Gimmicks in Sci-Fi Films - Essay Example

Gimmicks in Sci-Fi films: Message versus the Medium or The War of the Weirds and/or ID # Teacher All films have a message, science fiction movies are films, and therefore all science fiction films have a message. The question here is first, what type of message was the film made to express, fun or thought provoking, and second, whether or not the medium is the message or visa-versa. Cinema Fantastique, more modernly and cryptically known as sci-fi, is a genre film that has often been able to peel away the pretense of civilization and dig down into the real motivations, fears and ecstasies of human nature. It does this by the creation of a fantastic world that is not real, asks you to suspend your disbelief and pretend that it is, and then return to reality, hopefully, with some new insight for this world. At least that is the basic idea. However, sometimes the medium (or all the gimmicks) becomes the message and it is just for fun. There is nothing wrong with that either, as long as you know which side of the toast the butter is on. In other words if you started out making a message film but it got lost in the medium, than the message never gets out and the film usually winds up being a milquetoast event. All the films in this list have a message and were, supposedly, made to get that message out, let us see how it worked by analyzing a few. One can only imagine the audience seeing Fritz Lang’s Film, “Metropolis” for the very first time in 1927. The effects had to be as spellbinding as the audiences in 1977 seeing the premier of “Star Wars.” These two films as well as most others of the genre that have held the test of time as message driven movies have one thing in common. Their message is mythological. As Malcolmson notes in his article, The Matrix, Liberal Education and Other Splinters in the Mind, that, “Audience fascination with the character types is related to the power of myths.” (2004: 148) Whatever the innate and archetypal need for mythology, beliefs, religion is in the human psyche, it’s presence in sci-fi movies is profound and moving. When this connection is lacking, the movies is usually relegated to the b-movie section of the class. B-movies are fun too but that is another topic of discussion. However, while the effects of mythology in filmmaking are often profound their interwoven texture in the movie should not be too obvious, or it can become a little heavy-handed and the message can get blurred. Malcolmson also notes that “The Matrix” is “densely allusive” (2005: 141) and we find that was the intention of the Wachowski brothers as he quotes Larry Wachowski: "Were interested in mythology, theology and, to a certain extent, higher-level mathematics.... All are ways human beings try to answer bigger questions, as well as The Big Question. If youre going to do epic stories, you should concern yourself with those issues. People might not understand all the allusions in the movie, but they understand the important ideas." (Malcolmson 2004:148) The good guys all seem to have obvious Mythological names like Neo, Morpheus, the Oracle, etc. while the bad guys have more common monikers like Cypher, and the most notably bland “Mr. Smith,” who as a villain is often a more interesting character. The success of the film (and subsequent sequels), however, would seem to prove that there is some message getting out and that message most certainly has a large audience. While one of the core questions in the Matrix is about existence and what it means, that message tends to get overwhelmed by not only the allegorical references, but also the intense and assuredly amazing special effects it is now famous for. So it would appear that some movies can have both a message of fun and also be thought provoking. Then of course there is the law of unintended consequences to deal with. Ridley Scott is no stranger to this. In his movie “Alien” he created the transformational character of Ripley. While the Alien in the movie was an awe-inspiring creature from the mind of H.R Gieger, the persona of Ripley contrasted against the monster was what propelled the movie into in sci-fi history, and was a key element of the four sequels. Even killing Ripley in the third she had to be brought back from the dead for the fourth.. In stepping into the place of the hero, Ripley becomes a character, in Rebecca Bell-Metereaus words, so foreign as to be unrecognizable to most popular critics. Ripleys female body challenges and disrupts the tradition of heroes as necessarily male, and undermines any certainty about what she can or will do. (Hills 1999:41) At first this gave the movie somewhat mixed review by critics, but that soon changed and it certainly found its audience. However, Ridley Scott attempted later to use parts of his concepts from “Alien” to produce a similar success in his later film “Blade Runner.” Both films targeted an older market niche, but both had similarly mixed success in the beginning with the critics who, “…eventually recognized as exemplifying debates about post-modernity, (postmodernity) embodiment and identity which have since dominated many areas of cultural study.” (Bould 2003:92) His plan for “Blade Runner” was for it to be a movie that would appeal to a mass audience by creating again an uncomplicated narrative and to explore the psychologically and philosophical ideas of the author Phillip K. Dick of what it means to human or not to be. (LoBrutto 2005:41) However, this mass appeal did not come all at once and the movie floundered with the critics when originally released. Although it certainly has gained a following now in the world of DVD’s, especially with the directors cut that is missing the distracting narration of Deckards voice-over. The director’s cut markedly improves on the tone and feeling of the original. It also has a bit more gore for those who are looking for it. In a sense the highly stylized nature of “Blade Runner” may have diluted the message that the movie was attempting to convey. By being set in the not too distant future and having all the attributes of a film noir, Ridley Scott may have mixed the mediums enough to confuse the viewer. On the other hand, the director of “Metropolis”, Fritz Lang, used that highly stylized technique to create a cohesive atmosphere of his depiction of the future. The film portrays a stunning, even by today’s high-tech standards, depiction of tomorrow. Furthermore, through the expressionistic nature of the direction that Fritz Lang was famous for, it allows “objects and scenes [to] penetrate below the surface to the essence of symbolism (and featuring the first robot woman created by a mad scientist).” (Hinrichs 1996: 9). Through the art of its direction the message of Metropolis is allowed to come through clearly, “Metropolis is a warning about the future-a warning that the brains that create machines must have a heart for a society to survive. Lang foresaw a Germany driven by mechanization " (LoBrutto 2005:196). LoBrutto also points out that Lang’s masterful facility with cinematic technique is one of the reasons that the message is so clear and that the film has endured the test of time. He points out several instances of cinematic communication in the movie: To show the initial attraction between Maria and Freder, he intercuts full screen point-of-view shots of their faces. Handheld shots are used to show the chaos of working with the monster machine, and another point-of-view shot of Freder is dramatically rendered by including his outreached arm in the shot so that the viewer experiences life as this character for the length of the image. Lang moves from big shots of the city to the smallest human detail with ease, all at his disposal in the mise-en-sc6ne, which creates the science fiction. (LoBrutto 2005:201) The film also endures partly because the stylization and expressionism helps it to escape and iron clad definition of the future. Many older sci-fi productions have dated themselves by too much of a misrepresentation of our present, its future. Where the series “Space 1999” missed the mark, George Orwell’s 1984 hit it almost spot on. As Parker states “…nothing dates quite like the future: Whole decades have been ironized, comically, by their apprehensions of human destiny” (2004: 31). While the future of “Blade Runner” has not yet quite arrived, or has it, the depressing look of the future and the seemingly lower quality of life lived by the urban dwellers that inhabit it often takes away from the other aspects of the message of the movie. The atmosphere certainly at times overshadows the intentions of the author, Phillip K. Dick, but not altogether. While it may suffer from, “…a patchwork of influences: heavy-handed allusions to Blakes prophetic poems, film adaptations of The Maltese Falcon (1941) and The Big Sleep (1946), sets and neon lights borrowed from other films, and multi-cultural extras filling the streets,” (Butler 2003:142) the overall effect is finally memorable and striking. Action. This can often have the effect of enhancing and creating many levels of conflict in a film that ultimately lead you to the either Promised Land or destruction both with equal anticipation. Or, on the other hand, the explosions and space chases and bizarre aliens and other gimmicks just are there for action’s sake and the medium becomes the message again. However, the world of action in Sci-Fi movies was forever changed by the advent of George Lucas’ “Star Wars.” Lucas was able to successfully blend special effects, music, character and plot as pivotal to the action of the film. As the opening titles of Star Wars disappear into the background at the top of the screen, the musical score does not simply fade out to allow the effects in; it is, rather literally, blasted away by an explosion…the rebel ship squeaks, alarm sirens fill the air, and violins are drowned in a flood of laser bolts. From here on, the music is as though dwarfed by the power and exceptional quality of the effects, to become not a major star, but merely one of the elements of a soundtrack…one hears starships flying overhead; ships move from right to left; and blasts are heard around the auditorium. (Sergi 1998:16-17) It is this blend that makes action the unifying characteristic and quality of the film and not just a tool to hold the audience’s interest. You are not sitting there just counting the number of explosions or crashes, but action done within the framework of the overall message of the film invokes and helps you to arrive at the meaning of the story. Then there are films that depend on a type of star quality. A unique feature of “Star War’s” success is that at the time none of the main characters were at all famous. Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and even Harrison Ford were not box office draws at the time or even recognizable names by many. The Star quality that is in “Star Wars” was to be found in the film itself and in the exceptional cast of characters and depiction of a mythological hero’s journey through space. However, in some films like “Minority Report,” the star quality was all in one actor, Tom Cruise, and unfortunately nowhere to be found in the film. The action here is usually centered around Tom Cruise running (which he is exceptional at in all his movies) and chasing his eyeballs down staircases, while the message and the plot becomes a miasmic ooze of misunderstanding. However, this has often appeared as one of the difficulties of translating a Phillip K. Dick story to screen. His work was more psychological in nature, and much of Dicks appeal is undoubtedly rooted in his real-life psychoses. He developed a deep sense of paranoia--as well as a serious drug habit, which clearly didnt help matters--during the early 1960s, and it continued off and on until he died. In 1972, Dick started sending letters to the FBI, alleging that a sinister political organization was trying to recruit sci-fi writers to plant coded information in their novels. Several of his peers, he claimed, had already succumbed. (Barsanti 2002:1) You can see the problem. Not only are his stories deep with meaning both hidden and revealed, but they are also a product of an unbalanced mind. This often makes a good read but can translate poorly to the lager market of mass media like the cinema. In minority Report, the special effects like the sliding-holographic-computer-imaging-glove-manipulated-human-interface-device (wheh!) was more distracting than enhancing most of the times. It was a very neat effect but it became over used and even annoying at times. Especially when all these fantabulations produced was a little red ball with a probable crime carved into it rolling down a gum machine like slot. While “Minority Report” got some things right, generally it was concentrating on Tom Cruise’s star quality and the neat special effects and forgot about pulling it all together with an interesting plot or message. “Minority Report fairly tears along, absorbing at every level until its last half-hour, at which point various compacted strata of plot begin to crush the life out of it. Whatever happened to simplicity? To a good idea, directly done?” (Parker 2002: 38) This is certainly a case where the gimmicks used drowned out the message of the film. Tellote in his book, Science Fiction Film interestingly compares the two movies, “Contact” and “War of the Worlds:” … it pairs its story of an astronomers search for signs of some intelligent life in the universe with the larger question of humanitys spiritual yearnings, using both types of search to point up our desire to find meaning in our existence. Despite their external differences, then, texts like War of the Worlds and Contact effectively draw on that marvelous impulse, as they set about expanding the scope of our knowledge, especially the knowledge of our own nature. (Telotte 2001:143) While a very truthful and concrete analysis of the message imbedded in both films, as far as getting the message across more effectively and entertainingly, “War of the Worlds” has to win the contest. While it was certainly techie for its time, “War of the Worlds” did not rely solely on its gimmicks to keep the audience interested. The film “Contact,” on the other had, besides being able to loose about an hour on the editing room floor, became immersed in its technology and gimmick which created expectations in the audience that were so high, when Jodi Foster finally lands, that to see her father appear was certainly an under-whelming experience. While the message is interesting and the movie itself certainly thought provoking (more credit to Carl Sagan than Zemeckis) it is muddled by the audience’s experience and over stimulation by its effects to really hit the mark. Science Fiction cinema began with the idea of using special effects for fun and to trick and confuse the audience. In the early history of the genre the medium was certainly the message: The first twenty years of cinema were dominated by similar one-reel trick movies which exploited the basic special effects made possible by undercranking or overcranking the camera, split screens, dissolves, stop-motion and reversed footage. (Bould 2003:79) However, as the actual craft of filmmaking itself evolved from simple tricks to silent films and talkies, the possibility of presenting a message and entertainment in another form became more concrete. The Sci-Fi fan was born, “…they want the cinema to explore the world of imagination and the ‘unreal.’ To them, a realistic film is humdrum and unsatisfying; they want cinema to show what cannot be seen in real life.” (Hinrichs 1996: 7) Again this willing suspension of disbelief is the actual connection between the message and the medium of science fiction films. If you breach the trust and hard work of the audience in trying to suspend their disbelief, the message, as well as the entertainment of the film dissolves. References Barsanti, Chris. 2002. "Sinister Plots: For Philip K. Dick, Author of "The Minority Report," the Line between Fact and Fiction Was Nightmarishly Narrow." Book, July/August, p. 1. Bould, Mark. 2003. "5 Film and Television." pp. 79-95 in The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by James, Edward and Farah Mendlesohn. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Butler, Andrew M. 2003. "9 Postmodernism and Science Fiction." pp. 137-147 in The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by James, Edward and Farah Mendlesohn. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Hills, Elizabeth. 1999. "From Figurative Males to Action Heroines: Further Thoughts on Active Women in the Cinema." Screen 40:38-50. Hinrichs, Bruce. 1996. "A Trip to the Movies: 100 Years of Film as Art." The Humanist, January/February, pp. 7-12. James, Edward and Farah Mendlesohn, eds. 2003. The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. LoBrutto, Vincent. 2005. Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger. Malcolmson, Patrick. 2004. "The Matrix, Liberal Education and Other Splinters in the Mind." Humanitas 17:139-147. Parker, James. 2002. "Future Imperfect: Minority Report-The Story and the Film-Misses the Mark." The American Prospect, August 12, pp. 31-47. Sergi, Gianluga. 1998. "Tales of the Silent Blast: Star Wars and Sound." Journal of Popular Film and Television 26:13-23. Telotte, J. P. 2001. Science Fiction Film. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Read More