Evolution of Science Fiction Films

Since I was a kid (probably too young to have seen it) Alien was one of my favorite movie. This movie spawned my love for the science fiction genera. Since my viewing of that classic terrifying Sifi film I was introduced to Terminator, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and the Matrix, to name a few, and I loved them all. Although in the past few years I’ve noticed a change in the stories and morals in Sifi films, so I did some research.  What I found was that the historical situations of the time affected the type of story told.

The first real trend I noticed in science fiction films started in the 50’s and 60’s. For the most part the Sifi movie coming out in this time period involved outer space or aliens, The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951, Invasion of the Body Snatcher in 1956, and 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 and even in television shows like Star Trek. These movies dealt with outer space because they all came out during or around the Space Race. The space race was between Russia and America to be the first nation to send man into the cosmoses.

The next trend I noticed started in the 80’s and continued through out the 90’s. During this time, technologies in computers and genetic alteration were advancing greatly and faster then ever before, and the Sifi genera took advantage of this. The movies shifted from space to the idea of “beware the machines” with movies like Blade Runner in 1982, The Terminator in 1984, Robocop in 1987, and the Matrix in 1999. The idea that playing god will backfire also emerged during this time with movies like Jurassic Park in 1993.

Toady however, the ideas of science being dangerous are on the decline, making it harder for the movie industry to make Sifi films like they used too. This can bee seen in the recent and generally underwhelming remakes of classic Science fiction movies.  Where will the genre go from here is hard to tell, we just have to wait and see. 

A new way of looking at films

I recently discovered a new tumblr, which is often dangerous to my productivity, but I've found this one particularly interesting as it offers an interesting new way of looking at films.  It is called moviebarcode, and it posts single images, or barcodes, representing the entire course of a movie.  These images are made up of a number of still frames, evenly distributed throughout the movie, which are then stretched upward so that only the main color information remains.  It offers a very nice, birds-eye view of the art direction and overall color tones and moods of a film.  There is also an index so that you can easily look up movies you are interested in.

O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)

For example, this is the barcode from the 2000 film "O Brother, Where Art Thou".  This was the first film to be digitally color graded in order to make an artistic choice.  In this case, much of the footage was tweaked to make the landscapes look drier and more golden, to fit the setting of the Dust Bowl in the midwest.  This is easily apparent in the barcode, which is overwhelmingly gold and beige.  You can also see, right at the very beginning, how the film starts out in black and white, before the saturation is added back in to produce the color.

The Matrix (1999)

Here's another example: The Matrix.  Almost every scene in The Matrix has a distinctive green tint to it, which is easily apparent in this image.

Harry Potter: Complete Series (2001-2011)

This is one of my favorite examples, because it shows some of the applications that these images could have.  This is all eight Harry Potter movies, sequentially, which means we can see some interesting trends.  First of all, we can see that the mood of the series gets progressively darker, until the last installment is almost entirely black.  This visual trend clearly follows the tone of the films and the stories themselves.  It also shows the differences in the styles of the directors; for instance, Chris Columbus filmed the first ones primarily inside, which is shown by all the warm tones at the beginning of the image.  When directing the third installment, Alfonso Cuarón made the conscious decision to shift to a more outdoors, location based film, which is shown in the abrupt transition to blues and greens.

By looking at multiple films at once like this, we can observe patterns, similarities, and differences that are both interesting and useful.  Using these images could be an easy way to examine multiple films by broad categories such as genre or time period, which might expose some of the stereotypes or tropes that are used in different types of filmmaking.