The IQ at the multiplex this summer has taken a sharp turn upward with the long-awaited release of Inception, director Christopher Nolan's follow-up to The Dark Knight and his first all-original script since his tiny indie debut, 1998's Following.
Don't get us wrong: Inception is action-packed, massive filmmaking on a grand, crowd-pleasing scale, and it doesn't look down its nose at the genre. But it's also a movie that demands that the audience pay attention and think—something all too rare during the summer blockbuster season (especially this one), when moviegoers are practically encouraged to check their brains at the door.
Nolan's gamble may prove too challenging to crowds looking to cool off and have some fun, but we think it's worth the effort. With that in mind, here's a look at some other sci-fi movies that have offered viewers more than just a roller-coaster ride—with some of them perhaps a little too smart for their own good.
Thinking caps on, everyone ...
2001: A Space Odyssey
The granddaddy of all thinking man's sci-fi films, Stanley Kubrick's cosmic vision lifted the genre right out of the drive-ins and double features and finally earned it critical respect. Kubrick also trusted his audience to make their own conclusions and not have everything spoonfed to them—which thrilled some and baffled others.
12 Monkeys
Leave it to the wonderfully weird Terry Gilliam (Brazil—a pretty smart flick itself) to bring us Bruce Willis as the most messed-up time traveler ever. Based on the short French film La Jetee, 12 Monkeys is a tragic romance wrapped in an elegant paradox—but audiences went along for the ride.
Children of Men
With no meteors striking the earth, nuclear weapons going off or global warming drowning yet another CG rendition of New York, Children of Men is a frighteningly realistic portrait of a civilization going down. Its world looks just like our own, maybe just 15 years from now; its characters are average people who accidentally become heroes or villains. In short, it's a masterpiece, and no one went to see it because it wasn't a "holiday" movie (it came out at Christmas) or a special-effects blitz. Do yourself a favor, go find it and watch it right now. Please?
Dark City
Dark City is a perfect example of a movie that might have seemed "too smart" when it first came out but later picked up a following and is widely considered a work of near-brilliance. Director Alex Proyas (Knowing) plays with the nature of reality and identity and asks some real philosophical questions—all while creepy, pasty men in black coats chase Rufus Sewell and Jennifer Connelly around an urban hell right out of German silent cinema.
Pi
Director Darren Aronofsky's first movie mixes number theory, stock market manipulation, paranoid schizophrenia and Jewish mysticism all into one 90-minute, high-contrast black-and-white mind-f--k of a movie. Whoever thought a 216-digit number—which could be the secret name of God or the solution to all of Wall Street's problems, depending on whom you ask—could be so creepy and compelling to look at onscreen?
Primer
Pi and Primer share a lot of similarities: they're both low-budget as hell (Primer is a real bargain, reportedly costing $7,000 to make), and they both rely on extreme cerebral calisthenics instead of whiz-bang effects and explosions. Yet while you can kind of follow Pi, Primer's story of three friends who invent a time machine and keep relooping themselves into the past gets so tangled that we doubt even 2001 supercomputer HAL could sort it out. And we mean that in a nice way, guys.
The Matrix
What is real? What isn't? What if this was all some sort of virtual reality and we didn't even know it? Those are some of the heady questions posted by The Matrix, which also manages to work martial arts, hacker culture, mechanical monsters and a hovercraft into the action and never feels dumbed down for doing so. Nobody had any problems understanding this movie—although the two sequels tripped themselves up with too much of everything.
Quatermass and the Pit
Imagine a movie where a grand theory about man's evolution also tackles creation myths, alien invasion and just where we get the idea of the devil from. That's what this '60s British gem, based on a BBC miniseries, is talkin' about. It's scary and fun and thought-provoking, although the rumpled, aged and bearded Professor Quatermass might be a bit too cerebral for modern action-hero fans.
Altered States
This movie has so much dialogue whizzing by about quantum states, evolutionary mutations, sensory deprivation and cosmic consciousness that your head is spinning even before William Hurt (in his screen debut) turns into first an apeman and then a big tub of primordial soup. Some of it feels like leftovers from the '60s, which is why chunks of the movie haven't aged well, but it's still like mind expansion without having to take the drugs. Groovy!
Minority Report
The fact that this was a huge hit for director Steven Spielberg and star Tom Cruise tends to overshadow how smart this movie is—not just in its main themes about predestination and free will but in the details of its portrayal of a surveillance society that doesn't look too far from now. It's gritty and sophisticated stuff ... it's just too bad that the ending sucked hard.
Contact
Based on Carl Sagan's book, Contact offers probably the most realistic depiction to date of what might actually happen when we get our first signal from an alien civilization. The movie's first two-thirds are thoughtful and provocative; its final act gets a little too over-the-top. And oh yeah, we wish Matthew McConaughey's badly written role were removed from the picture entirely. But for the most part, Contact tells it like it could be.
Gattaca
Gattaca is such a subtle, understated film that it's no surprise audiences never connected to it in a big way. Its lack of pyrotechnics is more than balanced by its rich, thought-provoking exploration of human bio-engineering and the dangerous ethical and social cans of worms that could open up. This is sharp stuff, and you need to pay attention.
The Fountain
It's purely a fluke that director Darren Aronofsky got on this list twice, but it's no fluke that The Fountain was criminally overlooked and underrated when it came out in 2006. It's either three separate stories or three strands of the same doomed love story that spans all of time and space, posing questions about immortality, the existence of God and the search for meaning along the way. We'll admit it's a little tough to figure out what it all means, but hey, they said that about 2001 too, didn't they?
The Day the Earth Stood Still
We're talking about the 1951 original here, and not the pointless, blank-faced 2008 remake. This compact, simple yet still awe-inspiring film poses bold questions about humanity's place in the universe, whether we deserve to be there in the first place and whether we've got what it takes to make it to the galactic big leagues. It's simultaneously inspiring and depressing, but it's touched a nerve with people for almost 60 years.
Moon
Many of the smartest sci-fi films tackle bigger themes than just "will E.T. be friendly or nasty when he finally shows up?" This little independent gem is both a rugged, realistic look at a near-future space mission and a poignant character study of a man who suddenly has to question his own existence, and whether he has any control over his own life. It was never going to be a big hit (and was not meant to be), but if you haven't seen it yet—this is what great science fiction is all about.
Donnie Darko
Time travel, alternate universes and changing the course of history are all part of the fun in this mind-bender disguised as a teen high-school horror film. Over the years, repeated viewings either bring Donnie Darko into clearer focus or make you wonder if writer/director Richard Kelly even knew what he was doing—but you still feel smarter for having tried to figure it all out.
Class dismissed!
While the science fiction genre might not be for everyone, readers who pass on it are missing some excellent literature. Below are 100 science fiction novels that are important works of literature, downright excellent or both.
For purposes of classification and simplification, the term “science fiction” is sometimes used quite loosely for some of these titles. While some specific titles might not be hardcore science fiction, the titles were produced by authors traditionally known as science fiction authors. The authors’ names will follow the titles.
- The Postman – David Brin
- The Uplift War – David Brin
- Neuromancer – William Gibson
- Foundation – Isaac Asimov
- Foundation and Empire – Isaac Asimov
- Second Foundation – Isaac Asimov
- I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
- The Long Tomorrow – Leigh Brackett
- Rogue Moon – Algis Budrys
- The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury
- Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
- Something Wicked This Way Comes – Ray Bradbury
- Childhood’s End – Arthur C. Clarke
- The City and the Stars – Arthur C. Clarke
- 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
- Armor – John Steakley
- Imperial Stars – E. E. Smith
- Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
- Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
- Speaker for the Dead – Orson Scott Card
- Dune – Frank Herbert
- The Dosadi Experiment – Frank Herbert
- Journey Beyond Tomorrow – Robert Sheckley
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
- Valis – Philip K. Dick
- A Scanner Darkly – Philip K. Dick
- The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick
- 1984 – George Orwell
- Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
- Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
- The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells
- The Time Machine – H. G. Wells
- The Island of Doctor Moreau – H. G. Wells
- The Invisible Man – H. G. Wells
- A Canticle for Leibowitz – Walter M. Miller, Jr.
- Alas, Babylon – Pat Frank
- A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
- A Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne
- From the Earth to the Moon – Jules Verne
- Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – Jules Verne
- Old Man’s War – John Scalzi
- Nova Express – William S. Burroughs
- Ringworld – Larry Niven
- The Mote in God’s Eye – Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
- The Unreasoning Mask – Philip Jose Farmer
- To Your Scattered Bodies Go – Philip Jose Farmer
- Eon – Greg Bear
- Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
- The Andromeda Strain – Michael Crichton
- Lightning – Dean Koontz
- The Stainless Steel Rat – Harry Harrison
- The Fifth Head of Cerebus – Gene Wolfe
- Nightside of the Long Sun – Gene Wolfe
- A Princess of Mars – Edgar Rice Burroughs
- Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
- Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
- The Stars My Destination – Alfred Bester
- Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
- Doomsday Book – Connie Wills
- Beserker – Fred Saberhagen
- Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
- The Word for World is Forest – Ursula K. LeGuin
- The Dispossessed – Ursula K. LeGuin
- Babel-17 – Samuel R. Delany
- Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany
- Flowers for Algernon – Daniel Keyes
- The Forever War – Joe Haldeman
- Star King – Jack Vance
- The Killing Machine – Jack Vance
- Trullion: Alastor 2262 – Jack Vance
- Hyperion – Dan Simmons
- Starship Troopers – Robert A. Heinlein
- Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert A. Heinlein
- The Moon is a Harsh Mistress – Robert A. Heinlein
- A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
- More Than Human – Theodore Sturgeon
- A Time of Changes – Robert Silverberg
- Gateway – Frederick Pohl
- Man Plus - Frederick Pohl
- The Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
- Mission of Gravity – Hal Clement
- The Execution Channel – Ken Macleod
- Last and First Men – W. Olaf Stapledon
- Slan – A. E. van Vogt
- Out of the Silent Planet – C. S. Lewis
- They Shall Have Stars – James Blish
- Marooned in Realtime – Vernor Vinge
- A Fire Upon the Deep – Vernor Vinge
- The People Maker – Damon Knight
- The Giver – Lois Lowry
- The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
- Contact – Carl Sagan
- Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
- The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
- Battlefield Earth – L. Ron Hubbard
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court – Mark Twain
- Little Brother – Cory Doctorow
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Jack Finney
- Planet of the Apes – Pierre Boulle
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