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Reged: Feb 16 2004
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This thread is for comments about The Ten Best Science Fiction Film Directors, by Jeremy Adam Smith.
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Anonymous
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Kubrick, check. Cronenberg, check. Spielberg, check. Tarkovsky, checkcheck. Gilliam. Interesting. I like it. check.
Godard and Marker, ok. I don't know that I would call them "directors of science fiction films," but I would call them "science fiction film-directors," if the distinction is clear. check.
Lang, check. Whale, nice addition. check. Ridley Scott, check. Blade Runner alone does it.
But Cameron? He doesn't really make SF movies. He makes action moves that borrow SF tropes -- often poorly. I love the action in Aliens, but isn't gerat SF, unlike its predecessor. I can see it, if there weren't so many other, more SF oriented directors, to choose from.
I guess Cameron isn't a *bad* choice for the list (although I wouldn't put him above Ridley Scott). Maybe I'm just surprised becasue most of the list clearly care about the SF tropes in their movies. (This is where Godard and Marker may not fit, also.)
I'd suggest adding some "honorable mentions":
Luc Besson. "The Fifth Element" is the obvious SF romp, but also check out "Le Dernier Combat," a no-dialog post-apocalypse drama that mixes Zelazney's "Damnation Alley," The Road Warrior, and classic last-man-on-Earth stories.
Wim Wenders. "Until the End of the World" rambles lovingly through nuclear sattelites, computer databases and the social value and personal costs of dream-recording technology. "The End of Violence" is far weaker, but addresses the same space of computer-assisted social surveillance as any recent Dick adaptation. "Wings of Desire" is a wonderful modern fantasy.
And Tim Burton would be a great "Honorable Mention," if fantasy is included in the list. I assume it is, since Time Bandits and Brazil are counted for Gilliam.
Other potentials: , Roger Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still, Andromeda Strain, Star Treck 1).
Nice article.
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Cliff Winnig
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I'm with Anonymous on Wim Wenders. I would replace Tarkovsky with Wenders.
When I first saw Solaris, I hated the movie. Then I read the novel. Now I don't just hate the movie, I hate Tarkovsky. I'll discuss Solaris only in this post, but please feel free to draw on his other films for counter-arguments.
Solaris (the novel), even in the poor Polish-to-French-to-English translation, stands as a seminal work of science fiction, blending ideas, character, mystery, and originality. Tarkovsky had his own smaller and more human-centric agenda, one that is completely at odds with that of Stanislaw Lem (who, incidentally, hated the film). Tarkovsky's distortion of the novel's brilliance is a crime against art and literature. At least the remake tried to be faithful to the themes present in the book, even though it ultimately also was more limited in scope than the novel.
Furthermore, Tarkovsky's film is a bore for vast stretches of time. I discussed this with a Russian friend who said that Tarkovsky deliberately created empty spaces between key scenes, inviting the audience to use that downtime to co-create by pondering the significance of the scene just shown. I used the downtime to grow ever more frustrated with the director. I can sit through a glacially-moving Wagner opera with no problem, but Solaris (I've given it two tries now) just causes me to nod off. The Great Significance that Tarkovsky wants us to see in his scenes is a vision much smaller than Lem's.
You could argue that he's a good filmmaker because he presses his own agenda over that of the novelist's agenda. That's all well and good, except that his vision isn't on the same level as Lem's. He also seems to have missed the point of the novel. He drops entirely the theme of human beings encountering an unfathomable mystery (if you'll excuse the phrase when referring to an ocean): an intelligence so vast and alien that we simply lose the ability to cope, much less solve the mystery. In Tarkovsky's hands, it becomes merely another metaphor for the relationship between humans and their own technology, humans and their ability to go into deep denial, humans and how they act in isolation.
Blah blah blah. If I want to see a movie that's soley about humans (and sometimes I do), I don't turn to science fiction. I turn to mainstream drama.
One can view the SF genre as the West's coping mechanism with the social repercussions of our own industrial revolution. The SF field continues to explore this interplay between humans and our technology, but it's also grown into a capable art form that could take on additional depth, such as -- in the case of Solaris the novel -- the encounter between humans and an Other so alien that even trained anthropologists wouldn't know where to begin. Now that's interesting.
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Dennis Fischer
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You might want to take another look at Colossus: The Forbin Project, as it is quite mature and downbeat for a science fiction film of its era.
Philip Kaufman did more than one science fiction film, though not many have seen his obscure early feature FEARLESS FRANK.
Slim Pickens' Major Kong was not played "straight," but rather was quite entertainingly over-the-top. He queried Kubrick if he wanted it so "Texan," and Kubrick indicated that was exactly what he was going for.
I think you overlook John Frankenheimer, whose science fiction films SECONDS and THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE are two of the best ever made. (Unfortunately, neither PROPHECY nor ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU come close, but that shouldn't be held against him).
Robert Wise should definitely be strongly considered for DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, ANDROMEDA STRAIN, and STAR TREK--THE MOTION PICTURE, as should Nicholas Meyer for TIME AFTER TIME, STAR TREK: THE WRATH OF KHAN, and STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY. Then there's Val Guest with QUATERMAS EXPERIMENT, QUATERMASS 2, TOOMORROW, THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE, THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN, and GIVE US THE MOON. Probably the most overlooked of all is Byron Haskin who did WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE POWER, CONQUEST OF SPACE, FROM EARTH TO MOON (OK, not all winners), and ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS.
On the other hand, I think Godard is horribly overrated and Tarkovsky is thoughtful but dull.
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Jeremy Smith
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These are all great and intelligent responses to my article, so thanks to each of you. I can't respond to every single point, of course, but there are a couple that caught my eye:
1) Anonymous says that James Cameron "doesn't really make SF movies." I have to disagree: Aliens, both Terminator films, and The Abyss all embrace the SF themes I describe in my introduction, and do it in a way that's skillful and insightful. True, Cameron crosses into other genres in order to generate his effects, but to me that just makes him more interesting. Having said that, I had a long debate with myself about whether or not to include Cameron in this list (and at one point I did have him below Scott in the ranking). In the end, however, I decided that I genuinely enjoyed each of his SF films, and thought that they were well made and culturally important.
2) Also to Anonymous: In the original draft I gave to the SH editor, I did include a long list of "honorable mentions," which the editor suggested I delete. I did include Wim Wenders (whose SF/F is interesting but really uneven) and Robert Wise in that list, but I detest Luc Besson as well as most of Tim Burton's recent work. For his remake of Planet of the Apes alone, Burton deserves to be struck from all top ten lists, forever. He should probably also be tarred and feathered and run out of Hollywood in the back of a turnip truck.
3) Dennis Fischer also made an argument for Robert Wise. The Day the Earth Stood Still would definitely make my list of best SF films, and I liked Andromeda Strain, but the Star Trek motion picture was a weak effort. One great SF film isn't enough for inclusion in a list of best directors, I think, although I made a partial exception for Gilliam. Still, Wise deserves respect. In my heart, BTW, I really wanted to include Byron Haskin in this list, but kept him out for similar reasons. I've never seen Robinson Crusoe on Mars; someday.
4) Everyone seems to hate Tarkovsky, but I'm sticking with him. I agree with Cliff Winnig that his Solaris is very, very different from the book, but that's fine with me. I've tried to imagine a more faithful film version of Solaris, and I'm not sure that such a thing is desirable. The medium is the message; there are things you can convey in words that you can't in images. Look at the other film adaptations mentioned in my list: Blade Runner, all of Kubrick's SF films (especially 2001), A.I. and Minority Report, even Whale's Frankenstein, etc. -- they all differ radically from their written sources. Such departures are necessary.
5) Again to Dennis Fischer: Thanks, I will take another look at Colossus: The Forbin Project, if I can locate it. I was acting on an old memory of the film; perhaps I was unfair.
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Jed Hartman
Fiction Editor
Reged: Oct 15 2003
Posts: 151
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Yeah, I'm with Jeremy about Cameron. Some of his movies are among the most coherently science fictional movies I've seen. The first Terminator, for example, is partly an action movie and partly a horror movie, but it also has a tightly integrated sfnal premise that it adheres to fairly rigorously.
My favorite of Cameron's movies, though, is one that he wrote but didn't direct (so he doesn't and shouldn't get credit for it in Jeremy's list of directors, but I thought it was worth bringing up as a side point): Strange Days. It's also part action movie and part thriller, but that doesn't detract, for me, from its sf-nature. I can't universally recommend this movie; in particular, it features an extremely disturbing rape scene that a lot of viewers have been very upset by. But for people who can stomach that kind of thing, I thought it was a really excellent sf movie. (Though I should note that, as you can see from the IMDB comments, many people strongly disagree with me.) And Angela Bassett makes a great action heroine.
Anyway, regardless of the merits of any particular Cameron movie, one thing I like about him is that it seems clear that he actually likes science fiction, and knows something about it. I think a lot of "science fiction" movies are just horror movies and/or action movies with some quasi-sfnal tropes thrown in, made by people who have only the vaguest idea of what science fiction is. I get more or less the opposite feeling from Cameron's work.
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Anonymous
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Just a quick note to include Mario Bava in the discussion. Anyone who has seen his luridly beautiful film 'Planet of the Vampires' will be struck by how Ridley Scott 'paid homage' to it, often shot for shot, in his film 'Alien'. Yes, Bava's films are camp, but he was one of the greatest cinema stylists ever, IMHO.
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Anonymous
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what does this memphis geek know about anything?
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