The FIRST and The MOST Recent Science Fiction Movies I've Ever Seen.

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talks movies this time I really decided

to do something a little bit different

and I say that every video

but this time I'm gonna be talking about

the first science fiction movie I ever

saw and the most recent one so you've

got to get a thematic thing going there

and that's what I thought up so we'll

work with it now the first so I'll get

this out of the way like subscribe leave

a comment tell me what your first

science fiction movie was

but don't do it yet do it after the

video the first science fiction movie I

saw was a movie that my uncles John and

Roy took me to they were living with my

grandparents at the time and they

decided they were going to take me to

see this movie at the Crescent theater

in Fairfield New South Wales uh because

they wanted to see it and also I've been

going through a bit of a rough Trot for

reasons and so they decided when I was

about six

to take me down to the Crescent to see

this island Earth which was on a Revival

showing when it first came out in 1955 I

was minus a couple of years old it was

great we got popcorn and down at the

bottom of the popcorn there was always a

little plastic Cowboy or an Indian on a

horse

because Cowboys and Indians were a thing

then colonizers and so you saw it and

there are bits that terrified me the

bits in The Tubes where people turn into

their circulatory systems and their

skeletons scared the hell out of me

metal in a monster not so much but I

thought I'd talk about the movie and I'm

getting ahead of myself

so let's get started like many Hollywood

movies all over Hollywood's history had

a bit of a fraught Genesis this movie it

was based on a novelist by Raymond F

Jones which turned up in thrilling

Wonder Stories in 1949

under the most prosaic title ever

the alien machine

jonesery wrote and expanded the

novelette in 1952 and it was published

Under The Meta title of this island

Earth title I kind of like the idea of

Earth being in Oasis in space in the

cold harsh conditions of space it is

it's an evocative title and I think it's

one of the best science fiction movie

titles ever apart from everything

everywhere all at once so I've read the

novel out you can actually find it on

archive.org if you look around because

all of the thrilling Wonder Stories from

1949 are on archive.org and the writing

is pretty bloody ordinary but the the

bones of it are pretty much the same as

the movie Hollywood didn't follow

everything in the story but then

Hollywood never ever does

but there are some aspects of the

original novel where there are all sorts

of interesting parallels between the

planet Earth and the little islands in

the Pacific Ocean that America kind of

took over during World War II while they

were fighting the Japanese the Earth is

is kind of an analogy for those islands

it's interesting that Jones made that

parallel and kind of put us in the

position of a culture meeting a vastly

superior warring culture which is

warring with somebody else and that

Superior culture using resources from

Earth to wage their War it's a really

nice analogy from The Fairly recent past

of the time that the movie and the novel

were made we get less of that analogy in

the movie but if you read between the

logs you can definitely find it there

but the movie itself was directed by

Joseph M Newman who was it was a pretty

ordinary director come to think of it

because the metal illness scenes weren't

actually directed by Newman they were

directed by Jack Arnold and we all know

Jekyll from so many cool things Creature

from the Black Lagoon being probably the

most prominent of them and I think Jack

Arnold knew how to handle science

fiction quite well the scenes on the

planet medal learner are less stallider

and stodgy than a lot of the other

scenes yeah and I'm glad the studio made

that decision now according to all the

studio publicity and I could believe

this the special effects took two and a

half years to make

for this movie and to look at them

they're nowhere near what we've got now

of course

but just thinking about making them

physically and using the different

techniques and Technologies

that were available to 1950s movie

makers they did a pretty good job and I

can understand why it took time building

those elaborate sets and those

Miniatures and the models and and

working out how to do some pretty

ambitious stuff with an alien Spaceball

where one alien race is guiding meteors

into the atmosphere to crash into a

planet it wasn't an easy thing to do in

1955

but let's get back to this story itself

uh there are some really nice reveals

every few minutes even though it starts

out with the usual thing you get in

science fiction movies from America the

1950s where Cal Meacham the engineers

scientist hero

uh is meeting with the government in

Washington talking about his inventions

and how he plans to do things like turn

lead into uranium and so making uranium

widely available for a whole bunch of

different things that they wanted to do

with it in the 1950s and since then we

found better ways to do and I couldn't

help but make parallels between Cal

Meacham in this island Earth and Elon

Musk cow medium's actually a guy who

makes things he's the guy who puts it

all together comes up the concepts and

makes things and he has a whole bunch of

press people asking him questions as he

climbs into a Lockheed t-33 shooting

star jet to fly back to California and

he gets the pr that somebody like musk

gets but he's actually the guy that

doesn't unlock Elon Musk who buys up

companies and then throws silly ideas at

them and yes I'm going to get some musk

stands having a go at me for saying that

but to be honest with you I simply don't

care so Cal who borrows this Lockheed

t-33 to fly back to California

is flying back to the lab where he works

there's a flame out and the engine goes

and he is rescued by a green beam which

envelops the ship and brings it into a

safe landing at the airstrip though even

doing that bit of special effects was

kind of difficult because because making

that green glow around the spaceship is

not an easy task even in the 1950s so we

get that as a first setup something's

going weird in the world and Carl

Meacham is a part of it then we get him

Minnie's assistant Joe in his lab

and to replace some capacitors which are

the size of Serial containers a company

has sent them tiny little beads XC

condenses in an envelope must be a gag

dreamed up by the receiving department I

ordered two XC condensers and supreme

equipment sent me these beads the uh Cal

and Joe test the capacitors to find out

that they're Technology Way Beyond

anything that anybody else has

and then this sent a catalog of parts

from the same mysterious company which

is not the company they ordered from and

they decide to kind of order all the

parts and build an interrocerer

which they don't know what is so they

put it all together there's a lot of

nice hard science kind of engineering

stuff in here which plays really well

into the hard science loving side of my

nature

and they're building into Russell which

is kind of like let me think what does

it into Russell like it's a great big

thing with the Triangular screen and all

the bits and pieces and it's pretty much

the same as that if this had a death

rate so in a lot of ways we're way ahead

of the metaluna people

except the fact that we haven't figured

out a way yet to fit a death rate into a

phone somebody should build a new

feroceter in real life for a YouTube

channel I think and find a way to make a

triangular video screen

put all the little bits in it and then

Mount some really really powerful

handheld lasers on the apices of the

triangle so they can zap things I think

that that's a YouTube video that I'd

really like to watch

but having said that they built the

interrocerer and then a man appears on

the screen Exeter played by played by

Jeff Morrow now Jeff Morrow Rick's

reasons another room is a particularly

good actor they were good looking actors

and they could say the words plausibly

but nobody was ever going to give them

an award they were contract players for

Universal Studios at the time they said

it does a couple of things first off he

congratulates Cal on building the

interrocity which few people could do

then he hits the catalog with a death

ray which is kind of you know you don't

shoot Death Race around somebody else's

lap it's just not done

and he then invites him to become a part

of a big project which Cal is kind of

intrigued by a plane lands at the

Airfield Cal gets in and there's no

pilot it's purely a drone

again technology that we're very

familiar with but though not anywhere

near on the scale

that we have here

uh they do do a nice Innovation though

on the plane which I really appreciated

which is when you sit in the chair and

the plane starts up the plane knocks you

out and you wake up at your destination

I like that I think that that should

happen on every plane give people

recliner seats sedate them you wake up

at the other end now it's not going to

necessarily work for long-haul flights

unless they start putting catheters into

people but for shorter Hall flights when

it's like only just across the country

it gets a little boring at times and I

could see the advantage of just knocking

people out you wake them up as they're

coming in for a landing and everybody's

happy so the plane lands in Georgia and

you meet some other scientists including

a female scientist because you need a

female scientist in this kind of movie

played by faith the merge and she is um

accompanied by another scientist whose

name is and said look it up

Steve Carlson everyone's got generic

names in these movies

played by Russell Johnson who played the

professor on Gilligan's Island many

years later

now there's also a kind of slightly evil

person there called BRAC who looks like

Exeter in that he has in that he has

kind of fuzzy white hair and the same

enormous fur that Exodus I'm a little

surprised that these scientists didn't

tweak earlier that there's something up

with these guys because they look really

really weird but they don't Kyle's given

a lab and he starts working on

converting lead into uranium and Ruth

and the Russell Johnson Steve Carlson

are the only two scientists that haven't

been brain Zapped by a brainwashing Ray

that the aliens as we find they are have

God like this movie too because got a

candidate whose real name is orangey who

lived from 1950 to 1967 so I had a

pretty good life and had appeared in a

whole bunch of things the cat you see in

this island Earth is the same cat that

Audrey Hepburn had in Breakfast at

Tiffany's

I kid you know I just looked it up

and yeah the cat actually helps them

detect when they're being watched by

BRAC and Exeter and I like that this

this movie treats cats will this isn't

one of those movies where the characters

hate cats

um yeah it's nice to see a cater there

though these safety issues with having a

cat in a high energy lab uh probably

something that needs to be addressed

but is but it's nice that the cat had a

long career in movies Steve Carlson the

Russell Johnson character Gets Zapped

and there's Cal and Ruth try to escape

in a light plane the metal in this

Flying Saucer Picks Them Up and

transports them to medaluna and that's

where Jack Arnold starts taking over the

directing

the I like the production design of this

I mean the kind of the Space Age design

and the kind of motifs of atomic symbols

in this one make it very groovy the the

sets on the spaceship are very sparse

which I kind of understand because they

spend a lot of money on the special

effects on this one

and the design of the spaceship itself

is on the Outside Pretty ordinary but on

the inside pretty cool they've got those

wonderful and iconic tube which are

necessary to adjust the bodies of both

the people from metal that are only the

humans to the high atmospheric pressures

on metaluna and I kind of like that I

think it works scientifically as well

because

the they talk about ionization layer in

their atmosphere which blocks a lot of

meat heels

and I can understand that if they have a

very dense atmosphere at the top fewer

things bombarding them from space would

reach the surface of the planet so that

kind of works in a kind of vaguely

scientific way

a lot of people like the iconic metal

only mutant that we've got there we and

I know that the bottom part of the

costume didn't work so they put him in

trousers which are embarrassed a whole

bunch of the actors

but the middle of the mute looks really

cool with that enormous scrotum-like

head and the buggy eyes and the big

clawed hands

but I've found it kind of interesting

because American movies do this a lot

with science fiction they deal with mole

people for instance

well you've got to have a slave race

it's almost like they kind of regret the

Civil War and there's always got to be a

race that does the menial work or a

group

that does the media work that kind of

stratification of society appears a lot

in American science fiction movies and

science fiction TV series of a certain

era

so that's one of those things that you

think yeah it's it's probably a little

bit off and they might have made Better

Life Choices when they were writing that

script

by leaving that aside the metal in a

mutant doesn't seem to be necessary to

anything it's only there to be a threat

because for some reason the people

making the movie didn't consider the

fact that the whole planet is getting

bombarded by meteors

from an hostile alien race enough of a

threat so they had to personalize the

threat by giving them the insect-like

mutants on metaluna one of which is

injured and goes Rogue and starts

attacking people and scaring people and

causing Ruth to scream because you've

always got to have a woman screaming and

a monster in these kind of movies

which is kind of disappointing because I

would have liked they'd have been

a better way of integrating the mutant

into the story

rather than just going yeah that's a

mutant and go away we we don't want you

right now oh dear it got hit by

something in this attacking us now

kind of

poor use of an interesting resource if

that had the

would have been better maybe if whether

or on Earth and working on turning lead

into uranium if somebody opened a door

unexpectedly and the mutant was on Earth

working for the medaluna people

introduced here early in the movie might

have been a really nice choice there and

my uncle's got in trouble for taking me

to see the movie

but it was one of those things you as a

kid two days later you think geez that

was cool

but nonetheless it gives me a real

fondness

for this island Earth and I know that

the mst3k movie of they made used the

solid earth as the movie they were going

to mock which was a poor choice because

it's not a bad science fiction movie

in fact it's one of the better science

fiction movies that Universal put out in

the 1950s it's not quite up to the level

of mgm's Forbidden Planet but then

nothing else in the 1950s was

re-watching it is a nostalgic kind of

comfort thing for me

I would really like seeing it in Blu-ray

and I've got the Blu-ray of it here let

me just scan span the camera over to the

Blu-ray because again I've got that

technology this is the one I've got it's

a cinema called Blu-ray it's not

fantastic there's no added

um extras on it gives a nice high def

transfer to the movie

of course you get a lot of problems with

the special effects of this one there

are times when the mat lines are

painfully obvious

and it's a good thing these movies

weren't made by George Lucas because he

would have gone back and painted over

that stuff

but

looking at it from Modern Viewpoint the

fact that you've got really obvious mat

lines in some of the scenes and the

color grading that they use to

identify that they're on the the planet

is a little bit intense and a little bit

harsh but nonetheless I like

the fact that they really tried two and

a half years of effort is no small

effort for a movie studio

to put into a science fiction movie and

I appreciate the fact that they did it

and again it's one of those steps along

the path

of doing better and better special

effects in genre films and respecting

The Source material enough to make them

without making them stupid and so this

island Earth for me it works because of

that that fondness I have for it is

partly Nostalgia and partly a

recognition that this is one of the

steps along the path

of Science Fiction Cinema which isn't a

misstep

and does it as right as you're going to

get from the 1950s

Studio science fiction movie

that then brings me to the most recent

science fiction movie that I've seen

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so the second movie I got for you is a

movie that was only released on Netflix

this month

and I kind of like it I don't think it's

the best science fiction movie ever but

it's visually interesting it's got some

things to say and in a delightful way

it's kind of a critique and also

a satire on Covert lockdowns in a weird

way

it's a French science fiction black

comedy written and directed by

Jean-Pierre Jeanette

it's in French so you're gonna have to

read the subtitles but you're you're a

cinephile you can read subtitles

and a set in the world of 2045

where communities have a lot of robot

helpers there's some nice advances in

technology which have a a really nice

retro look about them there's a lot of

kind of Space Age George Jets and stuff

about this

and a group of people who live in the

suburbs are locked in for their own

protection into their house

buy their household robots while a rogue

sentient AI Android Revolt is happening

in the outside world

and the robots are helping the kind of

hapless human beings

to survive and to escape this AI

Uprising that's happening outside the

house and it's beautifully done these

special effects are crisp and on point

they can be slightly cartoonish but in

the best way possible

there are lots of really really weird

things in this like every time something

breaks in the house an enormous floating

billboard floats down and offers them a

new product which will replace the old

one now the AI Uprising that's happening

on the outside is led by

um a company slash AI called Yonex which

has created the most popular TV show of

the time a thing called homo ridiculous

which is basically a whole bunch of

robots

humiliating human beings some really

humiliating things happening to human

beings in this TV show which is part of

the ai's Mind programming to teach

people that their place is below that of

machines there's some interesting little

side notes in the film where politicians

are debating with the AR yonics

for election in the government

and Johnny says pissed off because the

human's more charismatic than it is

I mean France has a different culture

than Australia

and so there are some cultural nuances I

may have missed in this but having said

that I enjoyed the film

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actors are pretty good in this one we've

got Isabel naughty who was in the movies

like Emily and is a very familiar face

she was also in um the visitors the time

travel movie from the 1990s with genre

nowhere there's Elsa Silverstein play

else the woman of the house who's broken

up with her husband who has taken up

with another woman who is going to marry

but he's trapped in the House suddenly

with his ex-wife

there's a very sleazy guy who says he's

a publisher who wants to publish some of

Alice's poetry

who basically just wants to get into her

pants

um we have the the children of

both parties in their case

and they also have the household robots

there's one robot called Einstein who

was created by the husband Victor

and who has been kind of put away he's a

really interesting visual creation and

he's uh and the advantage of Einstein is

that out on request his intelligence

level can go up and down as needed for

the particular circumstance there's also

the kind of made of the house the Rosie

the robot kind of made

uh whose name is Monique played by

Claude perol and she's really good she

really commits to being a robot who

might be sexy might not there's actually

some functions that she can do of a

sexual nature which are revealed in a

very interesting and humorous way in the

movie

and there's also

a little toy robot which was one of the

children's robots when she was much

younger

and these three robots between them

decide that a they want to be more human

and B they want to save these hapless

human beings from themselves

and we get some escalation in things

um Francois 11 tile plays the Onyx

leader who is incredibly creepy looking

and we also get another Android called

Greg who is Francoise gym teacher come

lover and Greg um has some interesting

things there

and shows that uh the idea of having

personal relationships with robots is

one that's kind of accepted in this

really weird and comic Society

now as I said the movie isn't the best

movie in the world it's over the top and

unashamedly so and I kind of like that I

like that intensity

that the movie has in its visuals the

creativeness of it the

World building is the first Raider it

really gives us a futuristic World which

apart from the AI Uprising and the

choices are TV is one that wouldn't be

too bad to live in they have some

innovations that will be really quite

useful and there are some great scenes

with Francoise pet dog which is her

sixth dog because she has a clone every

time it gets hit by a car or has some

other accident or dies so she's got an

ongoing contract to have her dog cloned

and there's a little bit of an

indication that uh there's the sixth dog

is it's not the brightest of the bunch

and does some very funny and very stupid

things at the same time I like this

movie I think that it sometimes it's

good to just have one that's

entertaining amusing a little bit of fun

visually striking and just a nice way to

spend a couple of hours and big bug is

definitely that I really enjoyed it at

that level and it's on Netflix at the

moment and I think that if you're

interested in French Cinema if you're

interested in science fiction as a kind

of dark comedy in there there are some

kind of Robert sheckly aspects to it

maybe R.A Lefty aspects to this movie

which I appreciated

but if you enjoy science fiction as a

method of discussing

some weird aspects of our modern society

in this case lockdowns then big bugs

probably going to be one you're going to

enjoy anyway that's it for this summer

thanks a lot for watching if you enjoyed

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Bell as well

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paleo Cinema I've got the second part of

my Hollywood movies about Hollywood

coming up on the weekend which I'm

putting together as we speak well not as

we speak after we finish this

and uh the first one was fun the second

one's got a whole bunch of hidden gems

in it

so stick around for that one and in the

meantime watch some good movies watch

some bad movies watch some old science

fiction movies with respect

and with a a lie on how much they've

moved us towards the kind of science

fiction movies we enjoy now

and I'll catch you next time

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