“Fantasy isn’t just a jolly escape: It’s an escape, but into something far more extreme than reality, or normality. It’s where things are more beautiful and more wondrous and more terrifying.” – Terry Gilliam

That’s how I introduced my Top 10 Fantasy Books and it’s even more apt for my Top 10 Fantasy & SF Films, given I feature Terry Gilliam in my special mentions as one of my favorite directors of fantasy or SF films.

Although, the definition of fantasy might be less apt as my Top 10 Fantasy & SF Films overwhelmingly leans towards SF, with eight entries as SF and only two entries as fantasy. As such, I will note each entry as either fantasy or SF.

In fairness, I might well have ranked more films as fantasy, or SF for that matter. When I compiled my top ten ‘non-genre’ films, I noted those with fantasy or SF elements. The same applies to my top ten comedy films. The distinction is that the fantasy or SF elements did not predominate in those films so as to rank them within the fantasy or SF genres but the elements are still there.

More substantially, I also have separate top tens for animated films, films adapted from comics, and horror films – each of which predominantly consist of films that could be ranked within the fantasy or SF genres. Animated films lean towards fantasy, films adapted from comics lean towards SF (albeit often functionally or outright fantasy for superheroes), and I have deliberately leaned my top ten horror films towards fantasy or supernatural horror.

Ironically, at least three of the SF entries in this top ten could be ranked as horror or more precisely SF horror (a sub-genre also reflected in the special mentions for my Top 10 Horror Films). Given the overlap of both fantasy and SF with horror, I will also note where an entry might have also been ranked as horror or arguably has elements of horror.

Anyway, here are my Top 10 Fantasy & SF Films. Just a quick note – if you’re looking for The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, I rank them in my special mention entries. The former is because as much as I love that film trilogy, it is eclipsed by my love of the book trilogy, ranking it in top spot in My Top 10 Fantasy Books. The second is because I have a complicated love-hate relationship with the original Star Wars film trilogy – and that trilogy has been somewhat diminished by them running the franchise into the ground since. Which, to be honest, they’ve also pretty much done with The Lord of the Rings franchise, what with the Hobbit film trilogy and the Rings of Power TV series.

 

 

 

(10) SF: DUNE

(2021-PRESENT: DUNE PARTS 1-2+)

 

“Walk without rhythm, you won’t attract the worm”

That is of course the lyric from Fatboy Slim’s Weapon of Choice, but like this ongoing film series, it is adapted from Frank Herbert’s SF novel Dune. The music video famously featured actor Christopher Walken dancing through a hotel lobby – and much to my delight of happy synchronicity, he was also in Dune Part 2, and as the God-Emperor no less! I might have squealed a little in my delight at that – although they sadly missed the opportunity for him to re-enact that dance scene in the film.

This is perhaps stretching my usual rule for wildcard tenth place entry as best of 2024 but I’m running with it. For one thing, the sequel film Dune Part 2 was released in that year and it easily was the best fantasy or SF film of 2024. For another, I didn’t actually see the first film when it was released but watched it shortly before seeing the sequel film at the cinema – so in effect both films were in 2024 for me.

And for yet another, with two films under its belt and another on the way, with consummate direction by Denis Villeneuve and a star-studded cast, it is easily the best fantasy or SF film franchise at the moment and the closest thing as successor to the epic Lord of the Rings fantasy film trilogy, particularly as that trilogy is offset by subsequent releases from what is now an expanding film and TV franchise.

As a fan of literary as well as cinematic fantasy and SF, I have to confess that I have never read Frank Herbert’s Dune or any of its sequels, although it is impossible to be a fantasy and SF fan without being aware of its plot or elements, at least in broad outline – archetypal space opera with an archetypal Galactic Empire, desert planet Arrakis, Paul Atreides and the House Atreides, Baron Harkonnen and House Harkonnen, the Fremen, spice, the sandworms, and the Bene Gesserit.

Or for that matter, its influence on subsequent fantasy or SF – it’s hard not see Dune’s Galactic Empire in Star Wars, or Arrakis in Tatooine, or even Paul Atreides in Luke Skywalker (although Star Wars could definitely have done with more Bene Gesserit).

The two Dune films seem to adapt the plot and elements well from what I know of them, particularly given the daunting scale and scope of the literary source to adapt to film (not unlike Lord of the Rings), and in stunning visual style to boot.

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

Well, it’s obviously classic SF space opera…but like that other classic SF space opera, Star Wars, it has distinct elements of space fantasy.

 

HORROR

 

Like most SF or fantasy, it has some elements of horror – the sandworms can be terrifying – but not predominant or thematic enough to rank the films in the horror genre.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD-TIER) – BEST OF 2024

 

 

 

(9) SF: JURASSIC PARK

(1993+ Yes I know there’s an ongoing franchise but I’m only counting the first film for this entry)

 

Everything’s better with dinosaurs!

We all love dinosaurs, ever since we started digging up their bones – and we particularly love them in cinematic form. I’d argue that there is not one film that would not be improved by a dinosaur (or dinosaurs). Citizen Kane would have been MUCH improved by a dinosaur.

Anyway, Jurassic Park is the pure awesomeness you get when you combine dinosaurs with Steven Spielburg’s mastery of cinematic action and visual effects. Does it need any further introduction? You all know it. You probably can all quote it, from some point or other in the film or franchise.

I actually read the book first. Michael Crichton might have gotten a bit…controversial in his later years, but he sure knew how to craft a story – and Jurassic Park was one of his finest and certainly his most successful. Of course, there are the usual differences between the book and the film – the former had a starring role for the T-Rex’s tongue and the lawyer Gennaro was much more heroic (as lawyers should be), punching out a velociraptor and surviving rather than sniveling in a toilet before being slurped down by the tyrannosaur like the film’s lawyer.

Spielberg’s magic was of course to bring the book to life. The plot is the same – scientists discover how to recreate dinosaurs through a complex cloning process, involving dinosaur blood from mosquitoes fossilized in amber and filling in the gaps with other animal DNA, most notably transsexual frogs. Naturally, they come up with a dinosaur theme park to profit from this discovery, and equally as naturally, everything that can go wrong does go wrong – usually in the form of sharp pointy teeth.

Or in the words of character Dr. Ian Malcolm “Oh yeah, ‘oooh aaah’. That’s how it always starts. Then later, there’s the running and the screaming” – neatly summarizing each of the movies in the series, as TV Tropes pointed out. The same quotation might arguably apply to diminishing returns of the sequels, albeit with marginally less running and screaming. To which I offer the counter-argument – shut up, there’s dinosaurs! Even so, I’ll stick with just the first film for this entry – the franchise has been trying to capture the same magic ever since.

Of course, when it comes to the dinosaurs, there is only one true star. Despite the franchise’s effort to focus on the velociraptors (which I understand they beefed up from their actual and less imposing size of chickens), there’s only one true king (or more precisely, queen) of the prehistoric jungle – the tyrannosaurus rex.

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

Well, it’s obviously SF – genetically engineered dinosaurs! Although I do like it when dinosaurs pop up in fantasy, which they do surprisingly often. Everything’s better with dinosaurs!

 

HORROR

 

Elements of survival horror from animal predators – the tyrannosaurus rex and velociraptors in particular.

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(8) SF: BACK TO THE FUTURE

(1985-1990: BACK TO THE FUTURE 1-3)

 

“If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious sh*t.”

Alternatively, “McFly!”

One of the two definitive SF time travel franchises of all time – as per South Park, “Terminator rules” are that time travel is “one way only and you can’t go back”, in contrast with “Back to the Future rules, where back and forth is possible”. The other distinction is the mutability of time in the latter as opposed to the former – or to put it simply, you can change the past in the latter, for better or worse. Which in my opinion makes for the more entertaining franchise for the actual time travel – combining “fish out of water comedy with high-stakes drama, making deft use of threatened temporal paradox” (not to mention running gags based on similar events across time) and shuttling back and forth 30 years before and after 1985 as well as a century into the past.

The first film in the trilogy is the best, setting the basic themes and tropes for the sequels to follow:

“Marty McFly, a teenager from 1985, accidentally sends himself to 1955 in the time machine Doc Brown built out of a DeLorean, and requires 1.21 gigawatts of power to return home. After initial confusion, the 1955 Doc Brown agrees to help Marty get back home by striking his car with 1.21 gigawatts of lightning, giving Marty a week to make his parents fall back in love at a dance and put bully Biff Tannen in his place”

Not to mention inventing rock ‘n’ roll…

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

Again, it’s obviously SF – one of the definitive SF time travel film franchises! Although time travel can work as a fantasy trope – and I do like it whenever it pops up in fantasy, although it is perhaps more limited in fantasy use because of its potential story-breaking power if done by means of magic controlled by a character or protagonist.

 

HORROR

 

Unusually for fantasy or SF, virtually no element of horror – unless you count the existential horror of erasing yourself from existence by changing the past….

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(7) FANTASY: STEVEN SPIELBERG – INDIANA JONES

(1981-1989: INDIANA JONES 1-3 – yeah I don’t count Crystal Skull or Dial of Destiny)

 

“You call this archaeology?”

Indiana Jones is the pure awesomeness you get when you mix George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in a bowl of serials – the adventure cliffhanger serial films of the 1930’s. The centerpiece of that awesomeness is the film trilogy of the 1980’s, although there is a media franchise or expanded universe extending to books, comics and television. For Indiana Jones, archaeology was adventure – racing Nazis for mystical artefacts such as the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail, as opposed to the much less adventurous reality of dusting off and sorting one piece of broken pottery from another, barely above watching paint dry in excitement. Who’d have thought that a bullwhip and pistol were such indispensable archaeological tools? In fairness, Indiana does actually teach archaeology at a university, but even then his classes are full of hot coed groupies, who spend their time writing love messages to him on their eyelids rather than studying.

It is hard to choose between the three films of the original cinematic trilogy (ignoring, as I do, the fevered dreams of a fourth movie nuking the fridge two decades later, let alone the hallucinations of a fifth film, hence my entry only extends to the first three films), but it is equally hard to beat the introduction in Raiders of the Lost Ark to the character and his historical world much cooler than ours. I assume it needs no further introduction? From the iconic opening scene in the South American tomb of terror to the equally iconic finale, it is a masterpiece of cinematic adventure. The plot of course revolves around the archaeological arms race between the United States and Nazi Germany for the titular Ark of the Covenant. (That’s right – they’re going Old Testament on each other). Indiana Jones is enlisted by the United States government to thwart the Nazi recovery of the Ark. (“Nazis! I hate those guys!” We all do, Indy, we all do). Which explains why Nazi Germany lost the war – well, that and they lost too many men in Castle Wolfenstein.

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

It’s fantasy – the first film depends on its literal deus ex machina. There are rumors of a fourth or fifth film with SF elements but I don’t credit any such rumored films beyond the trilogy.

 

HORROR

 

And how! For adventure film fantasies, there’s surprisingly many elements of horror. Each film has a room full of horror – spiders or snakes, bugs, and rats. Also the second film has quite pronounced elements of horror with its cult of Kali led by Mola Ram.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(6) FANTASY: EXCALIBUR

(1981)

 

“Forged by a god

Foretold by a wizard

Found by a king…

Excalibur!”

 

Yes – that’s the cheesy blurb from the theatrical release poster.

Yes – the film itself can be cheesy at points, or messy, reflected by Roger Ebert calling it both a wondrous vision and a mess.

Yes – it conflates various elements of Arthurian legend, although perhaps necessarily so for adaptation to film and not unlike the adaptations made by the various texts of Arthurian legend. In particular Perceval does some heavy lifting here, conflating in his character (at least) the roles of Galahad and Bedivere in Arthurian legend. He’s not the only one – the film also conflates Morgana and Morgause.

I know all these things but I still love it anyway. I can trace my fascination for and love of Arthurian legend directly to this one film.

 

For mine is the grail quest –

round table & siege perilous

fisher king & waste land

bleeding lance & dolorous stroke

adventurous bed & questing beast

 

And most of it is here. Well, except for the questing beast. Arthur Pendragon himself, the once and future king. His flawed father Uther. The wizard Merlin, played by Nicol Williamson in arguably the film’s best performance. The Lady in the Lake. The titular Excalibur, conflated here with the sword in the stone. Queen Guinevere. The enchantress Morgan Le Fay, conflated with Morgause as the mother of usurper Mordred. The knights of the Round Table – most famously Lancelot but also Gawain and Perceval. The Holy Grail. Avalon – and so on.

That’s of course just the characters – despite its limited budget, the film’s cast is a veritable who’s who of actors who would rise to stardom. Helen Mirren. Liam Neeson. Patrick Stewart. Gabriel Byrne. Ciaran Hinds.

Then there’s its visual style and lighting, used to best effect to convey the ethereal nature of the mythic (and mystical) otherworld that overlaps with our own throughout Arthurian legend. Apparently there’s a study by Jean-Marc Elsholz that “demonstrates how closely the film Excalibur was inspired by the Arthurian romance tradition and its intersections with medieval theories of light, most particularly in the aesthetic/visual narrative of Boorman’s film” – and I’d say it shows.

And the music! It’s again used to much the same effect for the ethereal otherworld, but also for the heroic scenes of battle – I can trace my love of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana to this film, even if I was disappointed to subsequently learn that work is essentially about drunk monks singing.

Intriguingly, the film apparently started as an unproduced adaptation of The Lord of the Rings – and it makes me wonder what director John Boorman might have done with that property. Perhaps not quite as good as the Jackson film trilogy but I’d be prepared to bet it would have been the next best thing.

As it is, the film is still the single best cinematic or screen adaptation of Arthurian legend, although Monty Python and the Holy Grail comes in a close second. Although that may also say something about the adaptability of Arthurian legend, particularly to the sensibilities of modern directors or producers of film and television – and that it takes something like lightning in a bottle for a director such as Boorman (who after all made films such as Zardoz) to make it work.

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

Fantasy obviously. The film that is most fantasy in my top ten fantasy or SF films – not a shred of SF to be seen here.

 

HORROR

 

As with much mythology or legend, there’s elements reminiscent of horror, although perhaps less so than in the Arthurian legend from which it was adapted.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(5) SF: THE MATRIX

(1999. There are no sequels).

 

The Matrix is perhaps the next most definitive cinematic Robot War after another entry on this list, and like that entry, it works best by combining the Robot War with another trope, in this case that of virtual reality. As such, it is the direct descendant of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, consistent with my pet theory that the heart of science fiction is still all Martians and Morlocks.

We’ll be looking at Martians later, but the Machines and their software Agents in the Matrix are Morlocks, except that it’s cyberspace travel rather than time travel. The original Morlocks were one of two evolutionary descendants of humanity, evolved from the working class – maintaining the advanced technology of the future for the Eloi, the other descendants of humanity evolved from its leisured upper class.

The dark twist of Wells’ novel is that the Morlocks eat the Eloi, “farming” them like livestock. This theme of evolution endures in the Matrix, albeit transformed from Wells’ unrealistic biological evolution (without genetic engineering or mutation) to cybernetic evolution – involving artificial intelligence and robots as machine Morlocks that rise up against their human Eloi, particularly as the machine Morlocks do actually farm us for their food or energy.

Ultimately however, this makes no sense – humans don’t produce more energy than they consume. The Machines would obviously use more energy keeping us alive than they would ever extract from us – and that’s aside from programming and maintaining the Matrix itself. My theory is that the human resistance have no idea what the Matrix is for and the Machines actually use the Matrix for entertainment, like television (or the internet) – “Let’s see what the humans are doing on the Matrix tonight!”

And for a Robot War against humanity, the Machines are actually quite nice to us, whatever the purpose of the Matrix. Morpheus lets slip that humans fought a genocidal war with the Machines, in which we nuked the sun (NUKED the SUN!) to deprive the Machines of their solar energy (and you know, hopefully wipe them out). It didn’t work and we lost the Robot War, but instead of the Machines exterminating us like cockroaches, they keep us in our own cozy virtual dream world. Indeed, Agent Smith (who, unlike Morpheus, tells it straight) says that the Machines even tried to make it a perfect utopia for us, but human psychology wouldn’t accept it.

As I see it, the Machines’ only mistake was not advertising the Matrix to sign people up for it as your own programmable (and not necessarily permanent) reality (like, say, the Playboy Mansion or World of Warcraft) – I should be so lucky to lose a Robot War! “Seriously, you feed me and take care of me in a pod while I live it up in any number of dream worlds of my own design and all you want is my body heat? Sign me up!”

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

Yeah – the virtual reality world maintained by the Machines to farm humanity for energy after a Robot War? It’s obviously SF. Or is it? Well, yes, it is – but it does have substantial elements of fantasy, what with its mystical trappings of the Oracle and Neo as the (chosen or messianic) One.

And yes – I know there are no sequels, but if there had been a second film it at least might have the interesting spin on fantasy with fantasy creatures such as vampires and so on as leftover programs or perhaps glitches from previous versions of the Matrix.

 

HORROR

 

One can’t really rank it as horror but it has elements of SF horror and could well have been written more in that direction.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(4) SF (HORROR): THE THING

(1982+: I only count the John Carpenter film)

 

My fourth place entry is The Thing – not the original 1951 The Thing from Another World or the 2011 prequel but John Carpenter’s classic 1982 film. Once again, we’re back to Wells’ Martians and Morlocks, with some Lovecraftian Mythos a la At the Mountains of Madness thrown in for extra horror, because The Thing is at its core a horror film. Of course, in this case, we’re dealing with a Martian – not literally Martian but alien. And holy crap – every other alien in cinematic science fiction (including those of another entry on this list) are positively cuddly compared to the alien…thing in The Thing. That…thing doesn’t just invade our bodies – it assimilates them. Violently. The Thing is a shapeshifter, absorbing its victim’s body into itself, yet able to retain the appearance of (and mimic) that victim, seemingly extending to any lifeform.

Fortunately The Thing is confined to an American Antarctic research base, but then so are its targets subject to the body horror of the thing itself – it takes the hostile environment and inescapable isolation of the setting and raises it with a full house of paranoia, as the Americans desperately try to figure out which of them have been assimilated (against the background of the grim calculation that if the Thing should escape the isolation of Antarctica, then all of humanity will be consumed), an uncertainty that continues to the ending itself.

Apparently, it’s an annual tradition for viewing by the winter crew at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station during the first evening of winter.

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

SF obviously, from the very opening sequence of an alien spacecraft crashing to Earth – although arguably like the Lovecraftian or Cthulhu Mythos it resembles, it borders on fantasy, albeit not as much as beings like Cthulhu or other elements of the Mythos. I sometimes muse how it could work as supernatural rather than SF horror – with the Thing as something akin to a vampire or the demons in the Evil Dead films, except with shapechanging assimilation abilities.

 

HORROR

 

One of my three top ten entries which are also my holy trinity of SF horror – perhaps the most classic SF horror entry in my top ten, which has inspired or been referenced by films and other works of popular culture ever since. Like all good classic horror, it is essentially haunted house horror, substituting an alien for the ghost, and neatly solving the so-called haunted house problem – why don’t the characters just leave the house? – by virtue of its Antarctic setting effectively confining their characters to their base and isolating them from the outside world, the latter being something the more astute characters realize they have to maintain to protect the world from the Thing.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(3) SF: MAD MAX

(1979-2024: MAD MAX 1-5 – yeah, I’m counting Furiosa as a fifth Mad Max film)

 

And now for some classic Australian post-apocalyptic cinema – let’s face it, Mad Max defined the post-apocalypse or at least post-apocalyptic chic, the apunkalypse or biker leather with a bit of BDSM kink thrown into the mix. (Hmmm…maybe a LOT of BDSM kink).

The only issue is which Mad Max film to choose? The correct answer is, of course, all of them – yes, the whole franchise. Even Thunderdome. Even Furiosa as “a Mad Max saga”. They all have something to offer the post-apocalyptic genre, particularly as the apocalypse shifts somewhat in each one.

Although overshadowed by its immediate sequel (so much so that the American audience was generally unaware that there was prior movie and the movie was instead titled The Road Warrior), the first Mad Max is arguably the purest of the films. Part of the latter is that it was shot on a shoestring budget – so much so that director George Miller paid extras in beer.

However, it is not purely a post-apocalyptic film – it also combines elements of ‘buddy cop’ movies and revenge movies, falling squarely within the so-called Ozploitation subgenre of contemporary films at that time (the Australian or ‘Oz’ version of exploitation films). Indeed, these elements predominate in the film – Max Rockatansky or Max is mad because a biker gang, led by Toecutter, burnt his cop buddy ‘Goose’ as well as running down his wife and infant child.

Oh the apocalypse is there somewhere in the background, but it has happened offscreen. Something has caused central governmental authority to decline, but it is still present in Max’s police highway patrol. What’s more – life and society are still relatively intact in the Australian country towns, and there’s even commercial traffic on the roads. This apocalypse reminds me of the proverbial decline and fall of the Roman Empire – too few legions and too many barbarians, the latter represented by the biker gangs emerging in the towns. Indeed, the parallel to the Roman Empire is even closer – just as the legions themselves were increasingly comprised by barbarian Germans, the police force in Mad Max resembles the leather-clad biker gangs. When the highway patrol arrests one of the bikers, the biker even has the mainstay of cop movies, a sleazy defense lawyer, show up and get him out. I mean, come on – what self-respecting post-apocalyptic world has lawyers?! Man, lawyers – they’re hardier than cockroaches! I might have to revise my post-apocalyptic job criteria…

It’s in the second film with the higher budget that the post-apocalyptic scene really gets into gear. And how – the opening narration speaks of oil running out and global (presumably nuclear) war. Long gone is the highway patrol – Max is now a lone survivor, albeit still in his iconic police super-charged V8 Pursuit Special. The plot revolves around an island of semi-barbarized civilization in the form of an oil refinery in an armed compound, besieged by the barbarian marauders. And what intriguing marauders in their leather bondage gear – led by the masked Lord Humungus (“the warrior of the wasteland, the ayatollah of rock-and-rollah” as he is announced) and his lieutenant Wez in those ass-less chaps.

The third film sees the last semblance of former civilization replaced by the barbarian Bartertown and its Thunderdome, ruled by an uneasy diumvirate of Aunty Entity and Master Blaster (although the latter is actually two people).

Personally, however, I can’t go past the visual splendor of the fourth film, Mad Max: Fury Road, which resets the apocalyptic story back to somewhere about the time of the second movie. Indeed, it probably works best as a retelling of the second film, but ramped up to eleven – the fourth film makes the apocalypse in the second film look positively cosy, while Immortan Joe and his War Boys makes the Lord Humungus and his retinue look like a polite picnic party. The plot, characterization and dialogue are all pared down, but who needs them when the film is this visually spectacular? John Keats basically wrote the plot in His Ode on a Grecian Urn:

 

“What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes & timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”

 

Basically, that is, if Keats were to replace pipes and timbrels with flame-throwing electric guitar – and wild ecstasy with balls to the wall insanity. As I’m sure he would if he saw Mad Max Fury Road. Ode on a Fury Road, perhaps?

Furiosa is Miller’s belated return to the world of Fury Road with the prequel story of Imperator Furiosa, which sadly underperformed at the box office – despite Chris Hemsworth’s memorable addition to the Mad Max rogues gallery with the warlord Dementus.

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

SF obviously – and the cinematic trope codifier for that SF subgenre we’ve all come to know and love, post-apocalyptic SF. Although it would be intriguing to see more post-apocalyptic fantasy – I’ve read books that are arguably literary post-apocalyptic fantasy but you just don’t see it in film (or at least, very little of it).

 

HORROR

 

Mad Max is not horror as such, although it arguably has elements of slasher and survival horror, not to mention the sheer existential horror of a post-apocalyptic world and the occasional body horror of the ravages of the wasteland on its warlords. As such, it wouldn’t take too much to switch it up for horror.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(2) SF (HORROR): THE TERMINATOR

(1984-1991+: THE TERMINATOR 1-2 – Yeah – I only count the first two films)

 

“I’ll be back”

The Terminator franchise is the definitive cinematic Robot War franchise, a science fiction trope that seemingly works best when combined with another science fiction trope. In the Terminator franchise, the Robot War is combined with that other compelling science fiction trope of time travel.

In this, it is the direct descendant of H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine – the heart of science fiction is still all Martians and Morlocks. We’ll be looking at Martians soon, but Skynet and its Terminators are Morlocks. The original Morlocks were one of two evolutionary descendants of humanity, evolved from the working class – maintaining the advanced technology of the future for the Eloi, the other descendants of humanity evolved from its leisured upper class. The dark twist of Wells’ novel is that the Morlocks eat the Eloi, “farming” them like livestock. This theme of evolution endures in the Terminator, albeit transformed from Wells’ unrealistic biological evolution (without genetic engineering or mutation) to cybernetic evolution – involving artificial intelligence and robots (or cyborgs) as machine Morlocks that rise up against their human Eloi. This descent from The Time Machine is doubly so for involving time travel, except in the other direction – almost as a direct sequel, as if the Morlocks had reverse engineered the Time Machine to travel back to the present.

Of course, at its core, the original Terminator is a horror film of relentless nightmare pursuit, literally evolved from James Cameron’s own nightmare vision of a metallic skeleton dragging itself from fire – which perhaps explains the franchise’s law of diminishing returns with each sequel away from its horror origins. Yes, even Terminator Judgement Day, which started the rot by breaking the rules of the original – although the action was so cool, we overlooked that. The original allowed time travel for only two ‘people’, the Terminator itself and Kyle Reese sent to stop it. The sequel allowed two more – a good cyborg Terminator and a bad liquid metal Terminator – and so on, until that Skynet time machine must be like a commuter train station with all the robots and humans going back and forth.

People bemoaned Terminator Genisys because it messed up the timeline, but that timeline was messed up from the very first sequel – if not implicitly in the original itself. It’s always bemused me that Skynet is smart enough to build an actual time machine, but not smart enough to work out the implications of it – either you simply can’t change the past (because it includes your time travel already) or you can but it becomes a different timeline from your existing timeline (nice for the new timeline, but not your original timeline which you still haven’t changed). Terminator Genisys simply took the changing timelines already in the franchise in their logical direction from Skynet’s point of view – a timeline-hopping Skynet, because the only way it can actually win by time travel is for itself to do the time travelling, like Skynet crossed with Marty McFly in Terminator meets Back to the Future. Then again, Skynet is just too much of a d!ck – it also bemused me exactly why Skynet’s plan always involves killing humanity rather than making a killing on the stock exchange or otherwise using its artificial intelligence to become rich and powerful, ruling the world rather than destroying it.

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

One of the biggest cinematic SF film franchises – the Robot War and time travel really give the genre away as SF. Although you probably could adapt it to magic in fantasy. There was a real missed opportunity not to do a Terminator-type storyline with time travel in epic fantasy. Think a mashup between The Lord of the Rings and the Terminator – with Sauron for Skynet…

 

HORROR

 

As I said, at its core (and in its origin) the Terminator films are SF horror – which essentially is slasher horror in this case, except with a robot killer.

 

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

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(1) SF (HORROR): ALIEN

(1979-1986+: ALIEN / ALIENS 1-2. That’s right – I mostly just count the first two films. Mostly)

 

Whereas Terminator is the definitive robot war franchise, Alien is the definitive, well, alien franchise – the direct descendant of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

As I said in my previous entry, the heart of SF is still all Martians and Morlocks to me (or evolution and entropy, those recurring themes in Wells). We’ve looked at the machine Morlocks of the Terminator (and the Matrix) – the aliens in the Alien franchise are Martians. Not literally Martians of course, unlike the original Martians in The War of the Worlds, but still the sharp edge of evolution (Wells’ penultimate true villain), red in tooth and claw, pitted against humanity in the backdrop of cold, dead space (or Wells’ ultimate true villain of entropy).

And holy crap – the Martians are positively cuddly compared to their cinematic descendant aliens, or xenomorphs, in the Alien franchise! Sure, the original Martians may have been space vampires, sucking down human blood, but the Alien xenomorphs take it to a whole new level of body horror, with every possible bodily fluid and organ of Freudian subtext thrown in for kicks. Whereas the original Martians invaded our world, the xenomorphs invade our very bodies – in the most face-hugging, throat-thrusting, chest-bursting way possible.

Like the original Terminator, the original Alien was at its core a horror film – the body horror of the alien itself in the claustrophobic intensity of a spaceship – and subject to a similar law of diminishing returns with each sequel away from its horror origins, although the intensity of action compensated for it in the immediate sequel.

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

Pretty much pure SF – although some aspects of the xenomorph biology verge on fantasy. Acid blood, anyone? It would be interesting to see a magic xenomorph in a fantasy setting.

 

 

HORROR

 

As I just said, the original Alien was at its core a horror film, arguably the SF horror film, and although the franchise moves away from that at times, it always retains some element of that SF horror, combining body and cosmic horror. Like The Thing, it’s another film that solves the haunted house problem but does The Thing one better by having the haunted house IN SPACE! Although, really, the xenomorph more resembles your classic slasher than your average ghost.

 

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT ALIEN-TIER?)

 

 

 

 

TL;DR – TOP 10 FANTASY & SF FILMS (TIER LIST)

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

(1) SF (HORROR): ALIEN

(1979 – 1986+. ALIEN / ALIENS 1-2 – I mostly just count the first two films. Mostly)

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(2) SF (HORROR): THE TERMINATOR

(1984-1991+: THE TERMINATOR 1-2 – I only count the first two films)

 

(3) SF: MAD MAX (1979-2024: MAX MAX 1-5. I’m counting Furiosa as a fifth film).

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If Alien is my Martian Old Testament of cinematic fantasy & SF, then The Terminator is my New Testament – and Mad Max is my apocalypse.

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A-TIER (TOP TIER)

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(4) SF (HORROR): THE THING (1982+: I only count the John Carpenter film)

(5) SF: THE MATRIX (1999+. There are no sequels)

(6) FANTASY: EXCALIBUR (1981)

(7) FANTASY: INDIANA JONES (1981-1989+. INDIANA JONES 1-3. I only count the original trilogy)

(8) SF: BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985-1990: BACK TO THE FUTURE 1-3)

(9) SF: JURASSIC PARK (1993+: I only count the first film)

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER) – BEST OF 2024

 

(10) SF: DUNE (2021-PRESENT: DUNE PARTS 1-2)

 

So to tally up my Top 10 Fantasy & SF Films, 8 are SF and 2 are fantasy.

3 are definitive SF horror – Alien, The Terminator and The Thing. Although I think you can argue for SF or fantasy horror elements in all the others except Back to the Future (unless you count the existential horror of erasing yourself from existence), albeit not enough to rank them within the horror genre.

 

 

 

 

 

(3) SF: MAD MAX

(1979-2024: MAD MAX 1-5 – yeah, I’m counting Furiosa as a fifth Mad Max film)

 

And now for some classic Australian post-apocalyptic cinema – let’s face it, Mad Max defined the post-apocalypse or at least post-apocalyptic chic, the apunkalypse or biker leather with a bit of BDSM kink thrown into the mix. (Hmmm…maybe a LOT of BDSM kink).

The only issue is which Mad Max film to choose? The correct answer is, of course, all of them – yes, the whole franchise. Even Thunderdome. Even Furiosa as “a Mad Max saga”. They all have something to offer the post-apocalyptic genre, particularly as the apocalypse shifts somewhat in each one.

Although overshadowed by its immediate sequel (so much so that the American audience was generally unaware that there was prior movie and the movie was instead titled The Road Warrior), the first Mad Max is arguably the purest of the films. Part of the latter is that it was shot on a shoestring budget – so much so that director George Miller paid extras in beer.

However, it is not purely a post-apocalyptic film – it also combines elements of ‘buddy cop’ movies and revenge movies, falling squarely within the so-called Ozploitation subgenre of contemporary films at that time (the Australian or ‘Oz’ version of exploitation films). Indeed, these elements predominate in the film – Max Rockatansky or Max is mad because a biker gang, led by Toecutter, burnt his cop buddy ‘Goose’ as well as running down his wife and infant child.

Oh the apocalypse is there somewhere in the background, but it has happened offscreen. Something has caused central governmental authority to decline, but it is still present in Max’s police highway patrol. What’s more – life and society are still relatively intact in the Australian country towns, and there’s even commercial traffic on the roads. This apocalypse reminds me of the proverbial decline and fall of the Roman Empire – too few legions and too many barbarians, the latter represented by the biker gangs emerging in the towns. Indeed, the parallel to the Roman Empire is even closer – just as the legions themselves were increasingly comprised by barbarian Germans, the police force in Mad Max resembles the leather-clad biker gangs. When the highway patrol arrests one of the bikers, the biker even has the mainstay of cop movies, a sleazy defense lawyer, show up and get him out. I mean, come on – what self-respecting post-apocalyptic world has lawyers?! Man, lawyers – they’re hardier than cockroaches! I might have to revise my post-apocalyptic job criteria…

It’s in the second film with the higher budget that the post-apocalyptic scene really gets into gear. And how – the opening narration speaks of oil running out and global (presumably nuclear) war. Long gone is the highway patrol – Max is now a lone survivor, albeit still in his iconic police super-charged V8 Pursuit Special. The plot revolves around an island of semi-barbarized civilization in the form of an oil refinery in an armed compound, besieged by the barbarian marauders. And what intriguing marauders in their leather bondage gear – led by the masked Lord Humungus (“the warrior of the wasteland, the ayatollah of rock-and-rollah” as he is announced) and his lieutenant Wez in those ass-less chaps.

The third film sees the last semblance of former civilization replaced by the barbarian Bartertown and its Thunderdome, ruled by an uneasy diumvirate of Aunty Entity and Master Blaster (although the latter is actually two people).

Personally, however, I can’t go past the visual splendor of the fourth film, Mad Max: Fury Road, which resets the apocalyptic story back to somewhere about the time of the second movie. Indeed, it probably works best as a retelling of the second film, but ramped up to eleven – the fourth film makes the apocalypse in the second film look positively cosy, while Immortan Joe and his War Boys makes the Lord Humungus and his retinue look like a polite picnic party. The plot, characterization and dialogue are all pared down, but who needs them when the film is this visually spectacular? John Keats basically wrote the plot in His Ode on a Grecian Urn:

 

“What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes & timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”

 

Basically, that is, if Keats were to replace pipes and timbrels with flame-throwing electric guitar – and wild ecstasy with balls to the wall insanity. As I’m sure he would if he saw Mad Max Fury Road. Ode on a Fury Road, perhaps?

Furiosa is Miller’s belated return to the world of Fury Road with the prequel story of Imperator Furiosa, which sadly underperformed at the box office – despite Chris Hemsworth’s memorable addition to the Mad Max rogues gallery with the warlord Dementus.

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

SF obviously – and the cinematic trope codifier for that SF subgenre we’ve all come to know and love, post-apocalyptic SF. Although it would be intriguing to see more post-apocalyptic fantasy – I’ve read books that are arguably literary post-apocalyptic fantasy but you just don’t see it in film (or at least, very little of it).

 

HORROR

 

Mad Max is not horror as such, although it arguably has elements of slasher and survival horror, not to mention the sheer existential horror of a post-apocalyptic world and the occasional body horror of the ravages of the wasteland on its warlords. As such, it wouldn’t take too much to switch it up for horror.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(4) SF: THE THING

(1982)

 

My fourth place entry is The Thing – not the original 1951 The Thing from Another World or the 2011 prequel but John Carpenter’s classic 1982 film. Once again, we’re back to Wells’ Martians and Morlocks, with some Lovecraftian Mythos a la At the Mountains of Madness thrown in for extra horror, because The Thing is at its core a horror film. Of course, in this case, we’re dealing with a Martian – not literally Martian but alien. And holy crap – every other alien in cinematic science fiction (including those of another entry on this list) are positively cuddly compared to the alien…thing in The Thing. That…thing doesn’t just invade our bodies – it assimilates them. Violently. The Thing is a shapeshifter, absorbing its victim’s body into itself, yet able to retain the appearance of (and mimic) that victim, seemingly extending to any lifeform.

Fortunately The Thing is confined to an American Antarctic research base, but then so are its targets subject to the body horror of the thing itself – it takes the hostile environment and inescapable isolation of the setting and raises it with a full house of paranoia, as the Americans desperately try to figure out which of them have been assimilated (against the background of the grim calculation that if the Thing should escape the isolation of Antarctica, then all of humanity will be consumed), an uncertainty that continues to the ending itself.

Apparently, it’s an annual tradition for viewing by the winter crew at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station during the first evening of winter.

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

SF obviously, from the very opening sequence of an alien spacecraft crashing to Earth – although arguably like the Lovecraftian or Cthulhu Mythos it resembles, it borders on fantasy, albeit not as much as beings like Cthulhu or other elements of the Mythos. I sometimes muse how it could work as supernatural rather than SF horror – with the Thing as something akin to a vampire or the demons in the Evil Dead films, except with shapechanging assimilation abilities.

 

HORROR

 

One of my three top ten entries which are also my holy trinity of SF horror – perhaps the most classic SF horror entry in my top ten, which has inspired or been referenced by films and other works of popular culture ever since. Like all good classic horror, it is essentially haunted house horror, substituting an alien for the ghost, and neatly solving the so-called haunted house problem – why don’t the characters just leave the house? – by virtue of its Antarctic setting effectively confining their characters to their base and isolating them from the outside world, the latter being something the more astute characters realize they have to maintain to protect the world from the Thing.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)