Happy 40th Moon Landing. Celebrate with several great achievements in Hard Science Fiction (with a documentary and historical drama and comedy thrown in for good measure) in the spirit of space exploration.
2001: A Space Odyssey
2010
Moon
Solyaris
Sunshine
Gattaca
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Apollo 13
The Dish
and…
For All Mankind
Feel free to add other Moon inspired films and docs in the comment section.
In the Shadow of the Moon is one of the better docs I saw in the last couple of years. And of course Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon is a classic.
Oh and I recently watched First Men on the Moon. It’s not Robinson Crusoe on Mars but it was entertaining.
Well, there are lots of goofier non-hard choices:
12 To The Moon is amusing in its bombast, admittedly it was made a decade before the actual moon landing.
Then there is Capricorn 1 which targets the conspiracy theory nuts, albeit relocating things to Saturn, between this and Outland, it probably got Peter Hyam’s the 2010 job.
I also like the very primitive Voyage dans la Lune from 1902.
I probably should have mentioned The Right Stuff, for all its pre-space stuff. I dug the russian doc ASCENSION which is more of a mood piece than a sci-fi film, as well.
see also: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/movies/19strau.html
Some people, not me but some people, would nitpick your inclussion of Star Trek as hard scifi. Probably Solaris too
Yea, I see where you are coming from, actually, the new Solaris probably is ‘harder’ (plot point use of the Higgs Field, not as technobabble! yay!)
But Solyaris 1972 is about ideas, and not gun-battles, actually there isn’t much actual science in there, but it feels closer in tone to Hard-Sci-Fi than most films. But fair criticism (to those people).
I included ST:TMP because of its ‘exploration’ plot, it being really the only of the films that feel that way, even the new JJ Abrams ST has not ‘exploration’ actually going on. And the V-Ger thing is pretty awesome as a Hard-Sci-Fi idea at its core, even if it is a what-if vaguely articulated idea.
@ Yea, I see where you are coming from
You mean that you see where someone who might say that may be coming from, right?
@ I included ST:TMP because of its ‘exploration’ plot, it being really the only of the films that feel that way
and excuse me Kurt, but in Star Trek V: The One Where They Meet God, they travel past the edge of the universe to meet God. So I think you’ve unfairly discounted the directing efforts of Mr. William Shatner.
merrily… merrily… life is but a dream
In all seriousness though, I do disagree about Solayris feeling like hard sci-fi.
To me it feels very stream of consciousness and impressionistic, I’m especially thinking of the journey from Earth.
I’d compare it more to sci-fi in the veign of Being John Malkovitch. Which is also about ideas, but not really science ideas.
Perhaps the combination of hard-sci-fi ideas and poetic/ethereal execution is the chief reason why I keep coming back to this one.
@Rusty: “Star Trek V: The One Where They Meet God, they travel past the edge of the universe to meet God.
actually, you are kind of right there, although they do not do this on purpose, but rather because the ship is hijacked by Spock’s half-brother. So not really in the spirit of ‘lets go exploring for science-sake.’
My Blu copy of For All Mankind has FINALLY arrived today, not really sci-fi (depending on who you talk to that is) but it is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen, and sorry Andrew, Shadow of the Moon can’t even sit at the same table as Mankind, its fine and all but the difference in quality between the films is immense to me.
The novel ‘Solaris’ is definitely hard sci-fi; both the film versions, not so much.
On the lighter side of the movies, I might throw in ‘Spaceballs’
I’ve read the novel Solaris as well as other work by Stanslaw Lem and as I recall I wouldn’t characterize it as hard sci fi.
There is a new film out from a Lem novel “1″ which opened in Hungary in early 2009 and hopefully will roll out world wide on the festival circuit. Why hasn’t more of his novels been adapted into films?
Futurama would make sly reference to his work sometimes.
Moontrap!
Bruce Campbell! Walter Koenig! Won an award from a scientific commission for adhering to scientific laws (I guess the commission missed the scenes where the 1000 year old robots attack people).