Outer Limits: The Filmgoers’ Guide to the Great Science-Fiction Films

321 Pages·2014·317.312 MB·English

by  Howard Hughes

OUTER LIMITS

H O W A R D H U G H E S
OUTER LIMITS
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the filmgoers guide to
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the great science fiction films
Published in 2014 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd
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Distributed in the United States and Canada
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Copyright © 2014 Howard Hughes
The right of Howard Hughes to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part
thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.
ISBN: 978 1 78076 166 4 (PB)
978 1 78076 165 7 (HB)
978 0 85773 475 4 (eBook)
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by T.J. International, Padstow, Cornwall
For Clara

COnTEnTS
Now aNd TheN: aN iNTroducTioN To ScieNce-FicTioN ciNema ix
ackNowledgemeNTS xxiv
1 ‘deaTh To The machiNeS’ 1
Metropolis (1927)
2 ‘regarded ThiS earTh wiTh eNviouS eyeS’ 9
The War of the Worlds (1953)
3 ‘godzilla iS JuST a legeNd’ 19
Gojira (1954)
4 ‘i Never Saw aNyThiNg like iT!’ 34
Tarantula (1955)
5 ‘you’re NexT!’ 45
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
6 ‘we are, aFTer all, NoT god’ 55
Forbidden Planet (1956)
7 ‘he haS all The Time iN The world’ 67
The Time Machine (1960)
8 ‘damN you all To hell’ 73
Planet of the Apes (1968)
9 ‘my god, iT’S Full oF STarS’ 83
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
10 ‘i love all The love iN you’ 96
Barbarella (1968)
11 ‘The mySTerieS remaiN’ 108
The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
12 ‘The Force will Be wiTh you, alwayS’ 119
Star Wars (1977)
13 ‘wheN you wiSh upoN a STar’ 132
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
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viii ouTer limiTS
14 ‘iN Space No oNe caN hear you Scream’ 144
Alien (1979)
15 ‘NoBody geTS ouT oF here alive’ 157
Mad Max 2 (1981)
16 ‘like TearS iN raiN’ 167
Blade Runner (1982)
17 ‘iT’S weird aNd piSSed oFF’ 177
The Thing (1982)
18 ‘you have No coNcepT oF Time’ 188
Back to the Future (1985)
19 ‘Hasta La Vista, BaBy’ 197
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
20 ‘houSToN, we have a proBlem’ 211
Apollo 13 (1995)
21 ‘Now ThaT’S whaT i call a cloSe eNcouNTer’ 221
Independence Day (1996)
22 ‘welcome To The real world’ 232
The Matrix (1999)
23 ‘By graBThar’S hammer!’ 245
Galaxy Quest (1999)
24 ‘we See whaT They See’ 259
Minority Report (2002)
25 ‘live loNg aNd proSper’ 271
Star Trek (2009)
26 ‘i See you’ 279
Avatar (2009)
BiBliography aNd SourceS 289
iNdex oF Film TiTleS 291
nOw and ThEn:
an InTROd UCTIOn TO
SCIEnCE -FICTIOn CInEMa
t all started in a galaxy far, far away. Well, the Odeon cinema in Chester actually,
I
where I first saw Star Wars in the late 1970s. I can’t remember how I found out
about the film, whether it was from school friends or reading about it in the latest
issue of Look-in, but I certainly remember the afternoon my mum took my sister and
me to see it. Before the movie started, the enterprising cinema staff set the scene by
projecting a starfield onto the darkened auditorium’s ceiling. The cinema was trans-
formed into a planetarium, the dim twinkling reaches of outer space, and the imperial
starship that roared overhead in the film’s opening sequence seemed to emerge from
the inky blackness of another galaxy.
The 1970s were the golden age for cinema science fiction, the moment when the genre
found its place in popular culture as fashionable and massive-grossing international
entertainment. Although sci-fi had been popular from the flickering dawn of cinema, it
rose to prominence in the postwar nuclear age and enjoyed great attention in the 1950s,
as the global space race caught the public’s imagination. The quantum leaps forward in
special-effects technology, partially facilitated by Stanley Kubrick’s Oscar-winning 2001:
A Space Odyssey in 1968, made the impossible possible, and by 1977 space travel and the
galaxy’s outer reaches could be depicted with something approaching realism, whether
in the fantastical worlds of George Lucas’s Star Wars or the alien visitations to our Earth
in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Science-fiction cinema has many varied forms. It has depicted life on Earth in the future,
in the past, or now. It has portrayed life and warfare in space and on distant planets, and
alien creatures beyond our imaginations (and sometimes beyond filmmakers’ budgets).
The creation of alien beasts and our concepts of them are one of the most interesting
aspects of sci-fi. If we met them, what would our interplanetary neighbours look like?
There have been many cinema manifestations of alien forms, from realistic depictions of
humanoids and ‘little green men’ to scuttling tentacled fiends and bulbous-eyed oddballs
with hydrocephalic heads. Some kill with disintegrating death rays, others tear their victims
apart with claws, chomp them with hideous jaws or bodily envelop them, leaving behind
only a pile of bones or a smoking patch of dust. Of course, anything ‘invisible’ – invisible
ray, invisible ship, invisible alien – is cheaper to recreate for those more budget-conscious.
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