This past weekend, Arrival hit theaters worldwide and was met with overall positive criticism. The film deals with the arrival of aliens on Earth and a select group of human scientists and professors who are tasked with figuring out the motive of the alien visitors before its too late. Many who saw it have called this film “thoughtful” and “smart”. Let’s explore some other films that have been put in this same category throughout the years.
District 9
When the first trailer for District 9 dropped, no one really knew what to think of it. Was it an Independence Day rip off? Was it a gritty E.T set in South Africa? Many people asked the same questions until seeing it for the first time. This film gave a unique look at the idea of an alien invasion. Instead of the aliens taking over the world and enslaving the human race, the human race enslaved the aliens and made them into essentially refugees. This was one of the few movies that did not paint the aliens as hostile invaders and instead showed them as beings just like us who just wanted to go home.
WALL-E
Now I know what you must be thinking, what is a Disney/Pixar film doing in this list? WALL-E was the first Disney film that ever explored a very interesting idea, what happens when the Earth gets used up? The answer, of course, is space as it usually is in science fiction films. The big difference with this story is that it is told through the eyes of a simple robot named WALL-E. We follow the amazing adventure from deserted and hopeless Earth into the vastness of space where WALL-E meets new friends and uncovers the truth behind why everyone has left the planet. This film also explores the unfortunately true side of what technology has done to the health of the human population and how that may become more of a problem in the future.
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Blade Runner
Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner dove deep into the mind of robots and artificial intelligence. When four “replicants” defect and go on the run, it is up to an ex cop turned assassin, also known as a blade runner, to eliminate the problem. Along the way, this man is faced with thoughts of what makes a human a human and what makes a clone a clone. At the time this film was a very far-fetched idea of what the future, which as of now is only three years away in 2019, would be like. With the advancements in technology and robotics in the past decade, the ideas in this film are not as impossible as they once seemed.
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Interstellar
There are very few films I have seen that have left me speechless for days after watching them. Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar was most definitely one of these films. This film took the idea of space travel to a place that many of us haven’t seen since 2001: A Space Odyssey. The amount of emotion and thought that went into this story left me feeling both happy and incredibly depressed after the fact. Just the simple notion of time within the story and its consequences is a gut-wrenching reminder of how fragile life is and what it means to truly live. Mixing Nolan’s classic cinematography and the astounding realness of today’s digital effects and IMAX cameras, this film captures the true essence of being in space and the wonders and horrors that follow it.
2001: A Space Odyssey
When you think about science fiction and outer space in films it is nearly impossible to not think about Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. This film made the audience truly think about what they were watching as man and machine faced off in a race to find out the secrets of human existence. While so many sci-fi films focus on the impending doom of aliens and their fascination with destruction, this film toys with the idea that we’ve been watched from afar and put on a predetermined track. Pitting a brilliant man and a clever machine against each other is one of the tensest competitions in film history. And really, that ending still to this day continues to blow the minds of audiences young and old!
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