Twenty-Five years ago in Genre Cinema
Okay, yeah, it's a given that '82 was super great year #1 for SF/Fantasy cinema.
Then it occurred to me: is this really the case? Was it truly a golden age? There's some people out there (and by that, I mean actually reading this) for whom that's a big stretch, and from before they were born.
Let's take a look then.
(this is mostly notes for a proposed panel at Toronto Trek this summer).
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: The high point of the Trek franchise. Nicholas Meyer provided Bill Shatner with a film he could bite his teeth into. The sub battle in the Mutara Nebula, "hey stayed at his post", Spock in the engine room, "like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target", "aren't you supposed to be dead?" Just a blast. They'd never be that enjoyable or, protestations aside, that young.
Blade Runner: The womb that would birth Neuromancer, and the grandmother of cyberpunk, Blade Runner slapped audiences in the face with a dystopian vision and launched a curse that would claim Pan Am, Bell, Coke & Atari. Time to die.
The Thing: A remake, sure, but a genre film that was more horror than SF, it preyed on feelings of isolation and claustrophobia and paranoia. And it's not even Canadian. It's got that happy go lucky ending, too.
Tron: Shiny pretty and ahead of its time. Sure, it's spawned unbearable horror, but it's fun. It also holds the missing fragment of Blade Runner's nascent cyberpunk world, a computer network with hostile artificial intelligences and sneaky hackers.
And it had the light cycles, which were probably the coolest element of the summer of '82, in a sea of cool elements.
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial: Spielberg presents his story of a boy and his alien. Mangled by the revised edition (yes, they had guns, we weren't scarred by it), nothing can ever destroy the iconic image of a boy and his alien flying across the sky. The story is fascinating from an adult's point of view as much as a child's. ET is a stranded scientist seeking his way home, trying to communicate with the only people on the planet he can trust, a group of children.
Conan the Barbarian: Confession from TBG. I haven't seen it. But, hey, Arnold. What is Good in Life?
The Dark Crystal: Jim Henson reveals to everyone who just knew Sesame Street and The Muppet Show what was deep down in his brain. And it freaked the shit out of them.
And those are just the ones people like.
Megaforce. Cat People (the remake, yeah). BeastMaster, Creepshow, Swamp Thing and even Firefox.
Yah,that was a year of the good stuff. Remember THAT when you go see Ghost Rider next weekend.
Then it occurred to me: is this really the case? Was it truly a golden age? There's some people out there (and by that, I mean actually reading this) for whom that's a big stretch, and from before they were born.
Let's take a look then.
(this is mostly notes for a proposed panel at Toronto Trek this summer).
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: The high point of the Trek franchise. Nicholas Meyer provided Bill Shatner with a film he could bite his teeth into. The sub battle in the Mutara Nebula, "hey stayed at his post", Spock in the engine room, "like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target", "aren't you supposed to be dead?" Just a blast. They'd never be that enjoyable or, protestations aside, that young.
Blade Runner: The womb that would birth Neuromancer, and the grandmother of cyberpunk, Blade Runner slapped audiences in the face with a dystopian vision and launched a curse that would claim Pan Am, Bell, Coke & Atari. Time to die.
The Thing: A remake, sure, but a genre film that was more horror than SF, it preyed on feelings of isolation and claustrophobia and paranoia. And it's not even Canadian. It's got that happy go lucky ending, too.
Tron: Shiny pretty and ahead of its time. Sure, it's spawned unbearable horror, but it's fun. It also holds the missing fragment of Blade Runner's nascent cyberpunk world, a computer network with hostile artificial intelligences and sneaky hackers.
And it had the light cycles, which were probably the coolest element of the summer of '82, in a sea of cool elements.
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial: Spielberg presents his story of a boy and his alien. Mangled by the revised edition (yes, they had guns, we weren't scarred by it), nothing can ever destroy the iconic image of a boy and his alien flying across the sky. The story is fascinating from an adult's point of view as much as a child's. ET is a stranded scientist seeking his way home, trying to communicate with the only people on the planet he can trust, a group of children.
Conan the Barbarian: Confession from TBG. I haven't seen it. But, hey, Arnold. What is Good in Life?
The Dark Crystal: Jim Henson reveals to everyone who just knew Sesame Street and The Muppet Show what was deep down in his brain. And it freaked the shit out of them.
And those are just the ones people like.
Megaforce. Cat People (the remake, yeah). BeastMaster, Creepshow, Swamp Thing and even Firefox.
Yah,that was a year of the good stuff. Remember THAT when you go see Ghost Rider next weekend.