Watch the Skies!: Science Fiction, the 1950s and Us

Directors Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott and James Cameron discuss the science fiction movies of the 1950s that influenced them.

This is an interesting short documentary, now featured on the Blu-ray for "Forbidden Planet" (with Spielberg joking that Robby the Robot influenced C3PO). We get a broad range of science fiction films from the 1950s, with some much better known than others, and four of the most successful science fiction directors discussing them.

I was frankly impressed how well the directors knew these films, with their casts and plot and special effects. Usually only Martin Scorsese seems to have this kind of recall. Either the interviewees were prepped, or they truly love these films and were deeply influenced by them. I prefer to accept the latter.

I was quite amazed when I watched this film, as the producers were able to assemble several amazingly important "heavyweights" from the film industry to talk about 50s sci-fi as clips are shown. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Ridley Scott all were interviewed and Mark Hamill narrated. Listening to their insights and recollections concerning these films was indeed interesting to a sci-fi fan like myself and I sure liked the clips. However, I felt that the show lacked pizazz and tended to be a bit too cerebral at times. I would have preferred a more comprehensive show--one that showed a broader spectrum of movies--including the bad ones, not just a few famous or seminal ones. Because of this, the special just wasn't as entertaining as it might have been. Interesting, yes--fun, not especially.

In own their words, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas how those early 1950' Sci-fi impacted their lives forever, they explain citing each specific movie from that time, re-telling specials scenes and how were affected by them, interesting study of cinema if you likes Sci-fi like me, indeed my favorite kind of movie!!!

Resume:

First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7

I am a great fan of science fiction and I am still wondering how it comes that I did not enjoy so much this film. Having four of my preferred directors - Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott and James Cameron - arguably the best or among the best quartet of directors of the genre getting together to talk about the science fiction films of the 50s and 60s and how these influenced their careers and their work - this is golden material and an opportunity that can be turned into an unique experience for fans like me. And yet, despite bringing these four giants together, and despite picking all or almost all the right movies of the genre and of the time to talk about them the film results in quite a boring sub-hour, with the classical talking faces interleaved with clips from the film, and especially with quite a confusing and uninspiring line of text. After too little historical context setting at the beginning the documentary slides into an enumeration of the various themes which fails to be interesting or to build up any original ideas. It looks almost like the four directors where respectfully left to tell their stories and then the film was assembled in the cutting room. I expected more interaction between the four, they seldom seemed to be in a dialog, and their ideas had too little continuity. I have to many questions to ask Spielberg if I ever meet him, almost none was asked and answered in this interview. Yet the most valuable parts are his, especially when he retells the stories of his experiences watching as a kid some of the cult movies of his time - he seems to be by far the more candid and more open of the four.

The key of science fiction is imagination. This is a very non-imaginative documentary about the most imaginative genre in cinema.

There are few things in life that allow you to crease the world without consequence. In the world of movies, those consequences can be profound.

Take Spielberg, a moderately talented filmmaker who eschews originality and insight, instead trusts an extraordinary intuition about what people like. Or think they like. Or can be fooled into liking with a several hundred million dollar promotion budget.

This is part of that promotion, a fake documentary about science fiction movies with a commercial for Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," tacked on a the end. The "history" here is his own version of what happened in the genre, which naturally enough starts when he started watching movies.

So we get a story about science fiction movies from an accomplished storyteller with a selfish purpose. And it is nearly all wrong. I hope this is enough to warn you away from this travesty. It is bad enough that he peppers us with vulgar movies (yes, even the nobly themed "Schindler"); but it is beyond the pale for him to reinvent the history of cinema to suit himself.

Science fiction goes all the way back to the invention of movies (and of course before that in literature). The core notion has always been with us: we enter the world of film to see another world. So far as films about the future and/or space, that element of the genre was fully mature by the end of the 30s and reached its peak in "Forbidden Planet" of 1956.

After that, the genre was reimagined to host technological thrills either in the story or in the effects brazenly displayed. Scott (shown here with the briefest of comments) added horror with "Alien" and improved on the self-reference of "Planet" with "Bladerunner."

All this without the meddling of Mr Dreamworks. Bah.

Incidentally,Spielberg's one really good film ("Close Encounters") is a French New Wave project about movie-making only wrapped in sci-fi like the French (and now the Hong Kongers) like to wrap in the gangster genre. Never was, even by him at the time, considered sci-fi.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.