GenresScience Fiction

Science Fiction• Cinematic roots in “trick

films”• Georges Melies’ A Trip to the

Moon

• Used double exposure, miniature models, stop-action jump cuts, in-camera mattes

• Simulated fantastic worlds, unexpected optical effects, and alterations of time and space

Science Fiction• Emerged as a major genre in the

1950s--Cold War era

• Inspired by society’s anxieties over• Developments in space

exploration

• Nuclear weapons

• Communism

Society’s anxieties were reflected in film

• The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Science Fiction

• The literature of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells provided stories for Sci-Fi films

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

• The Time Machine

Science Fiction

Big Bang Boys Get a Time Machine

• Initially, Sci-Fi did not really last more than a decade

• Resurgence by Stanley Kubrick in the late 60s

• 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968)

• Planet of the Apes (1968)

Science Fiction

• Series that kept Sci-Fi genre alive for 25 years

• Star Trek

• Star Wars

• Jurassic Park

Science Fiction

• Sci-Fi lends itself to utopian visions of the future

…however...

• They seem to end up revealing the opposite...

A dark, pessimistic view seeing

a decaying environment,

antidemocratic government,

ruthless corporations controlling the world

Science Fiction

Science Fiction

EXAMPLES

• Gattaca

• Robocop

• Minority Report

• Elysium

What films can you name that fall into this genre or subgenre?

Science Fiction gives form to contemporary doubt while conjuring magic tricks

Reflection society’s anxieties about the present and the direction for the future