Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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Warning: this review contains quite a lot of major spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Make sure you have seen it before reading this as it’s dead good.

Surely it is not news to anyone that there is a new Star Wars film out. There must be bacteria on Saturn that are aware of this. For the second time in my lifetime, a new Star Wars trilogy has exploded into the cinema with more hype than I thought was possible.

Clearly as a culture, we love Star Wars. Or at least the middle class geeky, mainly male, cultural group I move in loves Star Wars. Not even Harry Potter can so completely unite my Twitter and Facebook timelines in squeals of fannish delight. This new Star Wars film has reached near omnipresent status. It is everywhere and everyone is talking about it.

Star Wars has captured the cultural zeitgeist for a number of reasons, but mainly because this time the fans dared to hope that it would be good. Three sub-par, at best, prequels from George Lucas could not dampen our enthusiasm for more Star Wars. Fans are practically salivating with anticipation for another trip to a galaxy far, far away.

The fans have every reason to be excited; J.J. Abrams is a good director and has made two very entertaining Star Trek movies. His rambunctious take on Star Trek strikes me as an expensive means of auditioning to helm the new Star Wars trilogy. I cannot think of a director who would be better for the role. The trailers showed a lot of promise; the force is strong with this one.

There is one very difficult line Abrams had to walk, one that could make or break his take on Star Wars: how much do you rely on the recognisable characters and motifs from the original Star Wars and how much do you make this a film in its own right? Nostalgia verses originality. Clearly the film needs some of both, but getting the right balance is not easy.

Watching Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, I must admit that it was great to have the classic Star Wars iconography back, something that had been missing from the prequel trilogy. It was wonderful to see a film with tie fighters, stormtroopers, star destroyers, X-wings and the Millennium Falcon. However, The Force Awakens did not rely too heavily on classic Star Wars characters. I appreciated seeing Lela, C-3PO and R2-D2 again but I am glad their appearances were brief to allow new characters to assert themselves.

Said new characters were excellent. We had BB-8, the cute new robot rolling around, which looked convincing because it was a physical character that did not rely on computer effects. The new protagonist, Rey (Daisy Ridley), is engaging and sympathetic, from the beginning we are rooting for her to succeed. There is also Finn, a stormtrooper who does not want to be a stormtrooper anymore, played by John Boyega, who delivers the performance of the film, bringing energy and humour to the part. There is also Adam Driver playing new visor-wearing villain Kylo Ren, who is everything a blockbuster antagonist should be, creepy, evil, charismatic and a little bit frightening.

Despite having a mainly fresh cast, The Force Awakens is filled with nods to Lucas’ original trilogy. From when Finn accidently activates the holo-chess set onboard the Millennium Falcon, to Rey living inside a wrecked AT-AT. There are a lot of these cameos of familiar motifs in the film, and it sometimes feels like a roll call of scenes we knew and loved from episodes IV–VI, but it satisfies the audience’s thrust for nostalgia.

There were a lot of nods to past films, but The Force Awakens is a story in its own right. The new characters have lives and adventures of their own and are not crowded out by classic Star Wars characters. Han Solo is the only returning character to play a major role and Harrison Ford does so with the grace and dignity of an elder statesman. This is in contrast to Lucas’ prequel trilogy, which relied too much on classic Star Wars characters - Obi-Wan, R2-D2, Yoda - and did not develop its own characters enough.

The other major flaw of the prequel trilogy was that it focused too much on the internal politics of the Jedi. The Old Republic’s priesthood/Gestapo were not as interesting as Lucas seemed to think they were and each prequel episode always came down to a lightsaber fight in the end. There was an absence of epic space battles or feats of dangerous piloting, which should be the meat and potatoes of any Star Wars films. The prequel trilogy lacked anything as exciting as the battle of Yavin at the end of episode IV.

This issue was addressed in The Force Awakens as Abrams brought the epic. There were huge battles aplenty. The escape from Jakku was a breathtaking scene, with the Millennium Falcon flying loop-the-loops and then racing through the husk of a crashed star destroyer, chased by tie fighters. My heart was in my throat the whole time. As it was during the attack on Takodana when rebel X-wings fly to rescue the heroes and Finn tries to use a lightsaber for the first time. The greatest achievement of the film is its climax, when the rebels attack the new uber-Death Star. It combines daring feats of flying, an intense ground assault and a good versus evil lightsaber showdown. In a phrase: perfect Star Wars.

This amazing sequence was ends with the tragic death of Han at the hands of his own son, Kylo Ren. It was a scene of genuine emotion. So many Star Wars deaths seem hollow, when the audiences does not care about the character, but Han has a special place in any fan’s heart and it was gutwrenching to see him go. Both Harrison Ford and Adam Driver played this scene superbly; it is the jewel in the crown of this film.

The Force Awakens ends with a setup for the next film and a lot of the questions this film raises are left unanswered. I am very excited for episode VIII in March 2017 and I hope it delivers on the promise of this one. J.J. Abrams did an excellent job, taking on one of the toughest directing gigs in Hollywood. He managed to walk the line between the originality this film needed to be a story in its own right and the nostalgia it needed to keep the fans happy. The weight of expectation was enormous and Abrams rose to the challenge ably.

Episode VII has lots of adventure, visual spectacle and epic space battles. This is what Star Wars is all about. This film has the energy and enthusiasm for the classic trilogy that the prequel trilogy was missing. I left The Force Awakens about as excited about Star Wars as I was when I was ten years old. I am now itching with anticipation for more Star Wars films in the future. My faith in the franchise has been restored.

The Martian

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Andy Weir's novel of one man's struggle to survive on Mars has become a sci-fi sensation. The book was published to little fanfare but has become a viral success, ending up being Goodread's top sci-fi novel of 2014. The book is tense, well-plotted and uses the scientific detail to enhance the story of protagonist Mark Watney's struggle to survive. It has won over sci-fi reader after sci-fi reader, spread through peer-to-peer recommendations, and become a best seller. Inevitably, a big budget Hollywood adaptation has followed; the question is – can it live up to the book's success?

The short answer is that it does. The Martian is a superb film, entertaining from its witty first scene to the more thoughtful final few moments. Although it is two and a half hours in long, the Martian flies by and I was hooked for all of it. Watney's struggle for survival in the barren, airless deserts of Mars is tense and his fellow astronauts’ plan to rescue him is filled with edge-of-the-seat tension.

Ridley Scott is on excellent form behind the camera. His direction keeps the pace up and the film never drags, a real accomplishment for a film that is quite long and has a large cast of characters. Scott also uses special effects well, the action is intimate and focused on the characters. There are several dazzling scenes that doubtless employed an army of CG artists but no scene feels like hollow spectacle. The action drives forwards the plot and keeps the audience focused on Watney's precarious circumstances.

Scott's film is a very faithful adaptation of Andy Weir's novel. Dialogue, and at times whole scenes, are lifted directly from the book. The plot is identical to the novel: astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is the botanist on the third manned mission to Mars. During a freak sandstorm, Watney is lost and his colleagues are forced to abandoned the planet and leave him for dead. When he awakes and realises what has happened, he sets about finding out how he can survive on Mars until the next manned mission arrives in four years’ time. The problem is that he only has one year's worth of food and the airless, waterless surface Mars is a dangerous place to spend any amount of time. Meanwhile, NASA have found out that Watney is still alive and try to rescue him.

The film takes the novel's most tense scenes and expertly transposes them into nail-biting moments of cinema. The scenes when Watney's Martian habitat collapses and when he finally escapes from Mars make for tense and exciting cinema – the latter scene is one of the best I have seen this year.

All of the novel's large cast of characters are faithfully realised on screen in a series of great performances. Matt Damon excels as the ever upbeat Watney, a character he is perfectly cast for. Chiwetel Ejiofor is great as Vincent Kapoor, NASA’s Director of Mars Operations, the man in charge of saving Watney. So also Jessica Chastain, who plays Commander Lewis, Mark Watney's tormented superior officer. Other great performances are delivered by a stellar cast including Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Mackenzie Davis, Donald Glover, Kristen Wiig and Kate Mara, but a special mention must go to Benedict Wong who delivers the performance of the film as the hard pressed NASA's Jep Propulsion Lab director Bruce Ng. The only actor who disappoints is Sean Bean, whose enthusiastic performance appears to have been edited within an inch of its existence.

Fans of the novel will be glad to hear that the science of how Watney grows enough food to survive on Mars and the technology behind NASA's rescue plans are not diluted for the film. They feature heavily and are ably crafted into the story so that the audience never feels talked down to or confused, whilst the novel's level of detail is preserved. The Martian shows how a hard sci-fi story can be as entertaining as any action blockbuster, when handled by a competent director with a good cast.

My only criticism of The Martian is that it is perhaps too faithful to the book. Bringing a book with so many scenes and characters to the big screen means individual moments or characters rarely get a chance to shine. The film is long and although the tension remains high, some events are rushed through. It was great to see a film that was so faithful to a book that I love, but I would have preferred a greater degree of adapting the story to the medium of cinema.

The isolation and loneliness, which the novel conveys so well, are not developed in the movie. This could have been achieved with a greater focus on Matt Damon and less on the other characters. A movie which followed his video logs would have been less tense, but would have allowed for a greater character study and would have more effectively drawn out the drama of his struggle to survive in a hostile environment. The climax and denouement scenes are substantially different to the book to show what a more Mark-Watney-focused film would have been like. It would have been interesting to see this movie.

The road which the film could have taken does not detract from how entertaining and enjoyable The Martian is. It is an excellent adaptation that translates the strengths of the book to the screen and adds good performances and tense directing. I would certainly recommend seeing it to any fan of the book or of sci-fi cinema.

Top 5 sci-fi horror movies

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Science fiction and horror are natural allies. Science fiction can liberate an author's creativity to come up with new stories and this suits the horror writers’ ability to create imitative ways to scare the reader. Nowhere is the more true than in film, where sci-if concepts can be used to as to unsettle, creep out or completely terrify the audience.

Below is a selection of my five favourite sci-fi horror movies. Before we get started I want to issue a brief spoiler warning for the films that will be discussed below.

The Fly

The sci-fi concept of teleportation serves as the basis for this horror movie. Jeff Goldblum starts as eccentric scientist Seth Brundle who is secretly working on a teleportation device. After some initial failures Brundle gets the device to work with the help of journalist Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis). However when Brundle test the machine on himself he is impaired by jealousy, anger and alcohol and does not notice a common household fly has entered the device. Brundle is fused into a hybrid half-man half-fly creature and over the course the film looses his humanity.

The Fly uses our fear of our animal nature to increase tension. As Brundle becomes more fly he begins to operate under the primal drives of rage and sexual desire. The control that a human usually has over these desires are stripped away as Brundle embraces his animal side. When Quaife discovers that she is pregnant and dreams about giving birth to giant maggot, the film takes darker turn. Brundle is concerned that the child is the last remnant of his humanity and kidnaps Quaife to force her to have the child.

The Fly plays off our fear of break of the thin layer of humanity that separates us from animals. As Brundle becomes more fly he stops suppressing his basic animal desires and becomes more dangerous. In the Fly, the real monster is not the thing Brundle is coming but it is the animal within himself that has been set free.

The Mist

Cinematic adaptations of Stephen King stories have a mixed tracked record for every Shawshank or the Shining there is a Maximum Overdrive or the awful TV adaption of the Stand. However the Mist delivers as a horror movie, it is tense, claustrophobic and violent.

The Mist stars Thomas Jane who wakes up after a thunderstorm to discover a tree has fallen on his house. He takes his son and neighbour to a grocery store where a strange mist surrounds them. Whenever anyone ventures out into the mist strange creatures devour them.

The tension in The Mist comes from setting, the characters are besieged inside the shop and any escape attempt will result in certain death. Events escalate as a Christian woman forms a doomsday cult around here and inevitably some the monsters break in. The Mist keeps the suspense up by showing as little of the creatures as possible, cloaking them in the eponymous mist, but frequently reminding the audience of how much danger the characters are in.

The sense of hopelessness and impending death makes The Mist both dark as well as tense and bloody. Like most of the best horror films the worst events in The Mist are caused by humans and not the creatures that have them trapped.

The Thing

Low budget and with plenty of gore, is a winning formula for horror movies and John Carpenter is the master of this approach. Without a doubt his best film is the Thing for being both suspenseful and gory. An alien space ship crashes near an Antarctica research station and the survivor is not friendly. After killing several of the humans, the base’s inhabitants try to fight back. There is only one catch; the Thing that is praying on them can disguise itself as any of the humans.

The fear of the enemy within your ranks runs across all of humanity and the audience can engage with the sense of paranoia that grips the characters. Unlike most horror movies, the Thing is not an external enemy killed but an internal enemy that must be rooted out. As the Thing spreads and takes over more of the humans we see its true form, a disgusting mix of organs, tentacles and bodily fluid. The Thing moves between tense physiological thriller and out and out gore-fest frighteningly quickly.

A sense of isolation runs through the entire film, which adds to the tension. In Antarctica no one will come to the characters rescue so they must deal with the Thing themselves, before it makes its way to the rest of civilisation and dooms humanity.

The Thing has enough physiological tension to be interesting and enough gore to be exciting. The use of the enemy within story works with the low budget approach and means that when we do see the Thing, it is brief enough and detailed enough to be truly shocking. The Thing is a low budget gore film with an added physiological element that makes it enduringly scary.

Event Horizon

A trip to the edge of the solar system to test a new piece of wormhole technology, what could go wrong? Expect the wormhole created goes to hell and the ship becomes possessed by a violent and malevolent force. The premise of Event Horizon may sound daft but the execution is frightening.

Event Horizon works so well because the revelation of what has happened is spread out over the course of the film. Event Horizon starts with a straightforward rescue mission, which slowly gets worse and worse. Sam Neill is great in the role of the wormhole ship’s creator who goes slowly insane when he is confronted by what he has created.

The tension builds through theological horror, confined spaces, no escape in space, and through moments of gut churning gore. Director Paul W.S. Anderson makes able use of both approaches to horror.

Event Horizon starts off as science fiction and becomes fantasy as the plot develops. As the story moves away from our reality so does the tension until the audience is lost in a world of pain and chaos. When the final revaluation comes it makes perfect sense in the context of the story and is completely terrifying.

Alien

One of my favourite movies of all time and certainly my favourite sci-fi horror movie. Ridley Scott's atmospheric horror movies owes as much to the art of H.R. Giger and Francis Bacon as it does to the science fiction of Isaac Asimov. The tension builds slowly and steadily, there is little music and it is long time before the mysterious predator is revealed. When it is finally shown to us it is the stuff of nightmares, a creature that is completely alien, impossible to reason with and utterly deadly.

When the freighter Nostromo picks up a strange signal they divert to investigate an uncharted planet. When the crew lands, they discover a crashed alien spaceship and a huge horde of eggs. One thing leads to another, John Hurt sticks his face in an open egg and later an alien killing machine explodes out of his chest and starts picking off the crew. It’s left to Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) to escape the before she too is killed.

The production design of alien lays on the atmosphere, the Nostromo is all steam pipes, cramped spaces and dark places to hide. I cannot think of anywhere worse to be trapped with a monster. The tension builds as the body count rises and leads to a terrifying final confrontation between Ripley and the alien.

Those are my favourite sci-fi horror movies. Do you have any to add to the list? Let me know below.

My thoughts on watching films in London

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On my way up the tube escalator, I stare at the posters that line the walls. Charity fun runs, exclusive estate agents, gyms offering extraordinary weight loss in an improbably short period of time. Then something catches my eye: rows of people sat in front of a cinema screen, the London skyline lit up behind them. It looks brilliant. Watching a film on a cool summer night with a spectacular view of iconic London landmarks. The magic of cinema transposed into a modern urban setting. Gone are the plain out of town multiplexes in shopping centres, instead this cinema in the heart of a global city. The event was probably very expensive, even considering the outrageous prices charged by some cinemas, but worth it for the experience.

I am the target audience for this event and others like it. I fit into the correct consumer demographic; someone who describes themselves as "passionate" about film in consumer surveys. I am young, urban, liberal, interested in culture, professional, modern, with no children and in possession of disposable income. I am someone who values experience over possessions, who thinks being well travelled is more important than owning a good car. I am a cliché of the late twentysomething, early thirtysomething Londoner, writing this blog post on an Apple product in a chain coffee shop.

A range of products and experiences have risen to cater for this lucrative demographic, one of the few that feels wealthy – or, at least, is not concerned about personal debt. These products includes secret cocktail bars, immersive zombie survival theatre and restaurants with unusual themes. All have the inflated prices that comes with urban chic. Rooftop Film Club is just another example of this.

Do not mistake any of the above for a criticism - these events are a lot of fun and usually put on with dazzling creative flair and attention to detail. They are experiences perfectly crafted to make you feel like you are a part of something exclusive, something special. Life would become boring if it only consisted of the same pubs, TV shows, books, etc, and these unusual events provide the variety which keeps life interesting. London is an expensive, crowded, noisy, dirty place to live, and these unique experiences make life in the capital worth living, they remind you how magical London can be. I feel very fortunate to be in a position (in terms of time and money) to experience some of them.

A lot of these experiences include new ways of exhibiting film. I am certainly in favour of deconstructing what a film screening is and taking it in new directions. Film screenings should not be confined to multiplexes or the basements of independent DVD shops. The ways of experiencing film should be as diverse as film itself. Also it is a great idea to combine the screening of a film with complementary experiences, from meals to immersive theatre. This process of bringing the film to life while still keeping the immersive experience intact is a fantastic new way to experience cinema.

You can probably sense a rather large ‘but’ coming in the near future. Changing the way we exhibit film is a positive thing but the films on offer are becoming increasingly generic. These new screening events typically choose successful films from the 70s, 80s and 90s - Star Wars, Back to the Future, Shawshank Redemption - great films from the heyday of blockbusters, when they were still fresh and original. Alternatively they show the most mainstream franchise blockbusters from today, the Marvel shared universe, the DC shared universe, reboots of classic films series and TV shows - Mad Max, The Avengers, The Man From UNCLE. The ways of exhibiting films are getting more interesting while the films themselves are getting duller.

This is a process we are seeing across mainstream cinema as a whole. The multiplexes are investing in new projection technology and sound systems to make the cinema experience more immersive. The range of food and drink being offered is expanding beyond popcorn and Galaxy Minstrels. New and exciting ways of watching films are starting up from curated online streaming services like MUBI, to events like Hot Tub Cinema. The multiplexes have never been shinier but Hollywood's rising levels of risk adversity means our choice of film is getting narrower. We can choose between different competing superhero franchises, actions movies into embarrassingly high number of sequels, or formulaic vehicles for stars and directors who should have retired a long time ago to make way for new wave of original cinema. There is a limit to how fancy you can make a multiplex to cover up how uninspiring the films are.

Events like Rooftop Film Club, Hot Tub Cinema or Secret Cinema rely heavily on the good films from the past. This partly due to the cost of acquiring prints of new films and the fact that if you are going to spend north of £50 on a cinema trip, most people would prefer to know they will enjoy the film. Still, this reliance of successful blockbusters of the past only underlines how humdrum modern blockbusters have become.

We are drowning in sequels, remakes and adaptations and there is barely an original film in sight. This is partly why events like Rooftop Film Club are popular, as they are a way to breathe novelty back into the cinema-going experience in an age where novelty is too risky for the big budgets of mainstream blockbusters.

There is nothing wrong with events such as Rooftop Film Club, which I have perhaps unfairly focused on in this article. The cinema experience these new film exhibitions offer is interesting and innovative. Seeing a classic film on a hot summer night with one of the world's most iconic skylines around you is a once in a lifetime experience. My source of disappointment is that events like this are necessary to keep people like me passionate about cinema because the regular cinema going experience is so devoid of passion.

I would prefer more original films in regular, boring, cinemas to boring films and original ways of showing them. I would happily make that trade to have some more variety from Hollywood. Rooftop Film Club and similar events are fantastic ways to enjoy film as well as injecting some originality into the medium. However, they are, at best, a temporary fix to the problems of Hollywood becoming increasingly risk adverse. As films become increasingly similar and fans are offered less choice, people will turn away from the medium and interesting ways of showing films will not stop this. As much as I enjoy original ways of screening films, I would prefer some original films.

Superbob and independent films

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As film fans, it is important that we support independent films whenever we can. Sometimes this seems difficult, Hollywood is so monumentally powerful and posses such vast marketing apparatus that getting a smaller film noticed seems almost impossible. Despite this, film fans are more powerful now than they have ever been: through Twitter, Tumblr, forums and blogs, we all have a platform and we can use it to get more films that we like made. When a film fan sees a film they like it is important to make as much noise about it as possible, as through working together in this grass-roots approach we can shine a light on quality films that would otherwise be overlooked.

It is essential that film fans do this because it is through independent films that we can control how we are portrayed in the cinema. Films are immensely powerful; they create lasting cultural impressions and can even result in political change.

Not having control of how your country or subculture is portrayed in film or TV can be very damaging. Most people's impressions of Africa are based on stereotypes that are supported by Hollywood films or TV. If more people watched films made in Africa, such as Timbuktu or Fishing Without Nets, then viewers would understand that there is poverty in Africa, but the continent is much more complex than the stereotypes would have you believe. It is important to support independent film so that your country or subculture can exercise control over how they are portrayed on film and not just hand that power over to Hollywood completely.

Supporting a film is also a way to see representations of yourself on screen – that is, if you are not a middle class white American man. Recently, I saw a film that I want to make noise about so that more people get an opportunity to see it. This film is the British film Superbob, about an ordinary postman from Peckham who becomes a superhero when he is struck by a meteorite.

The film takes place in and around South London, mostly in Peckham, an area that is not usually the subject of films. If your experience of the world is only through Hollywood films, you could be forgiven for not knowing that Peckham existed, and if your only experience was through mainstream TV you would think that it was still inhabited by Del Boy and Rodney. Peckham is a vibrant, interesting part of London and it is time that this was reflected in a film. It was refreshing to see a London that is reflective of ordinary people's lives. This was not a film focused on the well-heeled Kensington or Notting Hill set, nor was it a film about hyper-cool Hoxton hipsters. This was a film about a London which ordinary Londoners can recognise.

Another reason why it is important to champion smaller films is that independent cinema showcases a wider variety of stories than the mainstream Hollywood output. Superbob is another good example of this. There are not many films focusing on British superheroes, we see a lot of super-powered charismatic Americans saving the day with witty one liners, but it was a nice change to see a superhero who was self-conscious and modest in a very British way. Superman makes proud statements on what it means to be human, whereas Superbob is concerned that he is signed up to two home energy suppliers. This humour and this type of character is absent from mainstream Hollywood movies, so we need to support it in independent cinema to see more of it.

Above all, Superbob should be championed because it is a great film. The writing is witty and clever. It has a great cast, including Brett Goldstein and Catherine Tate. The film has a warm story about love and being yourself at its core, which allows Superbob to transition from heartbreakingly sad to trouser-soilingly funny in the same scene. What Superbob lacks in budget, it makes up for in heart and wit.

Superbob is a great film because it is different, fresh and original when compared to a Hollywood output which is becoming increasingly generic. Superbob is also extremely entertaining, regardless of the wider industry context. It is a film that film fans should be shouting about because it deserves to reach a wide audience.

The roar of the Hollywood promotional machine can easily drown out a small British movie. That is why it is important that film fans make noise about the easily-overlooked independent films. Films like Superbob are great pieces of entertainment, but they are also important cultural documents and a record of the way we see ourselves. It would be extremely sad if this record was lost and it would be extremely sad if a great film like Superbob did not get the recognition that it deserves.

Are franchise blockbusters dumbing down cinema?

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Last week, Simon Pegg caused a stir when he implied that cinema has been "infantilised". Like most media circuses, this one turned out to be an exaggeration and Pegg's more detailed explanation is well worth a read. Whatever Pegg's actual views, he is not alone in expressing this sentiment that cinema is dominated by adolescent fantasies at the expense of real art. This argument is as old as cinema itself but I want to examine this claim in regards to recent cinema trends, because in Pegg's own words: “Sometimes it’s good to look at the state of the union and make sure we’re getting the best we can get.”

The trend in cinema currently blamed for infantilising the medium is what I call the “franchise blockbuster”. This includes the Marvel and DC super-hero shared universes, but also the trend to bring back expired film franchises (Star Wars, Mad Max, Jurassic Park, etc) or start new franchises using works popular in other mediums (The Hunger Games, Mission Impossible, etc).

I partially agree and partially disagree with the idea that this trend has dumbed down cinema or excluded films of greater artistic metric. Although it is true that there was a brief period where artistic movies were the most commercially successful (Tax Driver, The Godfather, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, etc) this period only lasted a few years between Easy Rider in 1969 and Raging Bull in 1980. It is also important to remember that this period occurred between the collapse of one dominant commercial model in Hollywood, the studio system, and the rise of a new one, the modern blockbuster which begins with Star Wars.

Franchise blockbusters are only the most recent form of the blockbuster and I disagree with the accusation that these films are dumbing down cinema. Most often this accusation is usually aimed at sci-fi films or comic book adaptations because these are the highest profile franchise blockbusters. This argument implies that sci-fi or superhero films can never be clever or tackle important real world issues, when there are many counter examples. Sci-fi films such as Elysium or District 9 and superhero films such as Super have used the conventions of their respective genres as a prism to explore real world issues.

Science fiction films have always lent themselves to spectacle and spectacle has always dominated the box office, because film is a visual medium. There is a view summarised by Pegg that: “the more spectacle becomes the driving creative priority, the less thoughtful or challenging the films can become.”

I do not believe this is true, as spectacle based blockbusters can also be very artistic such as films like Alien, Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner. It is not a valid reading of film history to claim that the blockbusters of the 1980s destroyed the artistic credibility of the 1970s, they just changed it.

It should also be remembered creating great art was not a priority in the period before blockbusters came along in the late 1970s. In the 40s, 50s and 60s there were a lot of generic studio films, most of which have been forgotten because they were generic. One reasons why three decades look so good in retrospect is because we only remember the good films. There was no golden age of artistic integrity which we should go back to, and the idea that there was needs to be resisted.

That said I do think the desire to be innovative, challenging and emotional has been pushed out of cinema. The main reason for this is because studios are becoming more risk averse and not chancing innovative or challenging films because they could lose money. This is manifesting itself in the dominance of franchise blockbusters. As cinema goers, we are getting a lot of the same types of film over and over again which is making cinema more boring.

I do not think that franchise blockbusters are themselves to blame for cinema becoming more boring. The current wave for films tied into existing franchises are just a wave or artistic movement like any other, muscle men action movies in the 1980s or melodramas in the 1950s. The wave will break, no artistic movement lasts forever.

However there are two trends in modern cinema which I find collectively troubling. They are that cinema is becoming more boring and more franchise blockbusters are being made. The artistic movement of franchise blockbusters has produced as many good films as any other cinema movement, Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier are as good as any blockbuster from the 1980s or 1990s and some films such as Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy have had both complex plots and explored complex characters in a subtle way.

The only reason that franchise blockbusters are making cinema more boring is that our cinema diet consists only of franchise blockbusters. Eventually audiences will get bored of franchise blockbusters (I predict this happen somewhere around the time of the Aquaman film) and cinema goers will stop paying to see them. When the fun has gone out of franchise blockbusters and they all become generic, this will end the movement, just as too many dull action movies like Collateral Damage killed the muscle men films. This natural process of artistic movements rising and falling will continue and another new type of blockbuster will take its place. This is not something to be worried about. If you do not like a fashion simply wait, it will change.

The excessively risk averse nature of studios could mean that cinema becomes so dominated by franchised blockbusters that the audience for cinema disappears almost completely. This will most likely happen when audiences are lured away by some other medium, such as video streaming services. It happened before - in the 1960s, the studio system was so reluctant to embrace counter culture that they kept making the same generic pictures they had been making since the 1940s. Film audiences were put off by the old fashioned Hollywood products and lured away by TV, where shows like the Monkey were reflecting cultural changes. Audience could abandon the cinema complete if the studios continue to make franchise blockbusters long after everyone is sick of them.

If this were to happen, it would be a significant event in cinema history, and we might get a brief period of creativity like we did the 1970s after the fall of the studio system and before the rise of the modern blockbusters. However, the process of movements rising and falling will continue and any artistic period will not last long before a new commercial model exerts itself.

Franchise blockbusters are a victim of the changing circumstances, namely studio's risk aversion, and not the cause of them. If cinephiles really do get bored of them then franchise blockbusters will go away as no artistic movement lasts forever. The one thing all artistic movements have in common is their belief that they are special, transcendent and permanent, when in reality they all end. Periods of change between artistic movements are the most interesting and the most creative. They are when certainties are questioned and possibilities open up. However these periods are always brief and commercial models reassert themselves quickly.

Film fans have always worried about cinema becoming too much of a spectacle and not being artistic enough. I do not think movies are dumbing down. They are just changing and they will change again in the future.

Avengers: The Age of Ultron

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Warning this review contains spoilers

Everyone must be aware by now that there is a group of fictional superheroes known as the Avengers knocking about. There must be amoebas on Titan who know that Robert Downey Jr is charismatic as Iron Man and that Chris Evans is strangely likeable playing Captain America. The Avengers have become a part of our cinematic landscape, along with being quietly disappointed about the number of sequels/adaptations and the lack of original films.

Now the Avengers we know (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow, etc.) and a few new ones (Quick Silver, Scarlet Witch, The Vision) are back and have teamed up to fight a new big bad in the form of Ultron, a psychopathic machine intelligence that is intent on destroying humanity.

Avengers: The Age of Ultron is an action movie at its heart, and it certainly does not lack for gripping action scenes. There are at least five spectacular fight sequences scattered throughout the film, each one more impressive and dazzling than the last. Avengers: The Age of Ultron is a movie that makes full use of the cinematic toolbox to create a treat for the eyes.

My personal favourite action sequence is fight mid-way through the film between the Hulk, ably played by Mark Ruffalo, and Downey Jr's Iron Man in a new extra large suit of armour. Superhero crossover movies are at their most fun when the heroes fight each other, as it settles the questions teenage geeks spending hours pondering: who would win in a fight between X and Y. This kind of drama is not the basis for Shakespearian intrigue, but it does make for spectacular viewing.

As a science fiction film, it has to be said that this is a little light on the science. It is still not clear if Thor is an actual magical god-being or an alien, and characters like The Vision are more fantasy than science fiction. However, James Spader’s Ultron is a brilliant villain, an out of control AI without a care for human suffering, intent of improving the world by destroying it. This is not original writing – the basic plot is little different from Terminator or The Matrix – but I have a weakness for AI-run-amuck films and Avengers certainly delivers this. Spader excellently camps it up as the evil Ultron and clearly loves every minute of being the villain.

A film that has the combined cast of four other films is understandably overflowing with characters, and writer/director Joss Whedon ensures that they all get their moments and all get a character arc. The best of these is Quick Silver’s and Scarlet Witch's redemption arc as they both begin the movie in the service of Ultron and then go over to the Avengers when they see how evil he is. This is nimbly handled and had some great acting from Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in their respective roles.

Every character’s role is weaved into the plot of the film, but I was left feeling that some were not necessary. The cast is perhaps too large and the pace would have suffered under a less capable director. Hawkeye, The Vision and Black Widow could have been jettisoned and the film would have been improved, although the removal of the latter would mean that there was only one woman with a substantial role in the film.

Cutting the number of characters would have left more time to develop the ones that remained. The arcs of characters such as Thor and Captain America are rushed, and at times barely coherent. In an ensemble superhero film, less is certainly more.

This lies at the heart of what most disappointed me about Avengers: The Age of Ultron. I was left feeling that Whedon was more committed to bringing in as much of the wider Avengers franchise as possible than to making a good film. Whedon has worked with ensemble casts before and handled their arcs and characterisation much better. For example, Serenity also has an established ensemble cast, however in that film each is given several moment to shine, where as in Avengers: The Age of Ultron characters such as War Machine and the Falcon are hardly in the film, which makes me wonder why include them at all other than to give the audience a knowing nod to the other films in the Avengers franchise.

Audience love knowing nods: it makes them feel clever and part of a club, and everyone loves that, but knowing nods do not make a good film. Developed characters and interesting scenes make a good film, but clearly this was not the priority when making the Avengers: The Age of Ultron, or there would be less cameo appearances and more time spent on developing the core characters. For example, an extended segment exploring Hawkeye's domestic situation was dull and pointless, but apparently necessary. Cutting Hawkeye would have allowed more time to develop more interesting characters, such as Thor and Captain America.

Whedon does make all of this work and also brings his trademark humour to the film, which makes it hugely enjoyable to watch. Avengers: The Age of Ultron takes itself a lot less seriously than Batman and is all the better for it. Witty lines pointing out the absurdity of the whole film make it more believable than trying to earnestly sell the conflict between a man in a clown suit and a man dressed as a bat as a deep meditation on the human condition.

However I do feel that Avengers: The Age of Ultron takes itself too seriously and tries to make all the characters relatable, which is not necessary. The audience’s lives are nothing like those of Tony Stark or Steve Roger, so why do we have to relate to them via their personal lives? Avengers: The Age of Ultron is an action movie and great action movies of the past, such as Alien or Predator, were lighter on character development and better on motivation - basic survival - and they are stronger movies for it.

Despite these weaknesses, Avengers: The Age of Ultron is a brilliant rollercoaster of a film. It is funny, has good actors, great writing and amazing visuals, it will certainly be the best superhero film of the year – and maybe the best sci-fi/action movie of the year if Star Wars 7 is more Phantom Menace than New Hope. I would highly recommend that any fan of superhero, sci-fi or action movies head down to their local multiplex and see Avengers: The Age of Ultron.

Leonard Nimoy obituary

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The 1960s were a formative time for popular culture and nowhere is this truer than for science fiction. In 1963, William Hartnell first took a voyage through time and space in the TARDIS; in 1965 Frank Herbert published Dune; in 1968 Stanley Kubrick and Author C. Clarke collaborated on 2001: A Space Odyssey. However, one of the most seminal science fiction beginnings in the 1960s was in 1966, when NBC premiered a TV show that promised to boldly go where no man had gone before. Over the years and series which followed, Star Trek has come to define science fiction, phrases like “redshirts” and "set phasers to stun” are well known to the fans of the genre because of the iconic characters which brought them to life.

Of course, one of these iconic characters were Spock, played by Leonard Nimoy. Spock was a character who on paper is difficult to relate to, cold and logical, he could have been a two-dimensional parody of non-human characters, but Nimoy brought the humanity out in him through his subtle performance. It is because of Nimoy that Spock became the character most geeks, myself included, related to the most. He was the outsider, the one who thought and acted differently to everyone else, but just as much a part of the team as the hot-blooded Kirk or the ever-exasperated Scotty. It was through Spock that most young geeks learned to believe that the future would be better, in the future we would be accepted.

Star Trek encapsulated that spirit of optimism which possessed 60s science fiction. At a time when there was civil disorder, rational strife and it looked like nuclear annihilation was inevitable, people looked to the future for a solace from their fears, and Star Trek showed them a future where humanity had not only survived but flourished in peace and harmony. Today's science fiction has a much more pessimistic outlook, from the unending grimness of Battlestar Galactica to the bloody Imperialism of Ancillary Justice and endless zombie apocalypses, we are now scared of our future. It is important to remember a time when we thought our problems would decrease in the future and not multiply.

Nimoy was born in Boston in 1931 to Ukrainian immigrants of orthodox Jewish background. Nimoy started acting at school and at community college, acting which was not stopped by service as a sergeant in the US army. When he left the army, he moved to New York where Nimoy worked a series of jobs around acting before getting noticed on TV shows like Rawhide and Perry Mason, then came his big break when he was cast in Star Trek.

The show was cancelled after three series due to low ratings, but it had already captured the imaginations of a generation and the characters at its core become some of the most loved in science fiction. It is an extremely difficult job to take a character from a script and bring them to life in a way that is believable; it is even more difficult to bring that character into the hearts and minds of millions of people. Nimoy created in Spock a character people genuinely loved, a character whose very existence made a difference to his fan's lives, this is the highest goal of any actor or writer.

As the popularity of Star Trek grew, Nimoy and co. took their characters to the big screen where they worked on some of the most iconic science fiction films of all time, most notably the sublime Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. Nimoy remained central to the film franchise, going on to direct Star Trek 3 and 4. Some of my earliest memories of enjoying science fiction is watching these films on VHS cassettes recorded off the TV. The ones which really stick in my mind as forming a strong early impression are 1 and 3, I am not sure why. It is partly through watching Nimoy and co. playing these iconic characters in amazing space adventures that I first learned to love a genre which would come to define a lot of my life.

Nimoy and Spock have been parodied over the years. As Star Trek came to define science fiction, its mannerisms were imitated and mocked. Nimoy, I assume, had a sense of humour about this because he participated in a fair few of these parodies of his famous character, most notably in the Simpsons where he appeared several times.

Nimoy also remained attached to the serious side of Star Trek fandom, appearing at conventions and in the two most recent Star Trek films. Even well into his 80s, he was still performing, appearing recently in the music video to Bruno Mars’s The Lazy Song.

The early days of Star Trek were part of science fiction’s formative years, or at least the formation of what we popularly understand to be the genre. Great writers, actors and characters will come in the future but the adoration that has been heaped upon these early luminaries is not something that we will see again. Put simply, once a genre's worth of fans’ hearts have been captured for the first time, nothing will ever be that loved again.

Nimoy was one of the last living connections to that early days of the genre, when we were optimistic that science could solve the world's problems and science fiction could show us how it was done. Now it serves as a warning of the terrible future we are sleepwalking into. That sense of passion, of optimism, that love was something unique and special and Nimoy was not only a part of it but he was central to it. Make no mistake that he is a titan of the science fiction genre who will be greatly missed.

“Live long and prosper.”

Science fiction at the BAFTAs

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Awards season is upon us, the time of the year when movie studios have to pretend that all of this is about art and not about making as much money as possible out of a line of films that look increasingly similar every year. This ends later this month with the Oscars, but before that we have the British Academy Film and Television Awards, which function along the same lines as the Oscars.

Personally, I prefer the BAFTAs, as they are slightly less preoccupied with American self-congratulation and contain a selection of foreign language and art house films as well as each year’s award blockbusters. The BAFTAs will take place this Sunday (8th February), and I have taken the time to look into how well the science fiction genre will be represented at the awards.

The answer to this question depends very much on how you define science fiction. In its purest form, the genre is underrepresented at the BAFTAs, but some borderline SFF titles do have nominations.

Birdman, the art house superhero film, has a lot of nominations, including in the best picture category. Birdman stands a good chance of going home with at least a few awards. Hopefully Michael Keaton will win best actor for his superb comic performance, in which he mocks himself and Batman mercilessly. However, the film would be better classified as magical realism, rather than science fiction or fantasy. Birdman does pays homage to the established archetype of the current generation of superhero films – namely that everything must be Batman: for evidence of the Batmanification of all superheroes, see the ludicrous dark and gritty Fantastic Four trailer.

The Grand Budapest Hotel also has a lot of nominations, again including best picture, and is a delightfully funny and distinctively odd film. It is set in a fictional, slightly mythical Eastern European country at a vague point in 20th century history. Again the film pays homage to many fantastical archetypes, but without being expressly fantasy.

Some of the other best picture nominees are likely to appeal to fans of science fiction, most notably the biopics of Steve Hawking (The Theory of Everything) and Alan Turing (The Imitation Game). Obviously these are historical dramas about real life scientists and both have strong performances at their core, but they are further evidence that film award bodies consistently overlook the science fiction genre.

The other major categories fare the same as best picture – for example, best director also has nominations for Birdman, The Theory of Everything and The Grand Budapest Hotel, but Christopher Nolan is cruelly overlooked for the masterfully directed Interstellar and James Gunn is similarly snubbed for the excellent Guardians of the Galaxy.

Children’s science fiction is well represented in the animated film category, with Don Hall and Chris Williams nominated for Big Hero 6, Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable for The Boxtrolls, and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller for The Lego Movie. The later is one of my favourite films of last year; it is funny, emotional and innovative. Why it has not been nominated for an Oscar for best animated film is beyond me. The Lego Movie thoroughly deserves to win in this category.

Science fiction films are better represented in the ‘technical’ BAFTA categories. Interstellar has nominations for original music, production design and cinematography – in all three of which the film excels. Hans Zimmer’s score is dark, brilliant and contributes to the film’s edge-of-our-seat tension. The film is also beautifully shot, and the retro look of the its production design creates a timeless vision of the future.

Special visual effects is the category traditionally dominated by Hollywood’s big budget science fiction films, and this year is no different. Interstellar, Guardians of the Galaxy, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, X-Men: Days of Future Past and the last Hobbit movie have all been nominated, and all were visually stunning. However, I find it hard to believe that visuals is the only way in which the science fiction genre has excelled itself in the last year.

Guardians of the Galaxy has a nomination for best make up and hair; the design of the alien creatures was very convincing, and it deserves a win in this category. This film was my favourite of last year, it is funny, spectacular and moving. In terms of the filmmaking craft, it is much better than the worthy biopics and art house films that are nominated for best picture. There are clearly certain genres that get nominations for awards and certain ones which are ignored. Looking outside the blockbuster science fictions which came out last year, there are many brilliant independent science fiction films such as The Phoenix Project which deserve award recognition.

Interstellar has a few nominations for being slightly more highbrow and acceptable, but it is still looked down on for being science fiction. Guardians of the Galaxy and other superhero films are snubbed further for not being considered artistically valid. This is despite the fact that Guardians of the Galaxy is better than most of the best picture nominees.

Apart from the technical categories, which are largely ignored by the press, science fiction as a genre is under-represented at the BAFTA awards this year. This has nothing to do with the sci-fi films of last year being below par: Interstellar and Guardians of the Galaxy are easy as well made as The Imitation Game or The Theory of Everything. This is evidence of the fact that only a certain type of film gets nominated for BAFTAs.

The BAFTAs should be an interesting night of awards; I hope that Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel do well, but from the perspective of a sci-fi fan there is an odor on under-appreciation from the nominations.

Birdman

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In 2002, Charlie Kaufman could not adapt Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief for the screen and so instead wrote a film about his struggle to adapt the book. Adaptation starting Nicolas Cage, the film which came out of this, is self-consciously everything Orlean’s book is not but is still a very entertaining watch. The same can be said of Birdman, that it is both a film about adapting and is a failed adaption of Raymond Carver’s short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

Birdman deals with the same themes as Carver’s short story: the complexities of love, abusive relationships, and suicidal thoughts. However, in narrativeit is very different to the original story. Michael Keaton stars as Riggan Thomson, a washed up movie star who used be known for playing a superhero called Birdman.

Riggan wants to reignite his career with a Broadway adaptation of Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, but he has to deal with a difficult co-star (Edward Norton), his recovering addict daughter (Emma Stone), his ex-wife (Amy Ryan), his current girlfriend (Andrea Riseboroug), an actress who is in a dysfunctional relationship with Norton’s character (Naomi Watts) and a theatre critic with a vendetta against him (Lindsay Duncan). On top of all this, Riggan is haunted by Birdman, who mocks his failures and chides him for giving up on the film franchise.

Birdman is a loving parody of the current superhero-dominated movie landscape. Keaton’s association with the Batman franchise, the epitome of the superhero craze, underlines this. Birdman himself is a thinly veiled Batman, he has the same gravely voice and a very similar costume. In one excellent scene, Birdman becomes enraged with a TV interview with Robert Downey Jr. and bullies Riggan about being the original superhero and giving it up.

Keaton excellently sends himself up throughout the movie, he has all the desperation of a washed up has-been, all the ambition of a struggling actor, all the aloofness of a self-centered artist. Norton is also a superb self-parody in his role as the self-involved serious actor who rants about “being real” on stage, while the rest of his life falls to pieces.

As well as parodying superhero films, the high art theatre world comes in for a roasting. Many stage archetypes are sent up, there is Norton as the primadonna stage star, Watts as the nervous actress making her theatre debut, Stone representing the effect of exposure to a world so focused on creating art and exploring inner emotions that real life relationships have been left to collapse.

Birdman is an exploration of modern trends in film and theatre. There are some good points about how superheroes have gone from blockbuster entertainment to serious art form, and how the struggling theatre world is trying to maximize its appeal with television and film actors, while said mass entertainment actors are trying to use theatre to gain artistic credibility. In one of the film’s best scenes, Duncan’s theatre critic lambasts Riggan for his egocentric production and contaminating her art form with his popular entertainment. Riggan hits back with how her elitist world is dying and needs people like him to keep it alive.

The film tackles several serious issues. Riggan blasts the current social media obsessed youth for not engaging with the real world and his daughter tells him that the world has moved on and Riggan is trying to cling to relevance without changing himself. Birdman is also an honest look at how superheroes have invaded every aspect of our artistic culture, even the theatre.

Points are made about the integrity of the theatre as a serious artistic medium where performers can explore complex emotions and nuanced characters. It is also pointed out that theatre is mainly experienced by older, middle-class white people, who are detached from other people’s problems. Whenever serious debate takes place in the film, it is always even handed and conducted in an entertaining way; the film never lectures or is preachy.

As well as artistic debates, the themes of love and difficult relationships are explored. Riggan has a dysfunctional relationship with her daughter, who herself looks for love in the wrong places - mainly Norton’s truth obsessed actor. The scenes we see from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love mirror the relationships in Birdman, we see unconditional love in difficult times, we see emotional betrayal, we see violent and self-destructive urges.

The most complex relationship explored in the film is Riggan’s relationship with himself, as personified by Birdman’s frequent appearances. Birdman tries to break Riggan down and convince him he is a failure. Riggan fights back but cannot escape his own haunting self-doubt. Riggan is a man searching for relevance in a world that has changed, whilst being unable to let go of his past.

Magical realism is used throughout Birdman, there are many scenes which could be interpreted as existing only in Riggan’s mind or by the fact that he actually possesses supernatural powers. The film blends together the emotional depth of a drama film with scenes of explosive action similar to any superhero movie. The use of magical realism allows Birdman to stay true to both genres, it is both superhero movie and cerebral drama. I was left not sure if Birdman is an art house superhero film or an art house film about superheroes.

Much like Kaufman’s Adaptation, Birdman is a film full of surprises which defies classification. It spans the worlds of popular culture and high art and manages to be entertaining on all fronts. Most of this is due to the superb performance from Keaton as Riggan/Birdman and the excellent supporting performances from the rest of the cast. Birdman excels as a movie, and I highly recommend that everyone go and see it.

The Eternal Past

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You might think that looking out of date is not a problem for science fiction, but it happens surprisingly frequently. How we imagine the future (or the past for that matter) says more about the present than what is likely to happen in the future. Our vision of the future is a portrait of our present ambitions and fears. From H G Wells's enthusiasm at the dawn of the machine age, to George Orwell's fears of totalitarianism, and to the atomic optimism of Isaac Asimov, science fiction novels have described the present and then looked out of date within a few years. With this in mind, how do authors or film-makers stop their future becoming dated?

This can be a big problem for films where their entire look can become outdated, sometimes in only a few years (we're still waiting on those hover boards from Back To The Future 2). However, this problem can also affect books when the cultural zeitgeist moves on. Dune’s themes of a consciousness expanding drug, spiritual awakening and revolution captured the mood of the 60s but have since been left behind by contemporary debates.

Some works just end up looking like the past. The computer system, M.O.T.H.E.R, in Alien looks very much like the larger brother of the BBC Micro. In 1979, the design of M.O.T.H.E.R probably looked very cutting edge, but now computers have evolved beyond blocky green text on black backgrounds and chunky multi-coloured keys. The whole system looks as dated as the industrial design of the rest of the Nostromo.

However, this does not reflect poorly on the film – quite the opposite, it enhances its aesthetics because it contributes to the run-down out-of-date feel of the entire ship. This is a part of one of Alien’s themes, that in the future there will be still be bad jobs. The dirt, hard work and danger of the Nostromo is the counterbalance to the shiny, clean Enterprise. The harshness of their working conditions explains why the characters are interested in investigating the strange planet if it brings them more money – or at least prevents them being fired. The computer design says more about information technology in the late 70s/early 80s, but the overall aesthetics of the film contributes to the narrative.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels are filled with gadgets that are atomic powered. From atomic blasters to atomic belts, the novels are a love letter to the optimism of the early 1950s. It was believed that the world would change completely now that atom was split, and it did. However atomic optimism melted away during the Cold War with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, and today we see the belief that atomic power will solve all our energy problems as ridiculous as the idea of fitting a tiny nuclear reactor into a belt.

This said, Foundation is a record of how people felt when it was written. Asimov's vision of the future captures the mood of the time and reminds us of how the past viewed the future, which in turn tells us about the opinions of the past. After the Second World War and the devastation it left behind, by the early 1950s people were ready (and in fact needed) to feel good about the future, and recent technological progress was a something to feel good about. This coincided with the writing of some of the great science fiction books of the time including Author C. Clarke’s Against the Fall of Night and Robert A. Heinlein’s Red Planet.

Greg Bear's novel Eon was written in 1985 but is set in 2005. However, in this 2005 the Cold War is still raging, the Soviets have a moon base and Eastern and Western orbital weapons platforms face off against each other. This may seem ridiculous today but it is a telling insight into the fear in the 80s of a never-ending Cold War with expanding weapons and expanding horizons. Another example is 2001 (was made in 1968) which imagined our present to have Strong AIs, moon bases and human-piloted missions to Jupiter. Yet there is no internet, smart phones or social media.

These are the difficulties of predicting what society will be like in a few decades. Predicting hundreds or thousands of years into the future is impossible. Life in the year 4,000 maybe almost completely unrecognisable to people today. My advice to writers is not worry about making inaccurate future descriptions and concentrate on telling a good story.

Some works of science fiction are able to make accurate predictions about the future. One example which comes to mind is the film Minority Report, which accurately predicts a few current or near future technologies including gesture control, tablet computers and non-lethal law enforcement weapons (in this case, a personal water cannon).

Minority Report includes these devices because technology experts were brought in to consult on the film. Even with experts advising on everything from future car design to town planning, it is still only possible to accurately predict what is likely to change in the near future. Our lives today are radically different to the average Victorians’ and it will be nearly impossible for an author to accurately predict what day to day life will be like in 2150.

One way to avoid being a victim of the constantly evolving popular zeitgeist is to consciously evoke the look or themes of the past. Christopher Nolan's film Interstellar opted to go for a retro blocky look to its design. It would have been easy imagine an Apple future - all smooth surfaces, bright colours and thin glass - but instead the ships and robots of Interstellar are boxy, heavy and dark. They look more closely related to the above-mentioned BBC Micro than to our modern ideas of computers.

There are several possible reasons for this choice, one of which could be to imply that in the future smooth and sleek design has gone out of fashion and angular design is popular. This trend can already be seen when comparing the cuboid design of the PS4 and Xbox Obe with the curvey PS3 and Xbox 360. It could also be because Interstellar is set in a future where knowledge of machines and computing has been lost, and thus adopting a retro design visually implies technology is moving backwards.

Whatever the reason for this design, the effect is to give the film's look a feeling of timelessness. In our future, when design ideas have moved on, Interstellar will not look as out of date as it would have if it had been a vision of the future based on current ideas of what technology looks like.

If an author or filmmaker wants to avoid appearing out of date by accurately predicting what the future will be like, then they should set their work in the near future (like Minority Report) as it is only possible to predict the near future. However, the best way to avoid your work dating as Eon has is to adopt the themes or designs of the past as a model for your future. Jonathan L. Bowen, the director of the indie sci-fi film The Phoenix Project, described this as 'the eternal past'. Bowen’s film adopts past technologies and visual styles to avoid it looking out of date in the future.

It is also worth remembering that there is nothing wrong with an author's vision appearing dated if it serves the narrative (like Alien) or makes a statement about the present (like Foundation).

How we view the future is an important record of what values and ideas are important to us now. Our fears and aspirations provide deep insights into who we are. This is something every science fiction author or filmmaker should remember.

Mockingjay - Part One

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The third part of the film Hunger Games film series lends itself to some obvious criticisms, being the adaptation of first half of Suzanne Collins’s novel it could have been slow paced, with little plot development and suffering from having to set up the second, excitement filled part. In short it could have had the same problems as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows or Twilight: New Moon. As well as being a part one there are also very high expectations, the film is based on a best selling novel and follows up two critically acclaimed box office topping hits. Mockingjay also stars run away box office sensation and critical darling Jennifer Lawrence. Between all these factors the stakes for Mockingjay - Part One are high. Despite all of this The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part One is a good film, the strong characters are put at the forefront of this picture and watching them is extremely entertaining.

The focus on their relationships grounds the film and stops it floating off into a debate about totalitarianism or being simply a series of vapid set pieces.

The strong performances from the able cast bring the characters to life (even those with little screen time), which makes the personal and interpersonal conflict vivid against what could have been the overpowering weight of the extra personal conflict. The three main conflicts are balanced against each other which stops the film becoming abstruse, melodramatic or just empty spectacle.

The personal conflict which follows Katniss Everdeen, Jennifer Lawrence, reluctantly becoming the face of the uprising against the oppressive Capitol, is handled well with an interesting exploration of the role of reluctant hero and the symbolic figure head. Katniss has always been a great reluctant hero, the perfect antidote to glory seeking superheroes that currently dominate the big screen.

Katniss’s reluctant hero is much more realistic and interesting to watch, Lawrence is ably shows the two sides of her personality: the raging Mockingjay, icon of the revolution, and the withdrawn teenage girl yearning for a normal life.

Lawrence is very good with the complex character of Katniss, bringing the character to life through her contradictions, from unrestrained anger at the violence of the Capital’s oppression,to heart breaking sadness when she sees the personal consequences of the struggle, to normal teenage angst and desire to be left alone by destiny. Where the character could have been confused, Lawrence makes her seems like a real person, filled with frailties and strengths.

Interpersonal conflict is very important in teenaged stories, with their strong focus on relationships. Mockingjay Part One avoids clichés even with characters who only appear briefly and could have been stereotypes. The supporting cast all get there moments to shine and each character adds a different dimension to the story, from the politicians and generals on either side, to Katniss family and friends struggling to live normal lives during a war.

I am glad Mockingjay Part One avoided a tired love triangle storyline common to many young adaptations. That would have been too obvious for a series as subtle as the Hunger Games and that is rooted in the extremes of life, from murderous teenagers to full scale open conflict between state and citizens.

More interesting interpersonal relationship are explored such as that of her family, her commanders and her enemies. The stand out performance of the film is Donald Sutherland as the Capital’s leader, the maniacal President Snow, who is equal parts Caligula and Stalin. A special mention must go to Philip Seymour Hoffman who turns in a great performance as calculating and manipulative Plutarch Heavensbee, producer of Katniss’s propaganda videos. He is great as ever, a talent that is sadly missed.

Some of the strongest moments of the film are in nuanced relationship drama. Extrapersonal plot developments, the rebellion itself, kept to a minimum or happen off screen so that they do not overpower the movie. This is not just a war film, it is about these characters continuing lives set against the backdrop of a war.

The most accomplished moments of extra personal conflict are not explosive action scenes but the contemplative scenes, Katniss visiting a field hospital or pausing for a few minutes by a lake. The strength of these scenes is that they also develop personal conflict, Katniss resolving to become the symbol they need in the field hospital, and the interpersonal conflict, Katniss bonding with her comrades at the lake side. Several conflicts turn on the same key emotional scenes, extra personal conflict and interpersonal conflict developing when Katniss sees a video of her love interests Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) doing propaganda video for the Capitol, rebel leader Alma Coin’s (Julianne Moore) speeches pushing personal and extrapersonal conflict forwards as Katniss becomes the Mockingjay and the rebellion steps up its efforts.

The war, or extrapersonal drama, is shown unflinchingly. The conflict we are shown is reminiscent footage we have all seen of the current conflicts in the Ukraine or Syrian. The ravishes of war in Mockingjay are also similar to reports I have read recent conflicts. The military set pieces appear to be modern, not futurist, or even looks a bit retro (the grey industrial landscape is reminiscent of the 70s or 80s) which makes the violence of the conflict appear very real. Mockingjay’s overall tone is grim tone, there is the horrors of war, the breakdown of personal relations and the Katniss doubt that if she can bear the weight of being the symbol the rebels need. The emotional tone is dark but the movie stops being oppressive by having enough inspiring movements such as the solidarity the rebels experience during a Capitol bombing raid.

The film is not perfect, it has some negative points. Peeta's character suffers from underdevelopment, not being particular interesting the first place and Hutcherson being a less than gifted actor. The rebellion could also have been explored more depth, the rebels are not shown as being completely virtuous but the politics are very one sided. The Capital is bad and the rebels are noble, reality is rarely like this and a more nuanced conflict would have been more realistic.

Despite these criticisms The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part One avoids all of the pitfalls it could have fallen into and ends up being a very well made film. The only drawback is that is raises expectations for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part Two. If part two can exceed part one than it will be a stunning end to the series. However the second half of Mockingjay turns out, I am certainly excited to see it after the strength of this film.

Zombies are not dead

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I had become tired of zombies. For a while , zombies were my favourite sci-fi B-movie villain. There had been a string of really good zombie movies, most of them British. 28 Days Later (2002) updated zombies to a modern urban environment and made them scary again. Shaun of the Dead (2004) brought zombies to my manor of North East London and managed to be a movie that was in equal parts genuine horror and hilarious character-based comedy.

Then it all went wrong, with a string of formulaic Hollywood zombie films. Finally there was Zombieland (2009); billed as pastiche of the zombie movie, it lacked either humor or charm. What Zombieland proved was that when a genre reaches the point of being mocked it has completely run out of original ideas.

What makes Zombieland boring where Shaun of the Dead was brilliant was that the latter was a completely serious and scary zombie movie with funny characters. Zombieland aimed far lower, at being a straight comedy, and managed to be not even particularly funny – although Bill Murray did have a great cameo.

For a while, I was tired of zombies and thought that nothing could rekindle my interest. Then three great titles came along, and none of them were films.

First was the Playstation 3 game The Last Of Us released in 2013. Set in a world which has collapsed after a zombie uprising, the story follows Joel, who lost his daughter during in the initial zombie uprising and now lives a cynical, survivalist life. He is given the job of transporting Ellie, a teenage girl who might hold the cure to the zombie inflection, across America. The journey is long and dangerous, they have to face zombies, dangerous survivalists, soldiers and cannibals. During the journey Joel and Ellie bond and Joel is eventually able to reconcile the loss of his daughter.

The Last Of Us succeeded where a lot of zombie movies have failed by having engaging characters. Joel and Ellie have a great dynamic and have a real emotional journey. There is more to their story then just surviving zombies, they have to find a way to live in a world that has collapsed. As an audience, we are frightened when they are threatened because we want them to survive. The story and the writing of The Last Us was much stronger than any film I have seen recently.

Last year, In The Flesh (2013) started on the BBC. It began with only three episodes but managed to be easily the best show of 2013. Earlier this year, a second series with a full six episodes was shown and this cemented the show’s reputation as one of the best on TV right now.

In the Flesh is also set after a zombie uprising but, unlike The Last of Us, civilization defeated the zombies and found a partial cure through regular injections of a new drug. Now the former zombies are being returned to society as PDS (partially deceased syndrome) suffers. The show follows Kieren Walker, who is returned to his family in the small Yorkshire village of Roarton. Kieren faces the prejudice and open hostility of a small community coming to terms with a big change.

In the shows zombies or PDS suffers are clearly a metaphor for the social changes which have gone on in Britain since the 1960s. Part allegory on immigration, part analogy for homosexuality, In the Flesh makes a point about how hard it is for people to accept others who are different, even within their own family. Kieren goes on a painful emotional journey, where he has to deal with the circumstances of his death, the hostility of people he used to call friends, the rise of a new anti-PDS political party, and an undead separatist movement.

In the Flesh is gripping because it has an intelligent point to make, but it also has strong characters and an emotionally-engaging story. We long for Kieren eventually to find someway he can live in peace, despite his difference.

Recently I have finished reading M.R. Carey’s The Girl With All The Gifts (published June 2014), which is also set in a world after a zombie uprising. As in The Last Of Us, humanity only survives in a few survivalist camps and the rest of the world has been overrun with zombies, or ‘hungries’ as they called in the book. The novel follows Melanie, a girl in a strange school on an army base. In many ways Melanie has a normal life – she loves school, has a crush on her teacher Miss Justineau, and enjoys stories about the Greek myths – but quickly we learn that there is something very unusual about Melanie.

Melanie and the children in her class are caught somewhere between being human and a violent ‘hungry’. They can learn and talk but also have insatiable desire to eat human flesh. She is a part of program to study the hungries to find a cure. When the school is attacked, Melanie, Miss Justineau, the brutish Sergeant Parks, the callous Dr. Caldwell and the green Private Gallagher are thrown out into the dangerous world of hungries and violent survivalists known as junkers. Surviving in the ruins of London relies on them all working together, but as the novel progresses they find it hard to trust each other.

The Girl With All The Gifts is one of those novels which grabs you on page one and whisks you away with a captivating story. Although Melanie is a strange character to be inside the head of, her sense of wonder at the world outside her classroom is completely captivating. The novel has nail-biting tension, beautiful writing and engaging characters. Carey plays with the reader’s sympathy and it is brilliant how he is able to make you fall in love with characters you hated at the beginning of the novel.

All three of these works leave the wider zombie situation unresolved, and instead focus on the characters and their emotional journey. We can relate to them as people searching for friends, love or home in a hostile world, as it is something we have all experienced to a greater or lesser extent. In these three cases, good writing and engaging characters make a great zombie story, just as they make a great story in any other genre.

It is also interesting that none of these stories focus on the initial zombie uprising but instead deal with how people live in a changed world. Stories about zombie uprisings have been done to death, but there is still life in the zombie genre by finding original ways to approach zombie stories. Zombie films may be dead, but my love of zombies lives on in other media.

Gravity

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Veteran film critic & general British institution Mark Kermode once described 3D cinema as ‘phoney-baloney gimmickry’. To date there has been little evidence to contradict him. A raft of 2D animated & live action movies have been aggressively upgraded to 3D for dubious commercial reasons. Audiences have complained of headaches, blurred vision or not being able to see any difference.

It seems that no film can use 3D to enhance the narrative experience and this technology will be confined to the dustbin of cinema gimmick along with the double feature and scratch-and-sniff. Now director Alfonso Cuarón has created Gravity, a film which might just redeem the new format.

Gravity is a film that is designed for the big screen. After leaving the cinema I felt the impact of that movie would be lost on even the best HDTV/Blue-Ray home entertainment combo. I paid extra to enjoy it in IMAX and felt that even a traditional smaller cinema would lose something of the film’s visual flair.

There is plenty of spectacle in this film. There is spectacle in seeing the international space station ripped apart in a moment and there is spectacle in watching the continents on Earth slowly pass underneath the protagonists. However what is really impressive about the film’s visuals is Cuarón’s long sweeping camera shots that move around, above and below the subjects, as weightless as the astronauts the film focuses on.

The spectacle is also in Cuarón’s wide shots, full of detail, most of which would be lost on a screen any smaller than IMAX. Gravity is a big film, big in budget, big in scope and big in impact.

The plot can be written on the back of a postcard. Sandra Bullock is Ryan Stone, a medical expert who is currently installing a prototype medical scanner to the Huddle Space Telescope. She is assisted by Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) a veteran astronaut on his last mission. When a Russian satellite is destroyed it creates a global domino effect of expanding space debris. These collide with Stone and Kowalski, destroying their shuttle and hurling them into space. The two must work together in the most inhospitable environment to survive and make it back to Earth.

Plot is not the focus of Cuarón’s hard-sci-fi disaster movie, instead this film is all about the visuals, mainly the 3D which is used to create a sense of depth. The 3D shows us how far from Earth the protagonists are, the scale of the international space station and the distance between objects in orbit. Cuarón creates a feeling of openness and emptiness greater than John Ford did in his classic westerns. Space is a frontier that opens onto nothing and where fate is cruel to people who venture there.

The 3D is also used sparingly, when it can be most effective. Only a few times during the film do objects fly out of the screen towards us, and these are during the movie’s most intense moments. To break up these spectacular scenes of orbital destruction, Cuarón uses long sweeping shots, moving around characters, in and out of their point of view and across space. He aptly moves from long shots to extreme close ups without an edit.

However great the 3D is, visuals alone cannot make a film great. Gravity has a great character and a great performance at its heart. The danger to Ryan feels very real and is subtly conveyed by Bullock’s stunning performance. A significant amount of the film is given over to her, alone in space, trying to survive. It is hard to act through extended close up shots without any other actor to bounce off but Bullock handles her character masterfully.

She creates a convincing arc for the character from nervous space virgin at the start, through the extreme terror of a helpless victim to commanding confidence by the end of the film. Truly this is a film to challenge an actor and Bullock delivers an Oscar-winning performance if ever there was one.

Ryan is a great character: she is played well, has a strong backstory, convincing character arc and genuine emotional responses. I rooted for her more than I have any other recent hero or heroine from a Hollywood blockbuster. In her simple terror and the everyday nature of her character, we as an audience can really relate to her. We are able to put ourselves in her position and see the action of Gravity through the character’s eyes.

The simple story perfectly facilitates this. When Ryan succeeds I felt like cheering and when things look bleak for her I felt a real lump in my throat. This was partly due to the seriousness of the film. Throughout I thought it was a real possibility that this film would not have a Hollywood ending and that Ryan might be left drifting alone and cold in space when the credits rolled.

A great film is made by combining impressive visual trickery with strong story and empathetic characters. Gravity is a movie that has all three. However, the visuals are the greatest achievement here; for the first time 3D was used to enhance the narrative experience and not just to provide a great visual experience. It perfectly conveys a sense of weightlessness in space as we watch screws or pieces of satellite debris float past.

Gravity is a movie that makes use of the entire film-maker’s tool box to create a visually spectacular and deeply emotional film. The 3D is amazing, but without the good characterisation and strong performances it would not be enough to support the film. Other directors of 3D movies should take a leaf out of Cuarón’s book. This is how it is done.

Thor: Dark World

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What do the Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and Man of Steel all have in common. They fall down in the third act. They all start off pretty well, but all three fall apart at the end. When they expand into bloated action set pieces and the story is lost in an attempt to cram as much spectacle as possible, these films fail to capitalise on their promising opening and middle sections. Contrast these films to the great action movies on the 1980s: Aliens, Predator, Die Hard. These undisputed classics of their genre only become tighter and more focused in the third act. The action boils down to one-on-one conflict of hero against villain where good can ultimately triumph over evil.

Sure, there is plenty of spectacle in Aliens's final conflict but it does not end with a hundred eggs hatching and Ripley fighting off hordes of aliens. Instead it ends with her fighting the queen; it’s a battle of alien terror against a human fighting for survival.

In the end these films become a distilled version of themselves, not an expanded version filled with nameless, faceless, pointless characters who only exist to be punched by the heroes. Many Hollywood action blockbuster now have a third act problem; however good they are in their set-up and development, these films fall apart at the resolution stage.

So does the latest offering from Marvel, Thor: Dark World break the mould?

The quick answer is that this film is much better structured than previous Marvel titles. The plot flows together well and leads to an appropriate conclusion. After the film-makers have established the main characters in the audience’s mind they can get on with the action, skipping the need for a tedious ‘introducing everyone’ stage.

The plot of Thor: Dark World is little more than an excuse for a series of action set pieces. It makes little sense and hangs on a series of bizarre coincidences. At some time in the distant past Thor’s grandfather defeated a race of dark elves who wanted to destroy all light using a weapon known as the Aether. Now the nine worlds are about to align and the dark elves have returned to use the Aether to destroy them all.

Thor’s love interest Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) accidentally finds the Aether in an abandoned warehouse in London, which is pretty convenient given otherwise there would no point in having her in the film. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returns to save her from the dark elves, have a brief period of emotional angst and then stop the dark elves destroying all nine worlds. The only snag is that to do all of this, he must enlist the help of his treacherous brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston).

It’s not uncommon for action blockbuster to place the plot and characters as secondary to the action, and in this case it is worth the series of beautifully designed, thrilling set pieces. It is also nice to see that this movie does not end with excessive property damage like Man of Steel & Avengers. That was getting boring. The final action scene in Greenwich doesn’t lack spectacle but manages to keep the action much tighter in focus as Thor battles against the dark elves’ leader (Christopher Eccleston).

Ending the film with Thor facing off against a super-villain is much more interesting than watching a group of people fight an army of faceless alien villains whose motivation is unclear at best. I can see why it was necessary to end the Avengers that way; watching six superheroes fight one villain wouldn’t be that thrilling. That’d be a pretty one-sided fight as the Avengers are pretty bad-ass.

However in creating these characters who possess enormous power, I feel the film-makers have lost the relatability of their protagonists. Die Hard’s John McClane is an everyday man in a strange situation, something we can all relate to. Superheroes are special by their very nature and are thus more difficult to relate to. Thor makes this problem worse by asking the audience to place themselves in the shoes of a Norse God.

We are supposed to relate to Thor via his real world problems – namely, his love life. Thor’s father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) wants him to find a nice Asgardian women like Sif (Jaimie Alexander) who has no discernible personality and almost no screen time. However, there is no tension in this story, partly because of Alexander’s lack of screen time and partly because it is clear from the start that Thor and Jane Foster will end up together.

The rest of the film has little emotional resonance. The big emotional moment in the middle of the film falls flat and doesn’t make Thor any more sympathetic as a character. This isn’t helped by Hemsworth’s terrible, wooden performance.

The rest of the cast are little better, however. Eccleston is unrecognisable under layers of make-up and does little more than fill the role of a two-dimensional villain. Hopkins phones in his performance and the usually very watchable Portman is on worse form than usual.

Idris Elba, who could act the socks off the rest of them in this sleep, turns up for five minutes as a pointless character. Only Hiddleston as Loki delivers in the movie. He is the only one with a credible emotional reaction to the main emotional scene. Hiddleston clearly delights in playing the trickster Loki and manages to be both funny and dark alternatively throughout the film. All the other characters are either there as window dressing or are completely pointless.

Thor is still a great character for an action movie: tough, courageous, lots of enemies to fight and nine worlds to save. The series of action set pieces both in London and in Asgard are breathtaking and stand up to the impressive legacy of action scenes the Avengers movies have built up. The visual effects, set design and combat choreography are all excellent which is what you want from an action film.

Despite this I was left with the feeling this was a very average movie. In many ways, it was acceptable and somewhat of an improvement on previous films in the franchise, but it offered nothing new or innovative.

I preferred the more paired down ending to a huge expansive set piece, the characters came through better and none of the visual impact was lost. Overall Thor: Dark World is one for the Avengers fans. They’ll love it for sure, but the general cinema audience might be left a bit cold.

Top Ten Spaceships

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From the Star-Destroyer flying overhead at the beginning of Star Wars to Klaatu’s flying saucer descending in the original Day The Earth Stood Still, the idea of a spaceship goes hand-in-hand with what we expect from sci-fi. Where would science fiction be without space ships? It would certainly have lost a significant proportion of its iconography. To celebrate this I have chosen ten ships which stand out to me as great icons of the genre. This list is by no means definitive (neither ships mentioned above is included) but these ten vessels are essential to the narratives of their stories, and they’re fiction design classics as well.

10. The Lying Bastard – Ringworld

This one takes some explaining: built by Pierson’s Puppeteers – a cowardly two-headed alien race from Larry Niven’s Known Space series – the Lying Bastard is technically advanced and packs a few nifty tricks.

Though the Puppeteers detest violence, this personal vessel (large enough to carry four in cramped conditions) is filled with tools which could easily be used as weapons – a disintegration ray supposed to be used for digging, a flash-light with a beam so powerful it can cut someone in half. Hence our protagonist, Louis Wu’s affectionate nickname for the ship.

The Lying Bastard is also protected by the Puppeteers’ impervious hull, which comes in handy when the ship collides with the Ringworld and the novel gets interesting.

9. Serenity – Firefly & Serenity

Serenity, a second-hand Firefly-class ship and the setting for Joss Whedon’s short-lived Firefly, has as wonderfully iconic design. To me it’s like a duck, odd-shaped and bulky on the ground but surprisingly graceful in the air.

Serenity may be small compared to the settings of some stories but it has enough secret hidey-holes filled with stolen goods and the occasional fugitive to keep the audience interested. More than anything, the crew of Serenity are a family and no family is complete without a home. Whedon lovingly brings it to life for this cult season of TV and the subsequent film.

8. Red Dwarf – Red Dwarf

In the future, there will still be shit jobs; this unavoidable truth is the essence of Red Dwarf, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor’s sci-fi/comedy show. Huge, lumbering and most of it serving no visible purpose, Red Dwarf is a place where the downtrodden of the future toil away for little money.

It has an AI with an IQ of 6,000 (or the same IQ as 6,000 PE teachers), a surviving crew of four (one human, one hologram, one cat and one android) and is vast enough to contain any number of comedy capers. One piece of advice: make sure you know one of their garbage pods when you see it.

7. Luke’s X-wing – Star Wars

No, not the Millennium Falcon; the real hero among Star Wars’ ships is Luke’s dependable X-wing. The star of sci-fi’s greatest David and Goliath scene, Luke must pilot this fast but well-armed single person star-fighter down the equatorial trench of the Death Star to deliver a photo-torpedo to the enormous battle station’s only weak spot.

The Millennium Falcon plays only a supporting role in this, one of cinema’s most dramatic scenes. It’s Luke in his plucky X-wing we root for, breath held as he presses the fire key and launches those missiles down an unshielded ventilation port. It helps if you have the force on your side at the final hurdle but you need an X-wing to get you there first.

6. Planet Express ship – Futurama

In the year 3000 you wanted some soft toys delivered to the moon, Planet Express would be your first call. Another great example of blue-collar jobs in the far future, the staff of this delivery company frequently ends up in trouble on simple delivery jobs, always relying on their trusty nameless vessel.

The ship has been everywhere with its human, robot and lobster crew, from the University of Mars, to Roswell in 1947. The only thing they won’t deliver is presents for Santa.

5. Nostromo – Alien

Continuing on from Red Dwarf, it seems to me the worst job you could get in the future would be working on the intergalactic mining vessel Nostromo. Made almost entirely out of tiny ducts, pipes and small spaces for nasty things to hide in, the ship is managed by what looks like a computer from the late 1970s.

Its crew is so obsessed with getting their bonuses that they barely have time to investigate a mysterious signal they pick up on their travels. When they do, they discover science fiction’s most vicious predator and spend the rest of their short lives running or being attacked in the ship’s escape pods. All in all, not a great ship on which to be a crew member.

4. The Truck – Galaxy Truckers

Galaxy Truckers is a brilliant board game in which you assemble your space truck out of tiles picturing spare parts and then send it on a run around the stars to get the stuffing knocked out of it. Bits fall off, crew members get spaced, the guns never point in the right direction and usually the whole thing is lopsided. We love this game, because no matter how well you build your ship at the start of each round, it always ends up in port hobbling along on its last engine, with a large hole in the side.

There’s a fine art to building robust space trucks and no human seems to be able to master it.

3. Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints – Surface Detail (Culture Universe)

No list of spaceships would be complete without a mention of the late Iain M. Banks and his amazingly named Culture vessels – runners up for a position on this list included Serious Callers Only, Grey Matter and Funny, It Worked Last Time. However the prize must go to Surface Detail’s Fast Picket Ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints, a vessel which is basically a self contained war fleet, capable of breaking into a fleet of smaller, deadly warships. In one scene, the FOTNMC takes out an entire enemy armada in a few seconds, displaying the Culture’s vastly destructive military power which goes along with their utopian lack of laws, leaders and social structure.

The casual cruelty and moments of sudden viciousness of the FOTNMC show the dark side to the never ending sex and drugs free-for-all that is the Culture.

2. The Normandy – Mass Effect

If I were going to fly around a hostile galaxy and fight ancient killer machines, I would want a ship like the Normandy. Piloted by Seth Green’s Joker and crewed by a bizarre rag-tag group of aliens and humans, The Normandy is as versatile as its captain, Commander Shepard.

There is enormous fun to be had exploring each layer of the ship and talking to every crew member, finding out their backstory and getting their opinion on the last mission they went on. Like Serenity, The Normandy is a home and its crew members are a family. Throughout the Mass Effect series you get to know each personally and the Normandy is the perfect setting for this.

1. Discovery One – 2001: A Space Odyssey

Without 2001, there would be no Star Wars and without Star Wars there would be no sci-fi summer blockbusters or triple A games. It all began here in 1968 when Stanley Kubrick teamed up with Arthur C. Clarke to expand one of his short stories into a film. What resulted pioneered a lot of special effects that are now a staple of modern sci-fi.

The most intelligible part of the narrative takes place on Discovery One, a ship sent from Earth to investigate a mysterious black monolith that has appeared in space around Jupiter. The ship has an active crew of 2 and is run by its AI, HAL. Unfortunately, conflicting parameters in HAL’s programming drive him to become murderous. More than the terminator, HAL is logical, cold and unwavering in his killing of the crew of Discovery One, leading to some of science fiction’s most iconic scenes. The mission was a failure but 2001 was a huge success which changed science fiction forever.

Honourable mention: The TARDIS – Doctor Who

Technically not a spaceship, in that she rarely does any flying, but a special mention must go to the Doctor’s mind bending, bigger-on-the-inside space and time travelling device.

It’s huge, unknowable and full of surprises. Its ability to always go somewhere interesting is one of the greatest plot devices in TV fiction. A piece of trivia for anyone keeping track: since Doctor Who was brought back in 2005, all regenerations have taken place in the TARDIS console room, including the Master’s and the Doctor’s fake one during Journey’s End. If only those walls could talk.

Elysium

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District 9 exploded onto our screens to commercial success and critical acclaim in 2009. The racism allegory and genuinely original storyline captured the minds of cinema-goers bored to cynical tears by too many formulaic Hollywood blockbusters. Now director Neill Blomkamp is back, his new sci-fi film tackling the wealth gap.

Elysium depicts a literal and vast gap between the rich and poor; the uber-wealthy orbit above the Earth in Elysium, a cartwheel-shaped paradise in space complete with beautiful homes, clean air and perfect medicine. The rest of humanity lives back on Earth, in cramped mega-cities whose infrastructure is collapsing from over-population.

Matt Damon is Max, a former car thief trying to go straight with a factory job and win the heart of his childhood sweetheart Frey (Alice Braga). When he is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation at work, he soon realises that only the perfect healthcare of Elysium can save his life.

Meanwhile on Elysium itself, defence secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) is under criticism for shooting down a shuttle attempting to land illegally on the station and for employing the ruthless mercenary Kruger (Sharlto Copley). Soon Max is caught up in Delacourt’s plot to stage of coup on Elysium and the plans of Spider (Wagner Moura), a gang leader intent on overthrowing Elysium. The plot starts out strong and manages to weave its many threads together well. It quickly establishes the setting and characters, grounding them in the audience’s mind. However this expert story-telling does not last long; about halfway through the film, we are back to standard action movie fair with Max fighting Kruger, who has kidnapped Frey.

The characters are not nuanced but this is a film that benefits from iconic characters. Max is an acceptable everyman trying to make his way in an unfair world and Damon plays the part well, as we’ve come to expect from him. Foster is clearly having fun, camping it up slightly as the heartless Delacourt. Copley puts in a good turn as the disgusting South African hired killer, and Braga also does her best with a severely under-developed character. The stand out performer is Moura, who takes Spider from terrifying gangster to loveable freedom fighter.

Where Elysium really comes to life is in its visual representation of the wealth gap. Life on Earth is dirty, but illustrates wonderfully the resilience of human nature when faced with adversity. Housing consists of shacks built on the sides of damaged skyscrapers, and every device is cobbled together form several broken ones. Spider’s makeshift HQ is high-tech but clearly salvaged from scrap, displaying his understanding of machinery. His only option on poverty-ridden Earth is to learn how to make and fix things. We see this in the most deprived areas on Earth today and it shown brilliantly in this film. The contrast between Earth and Elysium is stark; the space station is presented as a late 1980s vision of the future, all geometric shapes and blocky single colour graphics. It would have been easy to give Elysium an Apple-like aesthetic, complete with motion control and touch screens, but this representation would have dated quickly. The visual subtext is clear; Elysium’s wealth has isolated its inhabitants from understanding their complex technology, whereas scarcity has forced the people of Earth to be clever.

Where Elysium does well, it excels. Where it does poorly, it becomes a generic Hollywood sci-fi, action blockbuster. The visuals are detailed and clever, whereas the characters are largely transparent. The plot starts outs strong before petering out, but is well supported by the principal players. As a successor to District 9 it has too much Hollywood blockbuster and not enough original ideas. The metaphor is strong, but not developed in enough detail to really resonate with the audience. Fans of District 9 will be entertained but this is clearly the weaker of the two films.

Pacific Rim

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Guillermo del Toro is an interesting choice of director for a colossal summer blockbuster about giant robots and sea monsters, but if you think about it, it’s a completely appropriate choice.

He enjoyed commercial success with Blade II and Hellboy, brought visual splendour to the big screen with Pan’s Labyrinth, and received international critical acclaim for the Devil’s Backbone. Del Toro has a distinctive visual style that works in both small scale, intimate horror movies and huge summer blockbusters.

In the near future, an inter-dimensional rift has opened at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and huge alien monsters known as “Kaiju” have begun rampaging across cities on the Pacific Rim. The nations of the rim have put aside their differences to combat the alien threat and build “Jaegers”, massive Kaiju-fighting mechs. Each Jaeger requires two pilots who have to know each other intimately for the “neural handshake” to be successful. Most Jaeger pilots are sibling- or parent-and-child teams.

Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) was a Jaeger pilot with his brother until his brother was killed in a Kaiju attack on Alaska. Five years later, the Jaeger program is being wound down after several defeats by new, larger Kaiju. The Jaegers’ commander Stacker Pentecost (Idris Elba) persuades Becket to return and team up with new co-pilot Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) for a final Jaeger attack on the source of the Kaiju threat, the Pacific rift.

It sounds like standard summer action/sci-fi blockbuster, but it is in the execution that this film excels. Both the Jaegers and the Kaiju are beautifully realised, with attention paid to the tiniest detail of how they walk, turn and fight. The film takes place on an epic scale which del Toro emphasises with his photography. In one especially impressive scene a Jaeger picks up a ship to use as a club to beat a Kaiju; this should give you an idea of how massive we’re talking. Note that this film is certainly worth seeing in IMAX to fully appreciate how enormous the Jaegers are.

In the hands of a less talented director, this would just be a film about special effects but del Toro puts a human story at its heart. Charlie Hunnam conveys Becket’s loss and self-doubt effectively and makes his new-found confidence believable after he teams up with Mori. The neural handshake is an effective method of characterisation, as we see different aspects or the characters’ lives when their thoughts mix inside the Jaegers. When Becket is transported back to Mori’s youth and sees her parents die in a Kaiju attack, that’s Mori’s back story effectively filled in one scene.

The film has a lot of strong performances, Rinko Kikuchi conveys the pain of her character’s loss convincingly, and Robert Kazinsky is excellent as Becket’s cocky Australian rival Check Hansen. Charlie Day and Burn Gorman put in a good turn as a pair of scientists working on the Jaegers, and there is a great addition in the cameo by Ron Perlman, of Hellboy fame, as a dealer of black-market deceased Kaiju bits. However, the stand out performance has to be the always-brilliant Elba, who delivers the film’s most stirring speech with Shakespearian gusto as he bellows ‘We are cancelling apocalypse!’

Aside from pure ‘Robots and monsters are cool’, one of the story’s key themes is cooperation. The Jaegers are built around the idea of working together; they are manufactured by the nations of the world pooling their resources, and must be operated by two warriors fighting as one.

This is not a surprising or new theme from del Toro, who has explored fascism in Spain in previous films, though characters setting aside national and cultural differences to come together against a common evil is always good to watch. My main criticism of Pacific Rim is that it focuses too heavily on the American and Australian Jaegers, relegating the Chinese and Russian Jaegers to minor supporting roles.

Pacific Rim is beautiful to watch with amazing visuals and gorgeous character design, and as much attention is paid to the villain’s appearance as to the heroes. This is one of those films that really could have gone either way, but in the hands of del Toro and his excellent cast it could just be the best film of the summer.

Man of Steel

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There is a drive to make superhero movies with meaning rather than just being empty special effects filled Hollywood blockbusters. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is the best example of the superhero genre done with integrity and substance. It has set the mould for a lot of ‘dark and gritty’ superhero films to follow. Now Superman is given the dark and gritty treatment with director Zack Snyder veteran of 300 and Watchmen.

The film certainly has style as the effects are beautifully realised. I appreciated the design consistency in the Kryptonian technology and the clear thought that has been put into how this advanced civilization will interact with their devices. Attention has been paid to make sections of the film based around the Kryptonian characters visually distinctive, appearing to be both alien and familiar.

The entire opening section of the film takes place on the planet Krypton and is the film’s most exciting sequence. The visuals, plot and acting are firing on all cylinders. Russell Crow is excellent as Jor-El, the lone voice of reason amongst a dying planet. The special effects continue to be impressive in the section of the film based on Earth. With modern effects technology Snyder can show how powerful Superman is which this film does well. The problem with doing this well is that it we struggle to empathise with a character who is nearly invulnerable.

As Snyder can show how powerful Superman is, he needs a villain who is equally powerful. Lex Luther can be an anti-climatic villain as he relies on a tricking Superman. What Superman needs is General Zod, someone his equal in power who Superman can have a physical confrontation with, this makes for a stronger climax to the film. This film borrows from the Superman II model that Superman works best when he has someone to punch. Michael Shannon is very good as the exiled Kryptonian military commander, clearly enjoying the role of a pantomime villain. The other supporting cast are also very good, Kevin Costner, Laurence Fishburne and Richard Schiff all turn in strong performances. This has the potential to be a complex and interesting superhero movie.

It just fails to deliver on the promises it makes. The film is too long and losses pace in the second half, descending into an endless stream of action spectacles. By the end of the movie I was suffering from blockbuster fatigue, an over exposure to epic fights scenes leading to a desire for a different variety of drama. Henry Cavill is too wooden to make either Superman or Clark Kent a relatable character and becomes more wooden when he dons the red cape. The film needs more development of Clark Kent as a character and less time spent focusing on him as Superman. This could have easily been achieved by cuts from the unnecessarily long action scenes.

The plot of the film is almost inconsequential and serves only as a vehicle for explosive action sequences. The same can be said for a lot of enjoyable Hollywood blockbusters but having a strong emotional relationship wit the protagonist is essential to making these films a success. Man of Steel lacks an engaging plot or an empathetic protagonist to fill the essentially dead time between action scenes.

Man of Steel is an action spectacle with too much action and a lack of substance. There is little development of the Clark Kent/Superman character, no emotional core to the film and no real sense of a plot. The effects and design, as well as the supporting cast, work their hardest but they cannot fill the gapping void at the centre of this film. This is a solid effort to make a more meaningful Superman movie but fails to be anything more than another identikit Hollywood blockbuster by being a film that lacks meaning.