Development And Progression Of Science Fiction In Cinema

“Space: the final frontier,” says Spock, as the starship Enterprise embarks upon a five-year mission, “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” In many ways, this quote from Star Trek: The Original Series (1966-69) reflects the ultimate goal of all Space research: discover something beyond our world. This alluring nature of space is what grabbed my attention as a child; those feelings of awe whenever I think about how small we actually are, those feelings of intrigue, yet underlying dread, of the unknown, have always been within my mind.

For this reason, Sci-Fi has been by far my favorite genre of fiction, ever since my childhood. I used to think of space on a very simple, materialistic level. However, as I’ve grown as a person, so has my understanding of the concepts of astronomy. Therefore, the progression of science fiction entertainment has paralleled the growth in my view of space, as both started off simple and naive, but eventually evolved into complex, rich catalogues that grasp exactly why space exploration is so important to humanity in the first place.

The classic film The War of the Worlds (1953), loosely adapted to the novel of the same name by H.G. Wells, is an early attempt at capturing people’s feelings toward space at the time. In the story, Earth is suddenly invaded by Martians, and many American scientists including Clayton Forrester, have to figure out how to stop them from taking over the world (Lyndon 1953). While the Library of Congress selected this film for preservation in the United States’ National Film Registry, it’s easy to tell that it has a very surface level understanding of space and extraterrestrial life. Back then, much of what the world thought of space was influenced by major global events during that period in history.

Countries had to claw their way back up to prosperity after World War II, and the United States and Russia were dealing with the beginning of the Cold War; the fear of the unknown had never been higher in American history. Therefore, this same fear of “aliens from other countries” was projected upon space. Clearly, the movie’s portrayal of Earth’s first contact with extraterrestrial life is catastrophe, as xenophobia was at an all time high. Films like this, while influential and revolutionary, are very much a product of their time and may not hold up to today’s standards of Sci-Fi.

In the same vein, much of my adolescent view of space was based on fear. The endless dark matter beyond the Earth, the lack of oxygen outside our world, and the fear of floating into oblivion if I was ever in space were the subjects of nightmares to me back in the day. This is partly due to the fact that I have an older brother who was also enthralled by science fiction at the time. As a result, I was exposed to films like The Thing and Alien, at an age where I definitely shouldn’t have been shown material like that.

Even without this in mind, the nature of space was enough to send a chill down my spine. In the same way the Americans’ fear of outsiders due to the Cold War was projected upon space in The War of the Worlds, my immaturity and exposure to unsettling entertainment contributed to my fear of space. Both this film and my childhood illustrate a lack of knowledge and associating concepts that shouldn’t be compared without appropriate context.

It’s practically impossible to talk about Sci-Fi entertainment without mentioning Star Wars (1977). As many know, Star Wars is a space-opera film written by George Lucas, and it created a franchise that would soon become a pop culture icon, enjoyed by different people of all ages. The movie is primarily well-known for its groundbreaking visual effects, but what most seem to ignore is that Star Wars pushed the boundaries of what is expected from science fiction filmmaking, in terms of story and character. The Empire and the Imperials, for instance, are meant to symbolize the Nazis during WWII, as they use power and fear to make people obey their ideals and punish those that resist.

Additionally, in contrast to many stories that came before it, Star Wars actually embraces space exploration. The results of the Rebels’ efforts to expand their reach are predominantly positive; they discover new planets, meet new life-forms, and unlike the Empire, they embrace diversity (Lucas 1977). This even relates to the shift in American legislation and attitude in the late 1960s, as colored populations began facing much less discrimination following the Civil Rights Movement.

Just as Star Wars reinvented the wheel for science fiction in the 1970s, my view of Space began to drastically change in my teenage years. Coincidentally, this is around the same time I became invested in the Star Wars franchise as well. Regardless of the underlying fear that still existed in the back of my head, the scope and scale of space is what kept bringing me back to Sci-Fi and astronomy, and Star Wars illustrates this scale and size better than any film before its time. It was around now that I began realizing space is about much more than just aliens and stars.

Our endeavor to explore space has to do with much more than simply answering the questions, “does life exist out there?” or “how will aliens respond to us?” Star Wars shows how populations can work together peacefully to solve common problems, as space exploration isn’t as black and white and as warfare might be, for example. Furthermore, I began learning how much strain we’ve been putting on natural resources in recent times, which is why space colonization is becoming more and more plausible. While Star Wars often veers into the fantasy realm more than one may expect, it exhibits themes and ideas that prove why space exploration should be important to everyone, including me.

While Star Wars stands out as a classical icon in the entertainment industry, it’s quite easy to poke holes in its logic and future plausibility. Nearly four decades later, a film called Arrival (2016), directed by Denis Villanueve, offered an entirely different perspective on encounters with extraterrestrial life -- one more complex than any of the films previously mentioned. It involves a story in which a linguistics professor named Louise Banks is sent with others to investigate one of twelve different alien spacecrafts landed around the world. By understanding the heptapods’ language, Banks is able to perceive both her future and past, which allows her to have “memories” of events that haven’t even happened yet (Heisserer 2016).

Instead of focusing on extremely basic alien invasion tropes like The War of the Worlds, or providing fairly surface-level allusions to real life events like Star Wars, Arrival provides a very grounded future scenario that many can actually relate to. This is a much more personal story that covers themes such as choice, time, and the perception of language. It is a film that expresses not only how we can explore extraterrestrial life and space in general, but how we can learn from them.

Arrival represents a time in entertainment in which Sci-Fi has become much more mature and complex. The influence and reach of Star Wars is obviously unparalleled, but we now have films such as Inception, Interstellar, Blade Runner, etc. Just as my blooming interest in Sci-Fi peaked around this time, my view of space was more multifaceted than it ever was before. My later teenage years allowed me to realize that space doesn’t have to be portrayed in a large scale to be interesting; that space wasn’t just about exploring and knowing, it was about learning.

Arrival not only reflects this idea, but also the world’s quick trigger finger and fear of aliens, similar to The War of the Worlds. It portrays all the different views of aliens over different time periods, and brings them together in a story that still manages to be a fairly small-scale, character-driven narrative. Overall, Arrival is a perfect expression of where my view of space is right now; I’ve finally realized its importance, and my underlying fear of it is still there, but the allure of it makes it worth learning about in my opinion.

All in all, each of these films provide their own different perspectives on space exploration, whether, its invasion, war, or something much more complex than that. While they all came out at radically different times, they very accurately parallel the growth in my maturity and view of space. Regardless of which specific film it is, the progression of science fiction in the entertainment industry helps me understand why space may truly be the final frontier for humanity.