For your money what’s the most underrated Science Fiction film of all time?

This post is going to be dangerous as I’m very drunk but just like last Friday I’m going ahead with it anyways. 2001 is my favourite SF flick and it’s frequently dissed (mostly proximaly here by Rosie) but I can’t call it underated since there it gets a good share of acclaim. The fact that cultural philistines like Rosie don’t appreciate it for what it is doesn’t change that. For a truly underated SF movie I’d have to pick The Quiet Earth, a low budget New Zealand SF cult film that is both mundane and mind blowing at the same time. The movie starts with an everyman scientist who recovers from a near death experience to discover that he may very well be the last man on earth. The story that unfolds doesn’t involve any explosions or spectacular special effects but blew my mind regardless. And despite the potentialy corny implications I really liked the brilliantly ambigious and poignant ending. I saw it once over fifteen years ago but it has lingered on vividly in my imagination. If this drunken description intrigues you then adding it to your Netflix queque probably won’t disappoint either.

Abigail Nussbaum
Well, first of all we have to agree on a definition of Science Fiction film, since to my mind the overwhelming majority of what passes for cinematic (and televised) SF is actually fantasy with spaceships and aliens. It’s a very rare film that actually grapples with SFnal questions, and when such films do come along they don’t tend to be underrated–at least, not within genre circles. But if we broaden our scope to include the D&D-with-rayguns set, then I’d have to say that the most underrated SF film I’ve ever seen is The Matrix: Reloaded.

Now, this is not to say that The Matrix: Reloaded is a good film, which it plainly is not. It suffers from most of the flaws that plagued its predecessor–wooden acting, lusterless dialogue, a very definite humorlessness–without compensating for them, as The Matrix did, with a taut, impeccably paced plot, action scenes replete with tension and an actual sense of menace, and characters that were still likable for all their flatness. There is hardly a scene or a line of dialogue in the film that couldn’t stand to be cut in half, and most of the memorable set pieces ought to have been excised entirely.

But. For all its many flaws, there is still one thing The Matrix: Reloaded does that very few reviewers seem to have given it credit for, and that is to fearlessly and with ruthless deliberation dismantle the Campbell-esque fairy tale established in The Matrix. The earlier film’s heroes are revealed to be dupes and pawns, its vaunted non-conformity merely another form of predictable behavior, and Neo, the so-called liberator of his people, turns out to be a vital cog in an even greater system of control. I never bought into the notion of The Matrix as a philosophical, challenging film. It struck me as nothing more than an intelligent, multifaceted treatment of a hoary SFnal concept–no mean feat in itself–but The Matrix: Reloaded is a film that forces us to think, to reassess the first film–which can never be viewed in the same way again–and to reevaluate everything we thought we knew about its imaginary universe. It’s an audacious, absolutely delightful mindfuck, a rare and ballsy maneuver.

Ultimately, The Matrix: Reloaded squanders the potential inherent to its premise. First, by not fully acknowledging the emotional ramifications of Neo’s discovery–Morpheus, who spends the first half of the film cloaked in bulletproof conviction, doesn’t get to react to the knowledge that his life’s work has been a lie with anything beyond stunned disbelief before the plot carries him away–and second, because as the middle part of a trilogy, the film relies on its sequel, the execrable Matrix: Revolutions, for validation. Having demolished the cosmology established in The Matrix, it was the third film’s job to erect a new one, a task at which it fails spectacularly, thus diminishing The Matrix: Reloaded’s effect. Nevertheless, it is impossible for me to watch The Matrix: Reloaded without marveling at its willingness to play with its characters’ heads, as well as ours, and admiring, if nothing else, its creators’ courage.

Abigail Nussbaum has a degree in Computer Science from the Technion Insitute in Haifa, Israel. She lives outside Tel Aviv and blogs at Asking the Wrong Questions

Naomi Krtizer:
“Men In Black.” The thing that made this movie work for me is that on some level, I think all of us know that Michael Jackson really is a space alien. (Just as the entire X-Files series worked because on some level, we all believe that the enormous government storage room of secret stuff really exists.) When a movie taps into one of those weird but deep-seated beliefs, it can take me practically anywhere (the neighbor’s Chihuahua is also an alien!) and I’ll follow along for the ride.

Naomi Krtizer is Fantasy author behind the Dead Rivers Trilogy

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response to this post, or trackback from your own site. Wax-political uses threaded comments so you can reply to any comment directly by clicking on the relevent reply to comment link.