July 25th, 2014
The new trailer for Interstellar was just shown at Comic-Con, and the general impression seems to be that it feels a bit like Contact.
Why is it that people don’t revere Contact? For me, it’s one of the two great under appreciated sci-fi movies of the last 20 years.
I suppose part of the reason it gets overlooked is that to really appreciate it, it has to be on a giant screen with big sound. It suffers from the home video experience as much as movies such as Gravity and Avatar do.
Update: My other candidate is The Fifth Element which, in addition to being a weird, great sci-fi movie–it’s Brazil, but with a heart!–is also probably the Frenchiest movie ever made. The vaguely Moorish thugs are troublesome immigrants, but they’re foiled by government bureaucracy; the real villain is from Texas; even in space, in the distant future, opera is still the highest form of art; oddball American comedians can be misunderstood geniuses; all beautiful women should be as nearly naked as possible, at all times; the Catholic Church is a pleasant cultural relic; and the most powerful force in the universe is amour. This is Luc Besson’s worldview in The Fifth Element.
I don’t know that Godard or Truffaut ever made a statement du Francais more comprehensive than that.
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To me, Contact is one of the few SF movies that actually captures what is great about SF literature (the sense of wonder, the sense of conceptual breakthrough, the idea ruling the story, etc…) rather than just “explosions in space” or other such stuff (which is fine in itself, but not really SF). I can probably count such movies on one hand, whereas the explodey variety has had 5 in the past couple months.
Theatrical presentation might have something to do with it (Contact’s opening tour of space in particular), but I suspect there’s a lot of people who don’t connect with characters or find the chemistry between the two leads a bit off putting.
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What’s the other underappreciated SF movie you have in mind?
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I adore “Contact”, and just as much on the small screen. It had a pretty outsize influence on me when I first saw it, though, at age 11. I still remember emerging from the theater into the daylight.
Yeah, what’s the other movie?
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I disagree that Contact is under appreciated….although the recent reboot of Cosmos wasn’t a big hit in the ratings department, there is certainly a decent groundswell of interest in Saganism, which is basically the underlying conceit of Contact.
Probably my favorite sci-fi movie of the last 20 years is 12 Monkeys, although it occupies a different sub-genre I suppose.
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Right. Saganism is kinda lame; ergo, so is Contact.
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Underappreciated sci-fi from the past 25 years:
1) “Sunshine”
2) “Moon”
3) “A.I.” (oh, yeah — I’m going there);
4) “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow”
5) “The City of Lost Children”
6) “Abre los ojos” (I’m too cool to say “Vanilla Sky”);
7) “Dark City”
I’d add “District 9” but I don’t think the film is under appreciated, even if it wasn’t a mega-hit/blockbuster. It put Blomkamp on the map and enabled him to make “Elysium”.
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I just realized you’re missing *my* opinions on your list. Sorry, I know you were worried I would remain aloof:
1) Meh. Just meh.
2) Yes. Just yes.
3) Um, ok. Just for the special effects and boyslutbots.
4) So you’re the one other guy who liked the movie! I’m wavin’ at ya, man! I’m the other one!
5) I give this choice my Papal imprimatur. I know you were hoping. Hell, City gets props just for Ron Perlman’s succesful performance in French (factoid: the man doesn’ta speakada French).
6) My deep analysis comes after spending precisely thirty seconds watching the movie before slipping my hand uin my girlfriend’s panties. And those thirty seconds were horrible, and all sideways due to errant licking. Thus you must retract this one, plus thehorrible Sunshine declaration.
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I love Contact, but I’ve always had one complaint that my wife is tired of hearing — I really wish the movie had not included the scene at the end where Alfre Woodard and James Woods discuss the static on the recording device and the fact that there was 18 hours of it (thus revealing that Jodie Foster’s experiences were real). It would have been much more in line with the movie’s statement on faith to leave the question of her experiences open. Still, that issue aside, it’s one of my favorite movies.
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Fake Herzog’s list is strong…I’m guessing that JVL’s other flick is the fountain.
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If you liked Contact I suggest you guys check out “Europa Report”. Low budget found footage genre, picked right off the Carl Sagan/Arthur C. Clarke end of the bookshelf. Very much the kind of intelligent sci-fi film geeks should be talking about and pushing on the uninitiated.
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Loaded up my Netflix streaming with “Europa Report” — I’m excited to watch soon.
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Ok, ok Last, you’re right about the Luc Besson Frenchie worldview in the Fifth Element.
However, I say he’s is an unusually Marquis de Lafayette-ish Froggie: his sheer good humor and Americanesque energy is evident in all of his movies, and the feel of his movies all seem to have more than a hint of that small, but good Atlanticist side of France. Besson honestly does not seem to have any sneering distaste for our country, and I don’t think you can attribute that to his making movies here: after all, a little redneck bashing doesn’t hurt at all in Hollywood, or even in American audiences, inured as they are.
Then again, maybe you’re right: in Leon, the main character originally took the very, very young girl as his lover. Maybe he is about as French as they come. And I do note he has never hired an American actor. Hm.
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Some good points in here but obviously the greatest and most under-appreciated sci-fi movie ever was A.I. I’d thank Fake Herzog for pointing it out except he put it in the middle of a list with Sky Captain, Dark City, Moon, and other entirely forgettable movies.
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FredR:
“A.I.” is certainly underappreciated, but greatest? It’s Spielberg’s second best science fiction movie, based on an unfinished Kubrick treatment. As for Kubrick, his best science fiction may also be the finest movie ever made.
Klug July 25, 2014 at 12:45 pm
FWIW, I loved Contact, but that probably makes me just as weird as you.