"As we know it" is the key, meaning a full-length feature film with lots of gee-whiz gadgetry, and a sort-of coherent storyline. Lots of short Sci-Fi flicks before that, of course, including Georges Melies' A Trip to the Moon (1902) and Conquest of the Pole (1912), and one of my personal favorites, The Airship Destroyer (1909), in which an inventor creates flying torpedoes to blow up enemy blimps! I had that film on 8mm for many years, and played it endlessly.
I was watching the reconstructed vetsion of Metropolis recently and I've decided to make a dolls house vetsion of Rotwang's cottage for next year's Doll and Miniatures Fair. Of course it will be a cutaway design with Rotwang and Fredersen arguing and with Robot Maria in her chair.... Making the glowing energy rings is going to be fun!
Good luck with that! A friend dragged me to the restored/reconstructed Metropolis a few years back and good god, it never ended! Not a favorite, although I do like all the gimmicks in it - and acknowledge its important place in film history.
"As we know it" is the key, meaning a full-length feature film with lots of gee-whiz gadgetry, and a sort-of coherent storyline. Lots of short Sci-Fi flicks before that, of course, including Georges Melies' A Trip to the Moon (1902) and Conquest of the Pole (1912), and one of my personal favorites, The Airship Destroyer (1909), in which an inventor creates flying torpedoes to blow up enemy blimps! I had that film on 8mm for many years, and played it endlessly.
ReplyDeletePS: The Airship Destroyer was not by Melies...
DeleteI was watching the reconstructed vetsion of Metropolis recently and I've decided to make a dolls house vetsion of Rotwang's cottage for next year's Doll and Miniatures Fair. Of course it will be a cutaway design with Rotwang and Fredersen arguing and with Robot Maria in her chair....
ReplyDeleteMaking the glowing energy rings is going to be fun!
Good luck with that! A friend dragged me to the restored/reconstructed Metropolis a few years back and good god, it never ended! Not a favorite, although I do like all the gimmicks in it - and acknowledge its important place in film history.
Deleteis it true that Maria inspired C3PO?
ReplyDelete