The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Space opera concerns stories that place an emphasis on intergalactic adventure. Space opera features a series of adventures in a variety of often exotic interplanetary locales, involving space battles and a variety of alien lifeforms all living in differing levels of coexistence.
The space opera was largely invented in the late 1920s by writers such as Jack Williamson and in particular E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith, as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs who came up with the Planetary Adventure, a space opera adventure that is restricted to a single planetary locale.
The first screen space operas were in the serials with the various adventures of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers and later with tv’s Star Trek (1966-9). The genre found enormous popularity with Star Wars (1977) and successive sequels, spinoffs and imitators.
Enjoyable sequel to Jumanji and actually a much superior film in the hands of Jon Favreau. This expands the idea of the Jumanji boardgame that brings things from a jungle to life to a space theme
Star Wars meets Top Gun – a concept it is surprising no one has thought of before – but alas this film adaptation of the popular videogame only regurgitates the cliches of either film
One of the cheap Italian space operas of the 1960s from Antonio Margheriti. This has a certain colourful absurdity amid the mostly dull happenings and B-budget effects
One of the various Italian space operas of the 1960s from director Antonio Margheriti. This has a certain colourful ambition despite frequently being let down by cheap effects
It was a box-office bomb but this is one of the most breathtaking and completely designed SF work to ever cross the screen. In terms of effects, sets and costuming, Luc Besson gives us a work that is an overwhelming treat for the eyes
Animated film based on the popular fantasy wargame. The set-up is a fascinating mix of SF and mediaeval religion but the plot rehashes Aliens without much payoff and the animation is B-budget
An Italian space opera where a professor and associates are abducted after finding an alien craft. The film’s main distinction was being redubbed in English under the title Star Pilot to be released as a copy of Star Wars
A strong contender for Worst Film Ever. Rather than create any effects, it has simply uplifted footage from Star Wars, while the score is a mismash taken from popular films of the era. The dialogue is so bizarrely surreal it makes the brain hurt trying to understand it
Disney animated film that proved a flop, this lazily remakes Treasure Island set in space. The result is bad science-fiction with sailing ships in space, Ben Gumm as a malfunctioning robot and so on
Animated theatrically released spinoff from the original Transformers tv series. The film mostly serves to highlight the considerable number of characters where to the uninitiated it is frequently difficult to tell one side from the next.
Very nicely made space opera from animator Don Bluth, operating from a Joss Whedon script, that unfortunately proved a big box-office flop
Rene Laloux, the animator who made Fantastic Planet, collaborates with cult fantasy artist Moebius and the result is a planetary adventure filled with trippily exotic backgrounds and creatures
Beautifully colourful 1950s SF film about scientists who are abducted to take part in a war between two alien species
Companion piece of James Gunn’s Superman, this met a very mixed reception. Part of its problem is that it wants to create a cynical version of the virtuous Supergirl we are familiar with and trash her image
Sequel to the animated The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was the second highest grossing film of 2023. From the people behind the Despicable Me films, this exists as little more than eye candy for five-year-olds
The fifth of the films in the series begun with Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers. The best of the series was the previous entry Starship Troopers: Invasion where they turned it over to anime director Shinji Aramaki. This is a sequel to that, although the same mix fails to work again
The importation of anime director Shinji Aramaki to helm the latest Starship Troopers film provides dazzling animation and hardware, along with some hard, furious military action that easily outstrips all the other films. On the other hand, the film never goes beyond being about soldiers shooting up bugs
Travesty of Robert Heinlein’s classic SF novel from Paul Verhoeven. Heinlein’s philosophical argument for militarism is junked in favour of blackly comic mindless violence
Modest space opera from British director Neil Johnson that achieves things with its effects on a low-budget that easily rivals A-budget films
Sequel to Starship Rising, a space opera that does some amazing things with effects on a next-to-no budget
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
The first animated film in 3D, a blatant copy of Star Wars that proves occasionally engaging
An extraordinary example of the fan film where Finnish filmmakers created a parody of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5, with effects that rival those of A-list studio fare made on their home computers
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
Long-awaited revival of the tv series on the big screen. While this has a mixed fan reception, it is well worth re-evaluation. It is the only one of the Trek films that reaches for epic, mind-expanding places to find something of a 2001: A Space Odyssey
A Star Trek film spun off around Michelle Yeoh and the secret service that appears in the modern revival series
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
I had mixed feelings about J.J. Abrams’ reboot of Star Trek This time around the actors seem more at home in the characters and the plot works a good deal better (for the most part), while Abrams creates a hurtling effects spectacle that is the most action-oriented of the Trek films
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 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
The second of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films where series regular Jonathan Frakes takes the director’s chair and delivers an exciting adventure, showing an excellent hand with the special effects. Far more satisfying than the previous film
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 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
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
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
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
Space opera (or more correctly planetary adventure) conducted on a low-budget where you can see the filmmakers are making a clear effort to go way above and beyond the resources to hand
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
Mel Brooks parodies the Star Wars films. As with most Brooks films, the humour is broad and scattershot but occasionally amusing
An enjoyable low-budget modern space opera that ably conjures the knockabout spirit of a host of low-budget 1980s Star Wars knockoffs
Stuart Gordon takes a lame concept – a trucker film set in space – and makes something far more enjoyable than one expected with most of the cast getting into the spirit of the exercise
South Korean space opera about a crew of space junk collectors. If the Star Wars series wanted to find a director to create fresh and exhilarating effects scenes, they need look no further than here
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
The brooding space pirate Captain Harlock is one of the famous anti-heroes in manga and anime. Harlock gets a big screen revamp here from Shinji (Appleseed) Aramaki, one of the most amazing of modern anime directors, who delivers a series of epic space battles with a breathtaking beauty
This is widely regarded as a classic bad movie. A South African-made space opera where the corner-cutting cheapness of the production proves frequently hilarious
Low-budget film that does quite a creditable job on the whole space marines theme
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
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
The great Osamu Dezai makes a colourful anime that jumps aboard the Stars Wars space opera fad
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
Easily dismissed because of its deliberately cheesy title, this is a modestly enjoyable relocating of The Most Dangerous Game on another planet
Shoddy low-budget Canadian-made attempt to jump aboard the Star Wars fad, this promotes itself as a bogus sequel to the H.G. Wells classic
The tv series Firefly gained a cult following before being cancelled before its time. This was a theatrical film intended to wrap the story up.
A low expectation effort, a space opera about the crew of a salvage vessel, that ends up being quite a bit better than the B-budget film it is
A pneumatically inflated heroine fights the machines amid a standard array of space opera and post-apocalyptic future tropes
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
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
Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon was intended as a two-part space opera saga. This first half emerged watchably and this is Part Two
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
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
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
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
Very cheap-looking attempt to essentially relocate a gold prospectors adventure into outer space
Soviet-made science-fiction film about a mysterious female alien visitor. The set-up intrigues for a time but the directorial delivery is dull and prosaic, while the mystery about who the alien woman is sidetracked by a long-winded interplanetary adventure in the second half
This has a cute title pun but otherwise is a feeble SF comedy
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
Film adapted from the popular German-language Perry Rhodan space operas that is cheap and quickly heads into bad movie stakes
Episodes of the original Battlestar Galactica tv series that were recut and screened theatrically for international audiences
Early Charles Band film made in the mid-80s 3D revival fad. A cheap planetary adventure that feels like a collage of other SF films around at the time, most notably Star Wars and Mad Max 2
Japanese attempt to jump aboard the Star Wars fad, a vigorous and colourful retelling of The Seven Samurai as a space opera
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
Another instance of a computer game or film franchise turning to anime to conduct a spinoff. While Mass Effect has an impressive reputation on the console screen, the film here is a dull piece that only comes in around the level of a production line animated tv episode
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
Surprisingly halfway reasonable big screen remake of the 1960s tv series, this welcomely dumps the campy silliness of the show for a grittier, much more realistic take on the characters
A spinoff from Pixar’s Toy Story films that gives Buzz Lightyear a film all of his own. A likeable if fairly routine space adventure but aargh the rewrites to series continuity
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
One of the sillier films made in the aftermath of Star Wars. It is recycling third hand cliches and reduces these to simplistic fantasies of military heroism for the videogame generation
The Wachowskis set out to make a space opera adventure in the Star Wars vein. As always, the elevate every genre they take on and the film is packed with astonishing action sequences and wild, mind-expanding ideas
A Japanese SF film with Sonny Chiba as superhero fighting off alien invaders. This has a tatty cheapness that takes it well and truly places into bad movie territory.
Dance music duo Daft Punk collaborate with anime directors to create an animated space opera based on their album Discovery about an intergalactic rock band and their fight to save the galaxy
A space opera that was made in the aftermath of Star Wars. It is a magpie collage of influences that are not always the most coherently presented and given a comic emphasis
One of several cheap Italian copies that were made after the success of Star Wars starring Richard Kiel as a peaceful intergalactic police inspector who is mutated into a killer humanoid
Sequel to the animated Heavy Metal that failed to attract the same cult audience that its predecessor did. Telling only one story instead of several, it only offers a routine space opera adventure
A compilation of shorts from anime directors set in the Halo videogame universe. The first two episodes have a breathtaking scale but the others are bitsy stories but nothing standout
Third of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, this successfully recaptures the nature of the goofy ensemble comedy caper that made the first film such a winner but seemed to be missing in the second
Guardians of the Galaxy was an audience winner with its eccentric humour and effortless charm; this sequel feels buried under bloated production overkill where the charms of the original remain thinly drawn
A triumphal Marvel Comics adaptations that manages to mainline the spirit of the original Star Wars, while in in its wryly, self-deflating culture savvy suggesting a Star Wars rewritten by a 14 year-old Quentin Tarantino
Green Lantern is a classic comic-book character but his screen presence were damaged by the Ryan Reynolds film. This conducts a severe reset of the character’s continuity
An extremely funny parody of Star Trek that sends up both the show, the actors and the fandom. A very witty and knowing script that has definitely been written by fans
Classic anime space opera adventure made not long after Star Wars and filled with moments of glorious visual poetry including the conceptually absurd image of a spacegoing train