Classic Sci-Fi

For as long as I can remember, I've loved Science Fiction and Fantasy. I blame my brother. He is five years older than me and he loved Star Wars. Some of my earliest memories include words like droid, wookie, light saber, and Millennium Falcon. I think I knew what Star Wars was before I knew what a movie was. But it wasn't just movies that kindled my love of sci-fi. Before George Lucas finally decided to tell Anakin Skywalker's story, we all thought the only place we'd get to revisit the Galaxy Far, Far Away was in books.

The Time Machine (1960) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)

I remember being so excited when my brother ordered Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" from some mail-order book club, and being impatient while I waited for my turn to read it. I continued reading the expanded Star Wars universe books for several years. They weren't all great, but I still think Zahn's "Thrawn" series would have made a better basis for the Sequel Trilogy than the disjointed mess we actually got.

Again following my brother's example, I branched out into reading Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, Orson Scott Card, and of course J.R.R. Tolkien. My borother actually gave me my first copy of The Fellowship of the Ring when I was in 5th grade. It took me a few tries to actually get through it and onto the rest of the series, but once I did, it was over. The Lord of the Rings has been my favorite book ever since.

Sci-Fi and fantasy fiction stimulate my imagination more than any other genre. I love to get lost in a massive fictional world, like Middle-Earth. I love the ideas and possibilities that sci-fi explores (even if they are not really possible, as my brother, now an actual experimental physicist, loves to point out).

One of the inherent problems with science fiction however, is that as time marches on some ideas that once seemed new and exciting can become ordinary, or even be disproved. I recently watched two classic sci-fi movies that are based on books that were written in the 19th century - The Time Machine (1960), based on an H.G. Wells novel, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), based on a Jules Verne novel. Both of these movies suffer from these problems. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't still enjoyable.

The Time Machine is definitely the weaker of the two films, both in terms of the underlying ideas and as a film. Rod Taylor plays George, an apparently independently wealthy British gentleman who designs and builds a time machine out of a chair, some lights, a crystal and a big spinning disc. There is no attempt to explain how George discovered the ability to make his chair travel through time. It just does.

After his stuffy aristocratic neighbors laugh at his ideas, George travels about 10,000 years into the future where he finds humanity divided into two societies, the Morlocks and the Eloi. The Morlocks are savage, cave-dwelling monsters who breed the Eloi for food. The Eloi look like normal humans to George, but he discovers they are docile, innocent and servile. He, of course, finds a young blonde woman who seems to respond to his presence a little more than the others and tries to find out what is going on in this future through her.

There is the obligatory climactic battle with the Morlocks, in which the Eloi begin to remember their strength. George returns to 1899 London long enough to explain everything to his uppity friends and then goes back to the future (no pun intended) to help the fledgeling Eloi society rebuild their civilization.

I don't blame H.G. Wells for writing what seems to modern audiences to be a very simplistic explanation for time travel, but there is no escaping that even in 1960, when the film was released, it probably seemed kind of hokey - and definitely does today. More disturbing are the subtle racist, sexist and imperialist undertones in the film.

At one point George tells his wide-eyed female Eloi companion Weena, that he shouldn't have been angry at the Eloi for their primitive innocence. To do so would be like getting angry at the natives in Bali in his own time. Indeed the film treats the Eloi as ignorant children who must be rescued from savagery and taught how to be civilized the British aristocracy. Wells was a product of his time, and it shouldn't be surprising that he would write from an imperialist point of view, but again, there's no escaping how the film comes across today.

By contrast, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea holds up much better as a film. The underlying scientific idea - the submarine - is now commonplace. When Verne wrote the story it was 50 years before such a thing existed, but by 1954 when the film was released, submarines had been used in two world wars. Despite this, the film holds up much better than The Time Machine because of its human story and the performances of its cast.

Kirk Douglas, James Mason and Peter Lorre are all in a different class of actor than anyone in The Time Machine. James Mason brings a believable menace and madness to his Captain Nemo. Kirk Douglas plays a good-hearted, but uncouth swashbuckler, against the more refined professor he accompanies. Peter Lorre, as he often did, plays a kind of creepy comic relief.

Though the film deals with themes of human violence and the dangers of advancing technology, it does so with a far lighter touch than The Time Machine. It is a Disney movie, and therefore must have a song - sung by Kirk Douglas playing a turtle-shell banjo. There is also a friendly seal wandering around the boat. These saccharin touches are a little ridiculous, but they don't ruin what is overall a strong adventure film.