Science fiction has an unusual dichotomy. Hard science fiction is based in reality and concrete facts, while soft science fiction lends itself to the fantastic and impossible. The genre takes us to subterranean depths and stratospheric heights. Somewhere in between is a middling subgenre, a speculative fiction that borrows established laws and returns what-could-be theories. Science fiction that makes you think about the big questions. Heady material on a cinematic scale is engaging on both a visual and philosophical front. Films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, and Soylent Green presented social commentary on how the world works and how the world harms itself. Although science fiction opens our minds to new ideas in the long run, there are still some sci-fi flicks that get lost in the details.
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8 The Matrix Resurrections (2021)
Warner Bros. Pictures
Living in the Matrix isn’t metaphoric psychobabble. Daily routines can trick us into complacency and sameness. Accepting the idea of treating what is deemed “status quo” and “normal” as interchangeable terms and realities is a dangerous existence. The Matrix Resurrections plays into this fact by satirizing the film’s existence as a sequel, pushing its idea(s) onto the masses. The only difference is that the movie’s self-awareness is ironically lost on the masses who go along with the Matrix, who don’t subvert it to truly live free. The Matrix becomes this play thing that sugarcoats its dystopian pleasure-dome placebo effect with the illusion of endless flavors and choices rather than disrupts it through a digital detox. Tech-dependent and Luddite societies can have the best of both worlds, if they learn to co-exist and learn from each other. Neo and Trinity leave this possibility, perhaps the ultimate choice, up in the air.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
7 Armageddon (1998)
Buena Vista Pictures
Michael Bay and explosives is all you need for a disaster film like Armageddon. Meteor showers have destroyed parts of New York City with another meteor the size of Texas on a direct path towards Earth. If the space rock reaches impact, it will destroy the entire planet. NASA hires a rag tag team of oil drillers to dig a hole into the meteor and plant a nuclear bomb to destroy it. The scientific accuracy of this film is stretched considerably next to its can-do spirit and camaraderie. The largest meteor is only four miles wide; a nuclear bomb in space would have less energy in its explosion due to the lack of oxygen, and trained astronauts could easily drill into an asteroid.
6 Annihilation (2018)
Netflix
An alien material known as the Shimmer has crashed down via meteor, infesting the fauna and flora in a quarantined zone on Earth. The overgrowth is explored by a special forces team, but the Shimmer displaces their sense of spatial and temporal awareness as their DNA mingles and changes with the environment. Biology professor and army veteran Lena (Natalie Portman) discovers that the Shimmer can also clone and mimic humans. Only she and her husband escaped the Shimmer alive, but whether they are doppelgängers or not is unknown. Annihilation argues that nature doesn’t need humans, but humans need nature. Nature could be more forthcoming.
5 Prometheus (2012)
20th Century Fox
The origins of humanity are found on a distant moon using a star map from ancient Earth cultures. A space voyage takes the crew of Prometheus to their makers known as the Engineers. Artifacts of humans’ creators show the dark side of creation: destruction. The Weyland Corporation set out to find the secret of immortality, since one Engineer has survived in stasis. However, a substance the team calls “dark liquid” and the presence of a structure that resembles a military base, leads them to believe that the Engineers either dealt with or were a threat. The answer came in the form of Alien, which only created more questions, loose ends, and dead ends.
4 Event Horizon (1997)
Paramount Pictures
Event Horizon is a unique marriage between science fiction and horror. Mysticism, religion, and space travel entwine inside an intergalactic haunted house. It’s like Hellraiser times infinity. A spacecraft travels to a distress signal of another vessel using a wormhole. They find that the missing crew at the other end of space suffered in Hell. Bending time and space, they believe, caused them to experience Hell outside the known universe.
3 The Cell (2000)
New Line Cinema
The Cell is the strange amalgamation of The Matrix and Minority Report. An avant-garde virtual reality device is used to enter the mind of a comatose serial killer and learn the location of a missing victim. His disturbed thoughts become metaphysical machinations for child psychologist Catherine Deane until she finds the memories that soothe the savage beast. Lucid dreaming is a creative but lousy way to investigate and solve a crime.
2 Knowing (2009)
Summit Entertainment
Nicolas Cage plays an astrophysics professor and father of a son who receives a class drawing from a 1959 time capsule unearthed at his school. The picture is a series of numbers that predicted major disasters correctly since it was written. He believes that his family is connected to the numerology as his wife died in one of the events. He decides his son is a young Nostradamus, since the boy begins to hear voices from otherworldly beings. Cage goes to the disaster sites, moments before they happen, in an attempt to prevent the end of the world. Aliens using the Gregorian calendar to destroy the Earth and kidnap children is wildly convenient.
1 The Core (2003)
The Earth’s core has stopped its rotation, weakening the magnetic field and exposing the crust to solar radiation. How does The Core plan to save the planet? By nuking the center of the Earth in hopes of spinning the Earth again. How will they get there? By using a convenient plot device and placeholder called Unobtainium. The planet stopped spinning as soon as it heard it was going to be in this movie.
