Science Fiction
Cinema imagining what is not there yet. Metropolis, 2001, Blade Runner, Star Wars and the effects industry it created, The Matrix, and the special-effects work from Méliès to the render farm.
Part of Films
33 moments in this segment.
- - Metropolis. Fritz Lang. The most expensive silent film ever made; the visual template for every cinematic dystopia since. Lost for decades in fragments; restored from a 2008 Argentine print find.
- - Metropolis (1927) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. 00:02:00
- - 2001: A Space Odyssey. Stanley Kubrick. The match cut from bone to spaceship. HAL's death. The Star Gate. The film that proved special effects could be art. Half of modern science fiction is footnotes to it.
- - 2001: A Space Odyssey - Trailer [1968] HD. 00:02:30
- - Star Wars. George Lucas. ILM invented modern visual effects to make it. Toy revenue Lucas had kept for himself made him a billionaire; merchandising became the studio business model overnight.
- - Star Wars A New Hope 1977 Trailer. 00:02:46
- - Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spielberg. First film to imagine extraterrestrials as benevolent. Five-note motif from John Williams. The mashed-potato mountain remains one of cinema's great images of obsession.
- - CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND - Official Trailer. 00:02:43
- - Alien. Ridley Scott. H. R. Giger's xenomorph. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the action heroine the genre had been waiting for. Married horror and sci-fi for good.
- - E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Spielberg's gentle counterpoint to Close Encounters. Highest-grossing film of all time for 11 years. The bicycle silhouette against the moon is one of the canonical shots in cinema.
- - ET The Extra Terrestrial (1982) Official 20th Anniversary Trailer Movie HD. 00:02:06
- - Blade Runner. Ridley Scott. Bombed at the box office; became the visual touchstone for every cyberpunk film since. Five director's cuts later, Rutger Hauer's "tears in rain" improv remains the high point.
- - Blade Runner (1982) Official Trailer - Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford Movie. 00:03:37
- - The Terminator. James Cameron, $6.4M budget. Schwarzenegger as an unstoppable cyborg assassin. "I'll be back." Started the franchise and made Cameron a major director.
- - THE TERMINATOR (1984) | Official Trailer | MGM. 00:02:05
- - Aliens. James Cameron's sequel, turned Scott's claustrophobic horror into a war film. Sigourney Weaver became the first action heroine nominated for an Oscar. The rare sequel as good as the original.
- - Aliens (1986) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. 00:01:56
- - Terminator 2: Judgment Day. James Cameron. Most expensive film ever made at the time. The T-1000's liquid-metal morphing rewrote what CGI could do; Industrial Light & Magic's career as the leader of visual effects starts here.
- - Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. 00:02:13
- - Jurassic Park. Spielberg. ILM's photoreal CGI dinosaurs ended the era of practical stop-motion. Highest-grossing film of all time until Titanic. Spawned an entire franchise and a thousand "we should clone X" pitches.
- - Jurassic Park Official Trailer #1 - Steven Spielberg Movie (1993) HD. 00:01:16
- - The Matrix. The Wachowskis. Bullet time. "There is no spoon." Sold a generation on simulation theory and cyberpunk aesthetics. The Wachowskis introduced action choreography (Yuen Woo-ping) to Hollywood.
- - The Matrix (1999) Official Trailer #1 - Sci-Fi Action Movie. 00:02:20
- - WALL-E. Andrew Stanton. First 40 minutes nearly dialogue-free. Pixar at its peak; environmental allegory wrapped in romance between two robots. Won Best Animated Feature.
- - WALL-E (2008) Trailer #1 | Movieclips Classic Trailers. 00:02:22
- - Avatar. James Cameron. $237M budget; grossed $2.9B. Sold 3D to the world (briefly). Defined the era's peak-CGI immersive blockbuster. Held the all-time gross record for a decade.
- - Avatar | Official Trailer (HD) | 20th Century FOX. 00:03:31
- - Inception. Christopher Nolan. Dreams-within-dreams heist film. Folding Paris, hallway zero-g fight, the spinning top. Made conceptual blockbusters viable.
- - Inception (2010) Official Trailer #1 - Christopher Nolan Movie HD. 00:02:23
- - Mad Max: Fury Road. George Miller, 70. Two hours of one chase. Charlize Theron's Furiosa is the actual hero. The best action film of the 2010s; mostly practical effects; a master class in how to direct kinetic cinema.
- - Mad Max: Fury Road - Official Main Trailer [HD]. 00:02:32
- - Arrival. Denis Villeneuve, from Ted Chiang. Amy Adams as a linguist contacting heptapod aliens. The thinking-person's sci-fi film of the decade.
- - Arrival Trailer (2016) - Paramount Pictures. 00:02:25
