‘Gravity’ Countdown – #4: Space And The Movies

While it may seem a slightly morbid way to start, the deepest ‘celebrity’ death that I have felt is that of Neil Armstrong. When I think back on Neil Armstrong, it is not simply as the first man who walked on the moon. It is not as the man who famously said “the Eagle has landed”, but rather as the man who, no matter how closely I compare the world I live in to that of STAR WARS, STAR TREK and Doctor Who (or any other science fiction, for that matter), came as close as humanly possible to the boundaries and potential as we associate with space. We so often watch tales of adventure, action and horror across the universe but so few of us know what it’s like to be up there.

The relationship between the setting of ‘space’ and the story being told within it has been shown in a variety of ways throughout the science fiction genre (a genre that is, perhaps only so more so in the Western, tied to a particular ‘setting’ or set of values, whether that be literally or culturally) which, ahead of the release of Alfonso Cuarón’s GRAVITY, is worth reflecting on.

GRAVITY appears to be giving us a ‘realistic’ space movie. Not explosive action, but rather tense drama as impossible situations are thrown up with Sandra Bullock’s character having the simple objective of survival. But what about other movies in the genre? How realistic are some of these uses of space? Do they excite us? Scare us? Perhaps this comes as an afterthought in some films you hold dear, or maybe it is a driving force behind the action, but through the particular films we watch we gaze up at the stars in different attitudes. We start with:

Space as the Fantastical Voyage

From our days as kids we have looked up at the stars and imagined impossible worlds. Long before I dreamed of being a film journalist, I dreamed of being Luke Skywalker. Of being plucked from a ‘normal’ world and flung into one of asteroid belts, strange alien creatures and hyperspace vehicles. People traverse a space we think of as impossible in mere seconds and in a notion we are opened up to new creatures, beings and ways of life. Before we learned of the scientific practicalities of life we thought anything was possible and, perhaps, these things still are.

As seen in: FLASH GORDON and STAR WARS

In the likes of adventure movies such as STAR WARS and FLASH GORDON, space is but a realm crawling with species we have yet to discover. It is explored and traversed freely because everything has been discovered in the name of adventure, and isn’t it fantastic? To know who the bad guy is because he’s dressed in black, and that good will prevail no matter if you’re from a moisture farm or the humble quarterback of the New York Jets.

In both of these films we have a seemingly ‘regular’ guy thrust into a world bristling with strange ways of life. Obviously, this is the audience’s ‘in’ to learn about the world too, with everything explained to us in the form of characters like Obi Wan Kenobi. They have encyclopedic knowledge and show space to be almost no boundary at all, with all walks of life coming together to form intergalactic governments as well as wretched hives of scum and villainy.

In the adventure film space is no distance, merely the gap separating one world from the next that you only touch if your heart demands it.

Space as Marketable Property

This wondrous potential can also be eclipsed by man’s cynical grasp, reducing the mystery of space into property and financial value. We hear little from NASA, but with news that Virgin is offering voyages into space to the highest bidder, it isn’t exactly hyperbole to think that companies will make their mark when the human race permanently establishes its place among the stars. It’s an essential extension of the growth of the media industry in our modern day. After all, how many times have you thought the bridge of a star ship could’ve been kitted out with Mac computers?

As seen in: ALIEN and TOTAL RECALL

In ALIEN we have the Wayland Yuanti Coporation who, even in the face of watching its employees die, will prioritize the capture and eventual manipulation of a lethal alien being. This is obviously the beginning of the ‘space marine’ appearance, with the dank corridors and steaming pipes of the Nostromo, but it’s hard to decide between which is the more evil force – the alien tearing apart the crew or the people who want to turn that alien into a mass-produced weapon.

TOTAL RECALL paints a similar picture, with the corrupt Cohaagen ruling over Mars and even willing to suffocate the citizens of a colony there, but Mars is also sold as a holiday destination. Can’t afford it? Simply have the memories implanted and you’ll believe you were there. Either way, space is an experience sold to you, rather than explored in the spirit of adventure. The main character, Quaid, even partially echoes this by plucking for the optional ‘espionage’ extras when downloading his memories of Mars.

Space as the Battleground

Don’t mistake this for the likes of STAR WARS and STAR TREK, which obviously use space as a literal battleground with ships whizzing around and firing photon torpedoes. By ‘as the Battleground’ I mean space is sometimes shown as the bringer of combat and annihilation to man’s own doorstep. This is frequently without warning and involving beings vastly more advanced than us. Rather than showing human beings shown as adventurers, we are the victims of whatever ruthless being we have the unfortunate pleasure of occupying a planet close to. They have better technology, better weapons and almost supernatural abilities, but humanity always has a chance to survive.

As seen in: INDEPENDENCE DAY and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS

INDEPENDENCE DAY brings more of an overwhelming physical threat compared to INVASION’S covert, body-swapping espionage. INDEPENDENCE DAY gives us iconic set pieces as aliens immediately descend upon our planet and deliver unparalleled levels of decimation, but INVASION buries an uneasy level of discomfort into the ordinary. It calls into question whether we can truly tell when something is wrong and that the enemy might be right on your doorstep without you realising.

Neither of these films, as is typical of others that fit into the same category, feature a lot of action (if any) set in space. Perhaps a brief shot at the start of the film, such as a flying saucer making its way to Earth, but their origin is largely vague as ‘space’ is seen as an all-encompassing wilderness where humans are ill-suited to fend for themselves. We don’t know where the aliens from INDEPENDENCE DAY came from, only that they travel from planet to planet and attack other life forms for their natural resources. Likewise, we don’t know exactly where the pod beings of INVASION came from, but their appearance on Earth (at least in the 1978 remake) seems accidental or natural. With space as a battleground, we should be afraid of what’s out there because, accidentally or not, it might just find us.

Space as the Ultimate Refuge

With space so infinite and humanity constantly creating new technology, eventually the human race will look to the sky and start to colonize. This is perhaps not in the name of exploration, though, but rather in the name of refuge. In many stories, artificial environments constructed on Earth provide a safe haven away from the seemingly insurmountable problems the planet faces. Overpopulation, starvation, natural disasters – all of them can (through socially radical means, obviously) be eliminated by abandoning the planet and seeking new life out in space.

As seen in: WALL-E and ELYSIUM

Disney’s WALL-E is the charming tale of one little robot who does his little job and manages to fall in love and save the human race in one fell swoop. Set in 2805, the Earth is completely covered in garbage thanks to mass consumerism. Humanity has left the planet and left robots to clean up the mess, with humans shown to be lazy, overweight and naive people who do little more than eat, drink and consume the media in front of them. The recent hit ELYSIUM set up a very clear class divide between the wealthy and the poor, with the poor stranded on a decaying Earth ravaged with sickness and starvation and the rich living it up on an orbiting space station called Elysium. Evidently, the rich have already achieved the ‘Ultimate Refuge’ in space but the film questions the morality of such a divide and whether such a lifestyle change can be justly established for two sides of humanity.

Space as the Impassable Void

Let us not forget that space is a cold and lifeless void. Even after countless STAR TREK quotes, and the romanticism of exploration that comes with it, space is the ‘the final frontier’ that man remains, on a large scale, unable to pass. While flying around in the Millennium Falcon, no-one pays a slightest thought to the fact that one technical hitch could lead to the entire crew suffocating in the cold depths of space (and why should they? They can make the Kessel run in twelve parsecs, and it would be a real downer anyway) but in the ‘realistic’ science fiction film, space is a challenge, if not the challenge.

As seen in: MOON and 2001: A SPACE ODESSEY

In MOON, Sam Bell is a lone miner tasked with overseeing the operations that those on Earth see as essential to making life easy. As Sam learns that he is a clone of the original miner and is part of a vicious system that creates and contains the death of life just like him in the name of keeping production going, he sees space as what it truly is. It is not a distance between him and his loved ones (as a convenient block on the communications systems suggest), but rather a barrier between him and the real world. On the Moon, Sam Bells will continually be made, decay and die, and spring up for the Earth’s and (as highlighted in a particularly emotional scene) the real Sam Bell’s needs with nobody noticing or caring an inch. Whether it in success or vain, we want to see the decaying Sam Bell clone reach Earth, if nothing else to break through the void that separates the lives he is a part of from the ‘real’ ones.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY shows space to be the final challenge of man as we know it today. Towering monoliths kick-start the process of evolution at the dawn of man, as we learn to use tools (almost immediately used as a weapon to conquer his fellow man) before a jump cut sends us careening millions of years forward to see a ‘space plane’ transporting someone across the stars. So what’s happened between these two shots? Man has grown and slowly conquered the world around him. He has built ships and conquered the sea. Built planes and conquered the air. Communication has blossomed from face-to-face to worldwide streams of digital information, and at last the next monolith is found and it emits a radio signal towards Jupiter. The rest of the movie sees astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole making the journey further than any man has gone before (even conquering the artificial intelligence man has created to aid himself) and Bowman makes the journey beyond the infinite to become the Star-Child, a higher being man has achieved through mastering the last of the environment around him.

These are the ways space is shown to use through films. It is a sight of both terrible evil and humanity’s last hope. It can take seconds to travel galaxies, or weeks just to get back home. It is out of reach, at our fingertips and ever expanding into the realms of the unknown.

GRAVITY will arrive in UK cinemas from Friday 8th November.