History of Science Fiction Films - 1960s

1960s

After the rush of science fiction films in the 1950s, there were relatively few in the 1960s, but these few transformed science fiction cinema.

One of the most significant films of the 1960s was 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick and written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. 2001 is regarded as the seminal entry in the science-fiction genre as it influenced several later entries. Steven Spielberg, one of the genre's most well-known figures aptly called 2001, 'the big bang of science-fiction.'

This movie was groundbreaking in the quality of its visual effects, in its realistic portrayal of space travel, and in the epic and transcendent scope of its story. Science fiction movies that followed this film would enjoy increasingly larger budgets and ever improving special effects. Clarke has told of screening earlier science-fiction films for Kubrick, and Kubrick pronouncing them all awful, without exception, even the revered Things to Come from 1936, with its screenplay by H. G. Wells. 2001 was the first science fiction art film and had a philosophical scope that earlier films had not attempted. Many critics called it an incomprehensible mess when it first appeared. Today, it is widely revered by critics as one of the greatest films of all time.

Several other important science fiction films were released in the 1960s. Planet of the Apes (1968) was extremely popular, spawning four sequels and a television series. Earlier in the 1960s, Fahrenheit 451 was a social commentary on freedom of speech and government restrictions. The extremely camp Barbarella paid homage to the sillier side of earlier science fiction. Finally, the science fiction film "boldly went where no man had gone before" when Raquel Welch ventured inside a human body in Fantastic Voyage. Another influential science fiction film, though it was never produced, was Satyajit Ray's The Alien, a story about a boy in Bengal befriending an alien. After production of the film was cancelled, the script became available throughout America in mimeographed copies, and may have served as inspiration for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

Adaptations of H. G. Wells stories continued to be made, including films of The Time Machine and First Men in the Moon, but these seemed somewhat like a continuation of the 1950s sci-fi's. While not strictly-speaking science fiction, some of the James Bond films included a variety of science fiction-like gadgetry.