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

I am a great fan of science fiction and I am still wondering how it comes that I did not enjoy so much this film. Having four of my preferred directors - Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott and James Cameron - arguably the best or among the best quartet of directors of the genre getting together to talk about the science fiction films of the 50s and 60s and how these influenced their careers and their work - this is golden material and an opportunity that can be turned into an unique experience for fans like me. And yet, despite bringing these four giants together, and despite picking all or almost all the right movies of the genre and of the time to talk about them the film results in quite a boring sub-hour, with the classical talking faces interleaved with clips from the film, and especially with quite a confusing and uninspiring line of text. After too little historical context setting at the beginning the documentary slides into an enumeration of the various themes which fails to be interesting or to build up any original ideas. It looks almost like the four directors where respectfully left to tell their stories and then the film was assembled in the cutting room. I expected more interaction between the four, they seldom seemed to be in a dialog, and their ideas had too little continuity. I have to many questions to ask Spielberg if I ever meet him, almost none was asked and answered in this interview. Yet the most valuable parts are his, especially when he retells the stories of his experiences watching as a kid some of the cult movies of his time - he seems to be by far the more candid and more open of the four.

The key of science fiction is imagination. This is a very non-imaginative documentary about the most imaginative genre in cinema.