Science fiction had a great year. It was a good year for science fiction, especially in cinema. That eye-grabbing medium dominates storytelling around the world. Yes, there were some great books. William Gibson’s The Peripheral and Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation are just a few. MIT’s Twelve Tomorrows is also a good one. The authors of our Terraform project produced some really stellar, genre-bending short films. This year’s films were incredibly powerful. The 2014 speculative fiction film landscape was diverse: it included everything from well-produced action movies to big-budget dramas and thoughtful art-house oddities.
The sci-fi genre of 2014 was better at reflecting our social, cultural, and economic anxieties. Widescreen speculations on ecological collapse, income inequality, self-enhancement, and sexuality, as well as predation, offered a futuristic mirror in which to view our current moment. The absence of a few films was notable. Next year, we may see a futurized, updated look at race politics. But overall, 2014’s science fiction was ambitious, penetrating, and strange. It’s exactly as it should be.
Here are the top ten films of the year that have most influenced the way we think about the future. I indeed ranked them, but it’s also because it’s almost the end of the calendar year, and I couldn’t resist. Warning: spoilers ahead. )
Guardians of the Galaxy
What now? It’s just a dumb Marvel movie in space. But The Guardians used classic sci-fi elements expertly–the scrappy intergalactic rogue, the high-octane shootouts in spaceships, and the unbelievable design of the world–giant space alien heads, anyone? –to carry the torch for this brainless sci-fi show. It was unlike most of its peers in that it did not take itself seriously. It had a lot of 70s yacht music and solid jokes, and it also had a sense of breezy fun that has been missing from Marvel’s factory. If I have to watch another self-important, leaden superhero film, I will send Christopher Nolan some shit. Literally, all of this helped it become the highest-grossing movie in 2014.
Guardians is a good movie. It’s not like the other sci-fi superhero movies of the year, such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier and X-Men Days of Future Past. The film’s main purpose was to show that SF movies can be blockbusters. I had feared that the genre would suffer after the poor box office returns of Pacific Rim, Oblivion, and Edge of Tomorrow. The Guardians did not really spark much discussion about a particular issue, but perhaps the importance of keeping sci-fi in the mainstream and paving the way for more complex and ambitious films.
LUCY
Indeed, Lucia was not a great film. It could have even been not good. It was a mess, with CGI colors and exploding ephemera. There were also half-baked aphorisms on human biology and augmentation. It somehow congealed into an eye-popping mixture of sci-fi symbols that was, at least for me, fascinating in its gleeful abundance and (probably unintentional philosophical import).
The Limitless was embarrassing, and the debunked claim that humans only use 10% of their brains is a tired plot device. As Lucy, played by Scarlett Johansson, begins to use more of her brainpower, an interesting thing happens: She becomes indifferent towards humanity. She begins to do more harm than good. She murders people at will, releases killer crime lords that kill dozens of innocents, and forces Interpol on a police pursuit through Paris, which must have resulted in scores of deaths. All this is done ostensibly for the sake of furthering humanity’s knowledge. We’re supposed to root for her.
She learns to master biological telecommunication, and she also masters telekinesis. She embraces technology in order to bend biology according to her will and ends up a nihilist. The film ends with a bizarre scene in which her arms transform into the tentacled computer, and she eventually becomes a USB flash drive containing the secrets of the universe. This is absurd. The allegory stuck in my mind: we are willing to fight to advance technology beyond known limits, augment our bodies, experiment, kill, die, and–what? Morgan Freeman is baffled, and we have no idea what he’s talking about.
Godzilla
I was eager to see the Godzilla remake as the most vocal advocate for the original Gojira — still the most powerful nuclear holocaust allegory ever recorded. I was disappointed. It was difficult to care about characters after Bryan Cranston’s premature and pointless death. The film had a bizarre plot and pacing that seemed to be designed to drain the narrative tension from the film.
The film had one interesting aspect, which was how it recast Godzilla into a kind of elemental hero. The extractive nature of humanity has unleashed several giant bug monsters. One of them crawled from a mine in Southeast Asia. This implies that we have again dug deeper than we should and interfered in areas we shouldn’t. Godzilla is a terrifying monster that can destroy entire cities. But he also engages in gladiatorial battles with other, more foul-smelling creatures.
As an allegory, it also presents a somewhat nihilistic viewpoint–yes, humanity has brought great harm upon itself by mining fossil fuels, and we have no choice but to watch as the destructive forces of nature violently battle to restore order to the world even if it means that San Francisco will turn into Pompeii.
