The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Other Planets refers to any other planet that is visited in the course of an SF film. The worlds of the Solar System are dealt with in more detail under Mars, Venus, The Moon and Journeys Inside the Solar System.
Visits to other planets were for many years (up until the 1950s) confined within the Solar System – the exception might be Flash Gordon’s Mongo. These were hardly scientific – most planets being represented with Earth-like atmosphere and inhabited or the unserious whimsies of Georges Melies where the Moon and Sun had faces.
Depictions of extra-solar planets began to enter in the Space Exploration films of the 1950s and in particular tv shows like Doctor Who (1963-89), Lost in Space (1965-8) and Star Trek (1966-9), which showed a widely inhabited galaxy beyond the Solar System – although in the majority of cases still inhabited by people that looked just like us, spoke English and lived on Earth-like planets. A large part of the reason for this being that creating non-human and exotic places was far more expensive than simply going on location in Bronson Canyon or the BBC Quarry.
The much more diverse galaxy started to come in in Star Wars (1977) and sequels, showing a galaxy of worlds and different environments – desert or ice worlds, forest moons, volcanic worlds. The new Star Trek series of the 1980s/90s created more exotic aliens with strange facial appliances. However, these were still all variants on humanoid aliens and earth-like planets for the most part.
Since this, not a huge amount is changed. There are plentiful films that depict well-inhabited galaxies. And a number of others that depict exotic worlds. However, with occasional exceptions, there are only a few works that have the imagination (or budget) to go for the truly exotic and different.
The first film from Bert I. Gordon, known for his cheap giant animal films through the 1950s. This concerns a space expedition to a planet inhabited by dinosaurs – cue Gordon’s usual cheap effects
A big-budget fantasy film made too much in the shadow of Star Wars by people with little understanding of the genre. The fantasy elements feel leaden and fail to take any imaginative flight
Sequel to The Lego Movie. This time the idea of the Lego universe, the crossovers and fourth-wall breaking gags are not as fresh but this still gets good mileage out of them
E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman books are space opera classics. Here they are given the anime treatment, which abandons much adherence to the source material and ends up more as a copy of Star Wars
Director Stanley Donen conducts a star-studded musical adaptation of Antoine De Saint-Exupéry’s children story about an innocent alien prince come to Earth but with ponderous results
On its own terms, a frequently lovely film. The director made a big thing of how much he loved the Saint-Exupery original but makes a completely different story with only occasional Little Prince interludes
SF film with Anthony Ramos as survivor of a crashed ship who must make a journey across a hostile planet to find another survivor while low on oxygen
Zack Snyder’s reboot of Superman leaves you irritated in the first half of the film at its throwing chunks of comic-book canon out the window and the second half bored with the mass destruction orgy that drags on
Nicolas Roeg’s film featuring David Bowie as an alienated alien visitor to Earth, a film that is equal amounts brilliance and pretentious distractions
A spinoff film from The Mandalorian tv series, this is the best film set in the Star Wars universe this side of the 2000s for the simple reason that it has invested in characters rather than slavish fanboy callbacks
Ray Bradbury’s book about the human colonisation of Mars is an SF classic for its wistful, nostalgic poetry. This tv mini-series adaptation is killed by a lumbering director who over-explains Bradbury’s imagery in the most literal ways
This ended up being the lowest rated of all MCU films. One wondered whether this was just fannish hyperbole but no what we end up with is the Batman & Robin of The MCU, the single worst film that franchise has produced
Live-action film based on the Mattel toy line and popular animated tv series. Given a Cannon Films budget, it emerges as a cheesily absurd Flash Gordon/Conan the Barbarian knockoff
A reboot of Masters of the Universe, this fully embraces the mythology of the animated series and gives them great life. But is also a work that is constantly deflating any chance you are taking it seriously
Japanese attempt to jump aboard the Star Wars fad, a vigorous and colourful retelling of The Seven Samurai as a space opera
Parasite director Bong Joon Ho makes an ambitious SF film where Robert Pattinson as a clone(s) on a planetary colonisation expedition who becomes embroiled in trying to save an alien species
Films about stupid people are rarely funny – this concerns a whole planet of stupid people. Despite reasonable production values, there is little that raises even a mild smile in this comedic take on Flash Gordon
The sixth Godzilla film, the first where the series combines elements of space opera – a typical entry of the era and colourfully entertaining about it too
Early Roland Emmerich film with Michael Paré investigating pirates targeting a mining moon. As usual with Emmerich, the focus is on action while neglecting the plausibility of the scenario
Following Tin Man and Alice, another of Nick Willing’s ingenious rewritings and rationalisations of classic children’s tales in science-fiction terms. Here the essentials of Peter Pan are transported to another planet
SF film with Stephen Baldwin sentenced to life on a prison planet where he becomes saviour to a small peaceful community
Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall, about a planet surrounded by six suns that only experiences nightfall once every thousand years, is considered the No 1 classic science-fiction short story. On film, it has alas befallen two impoverished versions from Roger Corman of which this was the second
Dull and forgettable space exploration film where an astronaut is stranded on a planet and ends up in a romantic triangle and an alien invasion
A gripping and particularly well conceived planetary survival story. The film that launched Vin Diesel’s career and he has never been better than as the lethal, tight-lipped serial killer Riddick
A one-gag animated film that essentially reverses the plot of E.T, and has a human astronaut stranded on a planet of aliens and adopted by one boy. More likeable than it has a right to be.
Animated adaptation of the one of the biggest Marvel Comics event storylines of the 2000s – the same one also used in Thor Ragnarok. Essentially Spartacus recast with The Incredible Hulk
Modest effort featuring some stop-motion animated dinosaur effects that are reasonably accomplished for the pre-CGI era. On the other hand, it seems a professionally-made amateur production designed to highlight effects and with not much beyond that
Tim Burton’s much disliked remake. Certainly, the ape makeups are superb. While Burton touches many points with the original, he has dropped the biting satire in favour of adventure, while the ending left everyone scratching their heads
The film that started it all. This takes what could have been a jokey premise and delivers it in bold, exciting stokes. What elevates the film is Rod Serling’s script. filled with embittered soliloquies that become a biting commentary on the human condition, before the film reaches one of the great cinematic twist endings
Cult Italian horror director Mario Bava makes an SF film where explorers find an alien planet where aliens possess the dead (not vampires despite the title). In many ways a precursor of Alien
Film spinoff from the Mighty Morphin Powers Rangers tv series that became a fad in the 90s. All the same rubber monsters and shrieking over-the-top acting is preserved intact
The ninth Predator film. This changes the mix quite considerably from the usual alien huntsman vs human prey formula we have had so far. It also offers a return to the Alien universe, although not quite what we expect
Despite being hamstrung with Adrien Brody in Action Hero mode, this is a hard-edged film that goes some way to rescue the Predator franchise from its novelty crossovers with Alien(s)
Japanese film about a superhero defending Earth against alien invaders that travels into incredibly bad movie stakes with its painfully cheap effects and frequent dialogue howlers
The Asylum conduct their own version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars adventures three years before the Disney film and, despite one of their impoverished budgets, do an almost halfway reasonable version
A Russian SF film about an expedition through a wormhole that then gets lost, this bites off an ambitious conceptual reach only for it to fall apart in a shaggy dog ending
Ridley Scott’s promised prequel to Alien. The first half creates epic mystery but the answers provided are not nearly as interesting as promised, while the latter half disappointingly settles for doing the Alien standard with decidedly lesser effect
I can’t say the premise of this – a gold prospecting story located in space – did much for me. Contrary to expectation, this is a surprisingly good planetary adventure that does a fine job creating an alien world with minimalist effect and telling a strong character-driven story
Strong and intelligent Spanish film that readily homages Philip K. Dick in its mind-expanding story of a science-fiction fan being contacting aliens
Absurd space exploration fantasy where men encounter an all-women planet and proceed to put them in their place. The film has a Plan 9 from Outer Space-level badness and the appallingness of the sexual politics makes you do a double-take today
Slight but colourful animated film for the very young based on the popular series of Hallmark cards and Mattel toys about a magical horse
Animated film based on the popular computer game. On screen, this emerges as essentially an instantly forgettable variant on one of the Star Wars prequels retooled for the Under Tens with the emphasis all on frenetic slapstick and visual eye candy
Zack Snyder returns with a work that is all but a Star Wars film in name where he draws heavily on the basics of The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven
Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon was intended as a two-part space opera saga. This first half emerged watchably and this is Part Two
The third Riddick film abandons the dark space opera of the less popular Chronicles of Riddick and tries to return to the planetary survival story of Pitch Black. Despite the effort showing at times, the film gets to be a good deal of fun when it gets to the scenes of Riddick outwitting the mercenaries
The first adaptation of Philip Jose Farmer’s series of novels where every person who ever lived is resurrected on an alien planet is given an abysmal treatment as a tv movie that ditches and rewrites major aspects of the books
The second tv mini-series of Philip Jose Farmer’s classic SF novels trashes the books just as badly as the first attempt. The premise and characters are indifferently rewritten, while the show is churned out by a director with a tatty indifference to what he is making
British-made film about an astronaut stranded on a world of robots. Made by a team of three people, this produces effects that rival Hollywood productions but is also a solid work of planetary survival that comes with some jaw-dropping mid-film twists
Disney are now doing what Lucasfilm did with their novels in the 80s and spinning adventures off from even minor background characters. This is a grittier Dirty Dozen adventure but still recycles the same basic elements
A film naming itself after an entire genre either has massive ambition or huge pretensions. Beyond the grandiose title, this is not much more than a better budgeted version of an 80s planetary adventure
Modest and underrated Philip K. Dick adaptation that builds reasonable atmosphere during its journey across a planet and doubt as to who among the party might be one of a breed of evolving androids
Disappointing sequel to the modest original that does little but revisit and re-run the first film’s scenario with little to add to it
A Canadian film starring Elias Koteas as an aging man banished to solitary servitude on a prison planet where his loneliness is broken by the arrival of a fellow prisoner
Not entirely uninteresting but also not entirely satisfactory adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel about a man who becomes unstuck in time, flipping back and forward between the events of his own life
Easily dismissed because of its deliberately cheesy title, this is a modestly enjoyable relocating of The Most Dangerous Game on another planet
Called the Russian 2001. Andrei Tarkovsky makes one of the great SF films, a haunting ghost story set on a space station as an alien planet below drives the crew mad with recreated doppelgangers of their loved ones
Steven Soderbergh’s English-language remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s epic SF film. Soderbergh trims Tarkovsky’s long-windedness and makes the plot tighter, more intimate but this still emerges as a lesser version than the original
Kurt Russell gives a fine performance as a programmed soldier who discovers emotions but under Paul W.S. Anderson the rest of the big-budgeted film collapses into over-inflated cliches
The second of the Stars Wars spinoff films tells a Han Solo origin story. After a change of directors, it emerges in the hands of Ron Howard who has spent four decades being the world’s most ploddingly sedate director
Sequel to the hit videogame adaptation, this offers up fairly much the same mix of elements as before – a cutely anthrompomorphic creature and Jim Carrey going to rafter-rattling excess
The great Osamu Dezai makes a colourful anime that jumps aboard the Stars Wars space opera fad
A live-action remake of the 1970s anime series Space Cruiser Yamato made with stupendous effects, although now much of the plot has been rendered familiar by assorted Star Wars copies
An animated film about NASA experimental chimpanzees. Not quite up there with Pixar but an amiable and unpretentious and amiable outing
Anime film spun off from a popular Japanese tv series. Despite crude animation, this has a colourful vigour and taps the same space opera vein as Star Wars, which came only three months earlier
Low-budget producer Roger Corman jumped aboard the Star Wars sf bandwagon with Battle Beyond the Stars then took all the effects scenes and wrote another entire film around them with Space Raiders
An enjoyable low-budget modern space opera that ably conjures the knockabout spirit of a host of low-budget 1980s Star Wars knockoffs
Mel Brooks parodies the Star Wars films. As with most Brooks films, the humour is broad and scattershot but occasionally amusing
Planetary adventure in the Star Wars vein with a few shakes of the junkyard future look of Mad Max 2. This was made to exploit the short-lived early 80s 3D revival fad
SF action with Michael Paré convicted to a prison planet from which he attempts to organise the prisoners to make an escape. This is essentially a Western that takes place in SF terms
Second of the Star Trek films, usually regarded as the fan favourite because of its often moving character focus on themes of life, death and aging. Ricardo Montalban makes a grandly theatrical villain and the film gets some great suspense out of space war sequences
Leonard Nimoy steps into the director’s chair of the third Star Trek film and his doing marks the shift of the films from intergalactic adventuring into the regulars engaged in a safe, easy set of adventures playing to fan audiences
William Shatner tries to emulate the success had by Leonard Nimoy in directing a Star Trek film but falls on his face, badly overstressing the comedy elements and delivering the worst of the Classic Trek films
The last of the classic Star Trek films. Nicholas Meyer, who made the last good Trek film The Wrath of Khan, returns to give the characters a moving send off, while the plot that reenacts the fall of the Berlin Wall with the Klingons gives the films a political immediacy that was missing since the tv series
J.J. Abrams revives the Star Trek franchise by recasting it with younger faces and rewriting continuity. But in the appeal to a hipper, sexier vibe, it feels a long way from Gene Roddenberry’s creation – nowhere in evidence is the original’s concern with galactic politics and social issues of the day
Gene Roddenbery created a tv series that was about boldly going, confronting different ways of life. The choice to hire the director of The Fast and the Furious films to helm the film made for the show’s 50th anniversary says how wrong-headed the reboot series has become – all about cool young leads and hurtling effects sequences
The first of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films is an odd affair that seems like a routine episode of the series that accidentally gained a big-screen budget. This crosses over with Classic Trek where William Shatner mugs his way through a grand old airing of Captain Kirk
Third of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films has Jonathan Frakes back in the director’s seat where he again plays to his strengths with great visual effects scenes but the story feels like a filler episode
The last of the films spun off from Star Trek: The Next Generation and a dismal flop that killed the film series off. Tom Hardy as a bad guy Romulan is a cardboard threat while the uninspired plot rehashes The Wrath of Khan
The single most influential science-fiction film of all time, one that created a massive industry of sequels and spinoffs, not to mention copycats, and changed the way that people thought of science-fiction
George Lucas’s return to the Star Wars series after a sixteen year absence and a build-up rivaled only by the Second Coming. Instead most audiences went away disappointed. Lucas has used the interim to push the technology to its heights but the story and characters are lacking
The second of George Lucas’s Stars Wars prequels is no particular improvement. The romance is stiff and awkward, badly written while the effects sequences seem to be running out of new things to do and so just up the scale of what has happened before with so much going on it reaches a point of visual overload
The last of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy and the last opportunity for him to get it right, which he generally does. The effects are expert but are not allowed to dominate as much as they did previously and the focus has come back onto the story and Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader
George Lucas’s first sequel to Star Wars and a work that holds up every bit as well as its predecessor, in many places betters it. The story darkens the mythos and introduces new characters, while the special effects sequences are the peak of the series
A disappointing end to George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy. The script lazily wraps up loose ends while sidelining the new characters introduced the last time, and the climax rehashes the climaxes of the two other films
It’s not another Empire Strikes Back but it makes up for the prequels. A good part fanservice to the original – if overly reliant on rehashing elements from Star Wars – this also does many things right
I’m not one of the haters on this. It’s the first Star Wars sequel since the 1980s to invigorate the series with fresh action sequences and place more focus on the characters instead of the action
The concluding chapter of the third trilogy of Star Wars films. After the critically divided The Last Jedi, J.J. Abrams opts for a return to the safety of familiarity and nostalgia
The tv special that George Lucas would have all copies destroyed, a work of legendary badness – a Star Wars Thanksgiving special featuring most of the original cast and a series of variety performances that are mind-boggling in their ineptitude, not to mention complete and utter fumbling of everything that Star Wars was
Theatrical spinoff from the Star Wars prequels, released to introduce the popular animated series. This shows it is time for George Lucas to move beyond recycling something that was successful three decades ago
The first animated film in 3D, a blatant copy of Star Wars that proves occasionally engaging
The first of Roland Emmerich’s special effects epics. Emmerich rehashes Erich von Daniken’s Ancient Astronauts theories but casts it as a planetary adventure on an epic canvas with surprisingly entertaining results
A planetary adventure from the director of Battlefield Earth. I waited 35 years to find a copy of this – it looked incredibly promising when I saw production artwork back in the 1980s
Sequel to Starship Rising, a space opera that does some amazing things with effects on a next-to-no budget
Modest space opera from British director Neil Johnson that achieves things with its effects on a low-budget that easily rivals A-budget films
A 15 chapter serial that marks the very first live-action screen appearance of Superman. The superheroics and effects are painfully primitive today (where Superman flying is represented by animation) but the serial gets many aspects of the comic-book down right
This is where the modern comic-book superhero began on screen. A film that is almost completely successful in banishing campy silliness and taking itself seriously, allowing Superman to fly with magnificent effects. Christopher Reeve shines as the ultimate boy scout
One of the best of the DC Universe Original Animated Movies under the greatly underrated Lauren Montgomery. This serves to introduce Supergirl and Jack Kirby’s Fourth World
Pilot for the excellent Bruce Timm Superman animated tv series of the mid-1990s. This retells the Superman origin story, keeping great faith to the comics, while adding some fantastic action scenes
The celebrated Walter Hill directs an Alien-inspired film about a mutated killer loose on a spaceship. This was a problem-ridden production that pans out far less interestingly than it promises to be
Grungy low tech anime that comes out like a sarcastic version of Hello Kitty