Watch the Skies!: Science Fiction, the 1950s and Us

There are few things in life that allow you to crease the world without consequence. In the world of movies, those consequences can be profound.

Take Spielberg, a moderately talented filmmaker who eschews originality and insight, instead trusts an extraordinary intuition about what people like. Or think they like. Or can be fooled into liking with a several hundred million dollar promotion budget.

This is part of that promotion, a fake documentary about science fiction movies with a commercial for Spielberg's "War of the Worlds," tacked on a the end. The "history" here is his own version of what happened in the genre, which naturally enough starts when he started watching movies.

So we get a story about science fiction movies from an accomplished storyteller with a selfish purpose. And it is nearly all wrong. I hope this is enough to warn you away from this travesty. It is bad enough that he peppers us with vulgar movies (yes, even the nobly themed "Schindler"); but it is beyond the pale for him to reinvent the history of cinema to suit himself.

Science fiction goes all the way back to the invention of movies (and of course before that in literature). The core notion has always been with us: we enter the world of film to see another world. So far as films about the future and/or space, that element of the genre was fully mature by the end of the 30s and reached its peak in "Forbidden Planet" of 1956.

After that, the genre was reimagined to host technological thrills either in the story or in the effects brazenly displayed. Scott (shown here with the briefest of comments) added horror with "Alien" and improved on the self-reference of "Planet" with "Bladerunner."

All this without the meddling of Mr Dreamworks. Bah.

Incidentally,Spielberg's one really good film ("Close Encounters") is a French New Wave project about movie-making only wrapped in sci-fi like the French (and now the Hong Kongers) like to wrap in the gangster genre. Never was, even by him at the time, considered sci-fi.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.