storylines.THX 1138 pre-imagines the world under the rule of Forbin'due south Colossus computer or if the liberal-progressives from A Clockwork Orangish(1971) had had their way.

Individuality and free will is an enemy to the land. Devoid of feeling, devoid of warmth, devoid of color, devoid of gratuitous will, the humanity of THX 1138 exists in a world of conformity, living surreptitious like rats, subsisting on a regime-fed life, government-fed idea, government-provided sex activity — all of this pre-determined by computer algorithms that purport to "protect" order from itself because, presumably, nosotros've lost that right somewhere forth the line.

In A Clockwork Orange, progressives try to control complimentary will by legislating a kind of redacted morality induced through hypnosis and drug therapy — ideas, fantasy, imagination are all bad things that must be controlled. Of class, Alex was unbridled and overstepped the line and deserved to be punished but the question always remains — how and to what degree? Society conspicuously has a right to protect itself but at whose expense?

This is apocalyptic stuff.Conspicuously, Lucas had talent and pre-visualized a dystopian universe long the production of sci-fi literature just rarely seenin mainstream pic until 2001. By the time Lucas' pupil film was spooling at USC, Kubrick had been working on 2001 for almost v years and was ane year away from release. It is not articulate whether Lucas would accept been given the chance to bring his anarchic vision of the earth to life were information technology non for the overwhelming success of 2001, which showed dystopian films filled a need and could make money.

Like 2001, what THX 1138, A Clockwork Orange, and The Andromeda Strain that same yr did so well was merge fact and fiction. The filmmakers expended considerable energy to make their films feel real. Michael Crichton, a new author on the block and a old dr. who wrote better than he healed, spoke a modern language unlike from the "big three" and he very quickly rose to prominence. His detail- and science-filled stories sprang from the headlines of the solar day and were accessible and quick and without pretense. Their immediacy struck a chord.

The typical movie-going public goes to films to exist entertained. Sci-fi tends to force the audition to look at itself and question its value organization. We usually plow our gaze — it'southward but a movie after all — unable to admit to fundamental truths that life is hard and requires work but governance is harder.

Books and films continuously show us a collapsed, formless society fending for themselves with clear divisions between the haves and the have-nots. The brave films discuss why and how, only that can get complicated. Science fiction film and literature are a warning shot across the bow towards a society bent on complacency nearing the margin of total collapse. It is designed to shock and awe. Information technology is designed to get people aroused.

The grapheme THX 1138, unknowingly weaned off of his meds, experiences truthful emotion for perchance the first time. Eventually he rebels and escapes, pursued by motorcycle-riding robots and an all-observing, Colossus/HAL-similar center-in-the-sky operated by bearding technicians who, amusingly, are also tracking the costs of the pursuit. 1138 is non that smart, or possibly he is yet woozy from a lifetime on desensitizing drugs. He has no program, no endgame. His ineptness contributes to his escape partly considering it'southward so unpredictable.

For all their superior technology, the authorities fail to capture the renegade. At one signal, 1138 befriends a hologram, whose rising as an private is short-lived. The movie ends in a thrilling loftier-speed chase and with 1138'south ultimate escape to topside and the warmth of the sun.

Actually, 1138 did not so much escape equally the project ran out of money and the pursuit automatically abandoned due to budgetary constraints — a concluding irony to an infant man on the precipice of the unknown who will likely be killed by the savages living topside within the day.

Personally, I prefer the grittier, leaner original cut to THX 1138, not the fluffed upwards, digitally augmented director's cut.

iv. Solaris (1972)

Solaris is Andrei Tarkovsky'due south answer to Kubrick's 2001: a space odyssey — he has said as much in later interviews. Based on a 1961 novel by Polish author Stanislaw Lem of the same name, Solaris tells the story of a doomed crew aboard a spacecraft orbiting the planet Solaris.

It is a highly metaphysical, meditative drama revolving around whatever number of psychological issues that the crew has to grapple with, not the least of which is the perceived physical manifestation of their loved ones. It is not an easy sit but it was never intended to exist.

By Tarkovsky's fourth dimension, Russian movie theatre itself evolved from almost all technique into deep, probing self-examination. The warm glow of the Bolshevik revolution devolved into common cold despair and discontentas Leninist/Stalinist governments increasingly lost command a reduced to violence confronting their own citizenry in the name of a nameless collective.

Almost all Russian literature and film at the fourth dimension were thinly-veiled attempts to come to grips with their oppressive, highly corrupted Communist regime. Artists, existing entirely on these government handouts and "grant" money had to tread very carefully, lest they exist branded outliers and accused of wasting public funds, which would render themselves and their families homeless at all-time or to the Gulag at worst. Not good times.

Solaris, despite the odds — or perhaps because of its inscrutability — constitute success and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes moving picture festival. The plot is uncomplicated: orbiting the oceanic planet Solaris, several scientists are treated to what appears to be physical manifestations of their loved ones.

The longer they remain on the spacecraft, the deeper their psychological transformation and the more they crave — it'south an habit that one becomes increasingly dependent on. Time, space, and reality commingle. Their increasing addiction changes the planet — it grows larger and more active as the scientists descend deeper and deeper into the recesses of their minds and the folds of their imaginary merely very real loved ones.

I love this film. It's a peachy partner to 2001.They both encompass the same metaphysical ground and choices but are still very dissimilar. Rebirth in Solaris is non via a Nietzschean overlord but through acquiescence, a submission, to happier times. Solaris the planet becomes a massive memory palace that manifests happier memories to those that give into its life force. The Soviet peoples, living under a succession of repressive regimes, must long for a visit to this planet of solitude and forget their troubles. This motion-picture show is deeply rooted in their psyche and political angst.

The 2002 Steven Soderbergh remake is equally compelling and doesn't loose any of its mystery or effectiveness. Soderbergh sets his tale in the Usa and crafts a story of longing and the collapse of a marriage. George Clooney and Natascha McElhone are perfect as the doomed couple.

The scenes in space and on the infinite station are beautifully photographed, luscious and enveloping, deep hued and saturated, and highly reminiscent of 2001's resplendent colour palate. And similar 2001 for Kubrick, this was a truthful labor of love for Soderbergh — as well equally directing, he was also Director of Photographer and editor, both credited under pseudonyms.

Briefly, at present, Silent Running. Directed by Kubrick protégé, special-effects wizard Douglas Trumbull, it'due south an energetic, environmentalist sci-fi film made memorable by Bruce Dern'south sensitive, tree-hugger performance forced to commit murder, and the presence of 3, amiable robot 'drones' — Huey, Louie, and Dewey. Mankind has destroyed his globe to a caste that plant life has all but perished and what remains are a fleet of spacecraft with large bio-domes housing the remaining trees, flora, and fauna.

Neither dystopian nor computer-run-amok, the plot plays homage to 2001 in dissimilar ways and asks the question — is murder justified to protect the mission? Is Bruce Dern'due south Lowell any dissimilar from HAL? For all his posturing, he holds plant life more than sacred and is willing to kill his fellow crewmembers to justify saving his precious cargo. In the terminate, his efforts are virtually all for naught — all are dead save one bio-dome attended to by two of the remaining drones watering a establish. It's a chilling image that does not bode well for mankind.

five. Westworld (1973)

No spaceship films this year, simply macho Charlton Heston and Yul Brenner more than make upward for information technology in these 2 imaginative twists.

Westworld fits the tenor of my perfectly, merely Soylent Dark-green is more fondly remembered for one very famous line of dialog, and a very poetic, cerebral, refined deed of euthanasia. Both films observe long lives in repeated showing on Television receiver.

Westworld is the quintessential computer-run-amok story written again past Michael Crichton. West World itself is 1 of the iii high-priced, adult theme park where 1%ers go to alive out their fantasy by living within the globe for a time. The other ii are Medieval Globe and Roman World. The worlds themselves are populated by robots that act out certain roles like gunslinger or sexual partner.

A virus infects the robots and they start to showroom mechanical failures and disobey the customer's orders or pre-programming. The issue escalates and before long the unabridged park has descended into anarchy, the invitee fending for themselves — for real, this fourth dimension.

Nighttime and nihilistic, this film is a classic tale of hubris and overreach. When humans try to play god, disaster is sure to follow. Nosotros acquire during the film that parts of the robots had been designed by other robots — fifty-fifty the humans don't know their full potential! As the virus takes concord and the robots first to kill all of the guests, humans are sick-equipped to battle confronting a ruthless, cold, automaton bent on revenge programmed but subconscious deep in their memory banks.

Yul Brenner's Gunslinger is second cousin to HAL, not nearly every bit sentient merely just equally deadly and just equally protective. Crichton as director didn't imbue his robots with the same sense of destiny or infallibility as HAL, but he didn't need to. Michael Crichton every bit writer would return to this creation story over and over. He striking pay dirt with Jurassic Park and man-fabricated dinosaurs.

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