“Respect for Wildlife” SCI-FI: storytelling that portrays Wildlife as a direct Mirror for Human Morality, exploring themes like Empathy, Co-Existence and Anti-Exploitation. It may focus on genetically engineered or highly valuable Creatures — to expose the Cruelty of Capitalist Greed and champion Animal Rights. Access to “Wildlife Consciousness” can also serve as an Environmental Wake-up Call.

Silent Running — (1972)

Silent Running is an American SCI-FI film, directed by Douglas Trumbull, (visual effects pioneer for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Star Trek: The Motion Picture) starring Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin and Jesse Vint.

Storyline
In the future, all forests on Earth have become extinct from careless environmental exploitation. As many specimens as possible have been preserved in a series of enormous greenhouse-like geodesic domes serving as closed ecological systems attached to large cargo spaceships, forming part of a fleet of eight “American Airlines Space Freighters”, stationed outside the orbit of Saturn.

Freeman Lowell, (Dern) one of four crewmen, is the resident botanist and ecologist on one of these ships, the Valley Forge. He carefully maintains a variety of plants for their eventual return to Earth and the reforestation of the planet. He spends most of his time in the domes, cultivating the crops and attending to the animal life.

The crew of each ship receives orders to jettison and destroy their domes and return the freighters to commercial service. After four of the six Valley Forge domes are jettisoned and destroyed with nuclear charges, Lowell rebels and opts to save his ship’s plants and animals. He kills John Wolf, one of his crewmates who arrives to plant explosives in his favorite dome, and his right leg is seriously injured in the process. He then jettisons and triggers the destruction of the other remaining dome to trap and kill the remaining two crewmen.

Enlisting the aid of the ship’s three service robots, Lowell stages a fake premature explosion as a ruse and sends the Valley Forge speeding toward Saturn in an attempt to hijack the ship and flee with the last forest dome. He then reprograms the drones to perform surgery on his leg and sets the Valley Forge on a risky course through Saturn’s rings. Later, as the ship endures the rough passage, Drone 3 is lost, but the ship and its remaining dome emerge relatively undamaged on the other side of the rings. Lowell gives the surviving drones the names Dewey (Drone 1) and Huey (Drone 2), while the lost Drone 3 is named Louie (a nod to Disney characters).

Lowell, Huey, and Dewey set out into deep space to maintain the forest. Lowell reprograms Huey and Dewey to plant trees and play poker. He also has them bury Wolf in the bio-dome. Lowell begins speaking to them constantly, as if they are children.

Huey is damaged when Lowell accidentally collides with him while driving a buggy recklessly, and Dewey sentimentally refuses to leave Huey’s side during the repairs. As time passes, Lowell is horrified when he discovers that his bio-dome is dying, but is unable to come up with a solution to the problem. When the Berkshire—another space freighter waiting to see if the Valley Forge has survived the trip around Saturn—eventually reestablishes contact, he knows that his crimes will soon be discovered. It is then that he realizes a lack of light has restricted plant growth, and he races to install lamps to correct this situation. In an effort to save the last forest before the Berkshire arrives, Lowell jettisons the bio-dome to safety. He then detonates nuclear charges, destroying the Valley Forge, the damaged Huey, and himself in the process.

The final scene is of the now well-lit forest greenhouse drifting into deep space, with Dewey tenderly caring for it, holding Lowell’s battered old watering can.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home — (1986)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is an American SCI-FI film, (fourth installment in the film franchise based on the TV series Star Trek.) Directed by Leonard Nimoy, starring cast from the series with Catherine Hicks.

Storyline
In 2286, an enormous cylindrical probe moves through space, sending out an indecipherable signal and disabling the power of every ship it passes. As it takes up orbit around Earth, its signal disables the global power grid and generates planetary storms, creating catastrophic, sun-blocking cloud cover. Starfleet Command sends out a planetary distress call and warns all space-faring vessels not to approach Earth.

On the planet Vulcan, the former officers of the late USS Enterprise are living in exile. Accompanied by the Vulcan Spock, still recovering from his resurrection,[a] the crew take their captured Klingon Bird of Prey and return to Earth to face trial for their actions. Receiving Starfleet’s warning, Spock determines that the probe’s signal matches the song of extinct humpback whales and that the object will continue to wreak havoc until its call is answered. The crew uses their ship to travel back in time via a slingshot maneuver around the Sun, planning to return with a whale to answer the Alien signal.

Arriving in 1986, the crew finds their ship’s power drained by the time travel maneuver. Hiding the ship in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park using its cloaking device, the crew split up to accomplish several tasks: Admiral James T. Kirk and Spock attempt to locate humpback whales, while Montgomery Scott, Leonard McCoy, and Hikaru Sulu construct a tank to hold the whales they need for a return to the 23rd century. Uhura and Pavel Chekov are tasked to find a nuclear reactor, whose energy leakage can be collected and used to regenerate the decaying dilithium crystals.

Kirk and Spock discover a pair of humpback whales in the care of Dr. Gillian Taylor (Hicks) at a Sausalito aquarium and learn they will soon be released into the wild. Kirk tells her of his mission and asks for the tracking frequency for the whales, but she refuses to cooperate. Meanwhile, Scott and McCoy trade the formula of transparent aluminum for the materials needed for the whale tank. At the same time, Sulu secures the use of a “Huey” helicopter to transport them. Uhura and Chekov locate a nuclear-powered ship, the aircraft carrier Enterprise. They collect the power they need but are discovered on board. Uhura is beamed out, but Chekov is captured, interrogated (under the assumption he is a Soviet spy), and subsequently severely injured in an escape attempt.

Gillian learns the whales have been released early and goes to Kirk for assistance. Gillian, Kirk, and McCoy rescue Chekov from a nearby hospital and return to the now-recharged Bird of Prey. After saving the whales from whalers and transporting them aboard, the crew returns with Gillian to their own time. On approaching Earth, the ship loses power due to the Alien probe and crash-lands into the waters of San Francisco Bay. Once released from near-drowning, the whales respond to the probe’s signal, causing the object to reverse its effects on Earth and return to the depths of space.

Later, the Enterprise crew stand judgment before the Federation Council, which acknowledges the crew’s part in saving the planet, and drops all pending charges except the one against Kirk, for disobeying a superior officer. Kirk is demoted to the rank of captain, but as a furtive reward for his heroics, he is returned to the command of a starship. Kirk and Gillian part ways, as she has been assigned to a science vessel by Starfleet. Spock’s father Sarek finally accepts his son’s earlier choice to enter Starfleet, further mending their broken relationship. The crew discovers they have been awarded the newly christened USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A) and leaves on a shakedown mission.

Powder — (1995)

Powder is an American SCI-FI Fantasy film, starring Mary Steenburgen, Sean Patrick Flanery, Lance Henriksen, and Jeff Goldblum.

Storyline
Jeremy “Powder” Reed (Flanery) is a young albino man who has incredible intellect and is able to sense the thoughts of the people around him. Jeremy’s brain possesses a powerful electromagnetic charge, which causes electrical objects to function abnormally when he is around them, particularly when he becomes emotional. The electromagnetic charge also prevents hair from growing on his body.

Jeremy’s mother was struck by lightning while pregnant with him; she died shortly after the strike, but Jeremy survived. His father disowned him shortly after his premature birth, and he was raised by his grandparents. Jeremy lived in the basement and worked on their farm, never leaving their property and learning everything he knew from books. He is taken from his home when his grandfather is found dead of natural causes. Jessie Caldwell, a child services psychologist, takes him to a boys’ home because he is now effectively a ward of the state.

Jessie enrolls him in high school, where Jeremy meets physics teacher Donald Ripley (Goldblum). Donald finds out that Jeremy has supernatural powers as well as the highest IQ in history. While his abilities mark him as special, they also make him an outcast.

On a hunting trip with his schoolmates, Jeremy is threatened with a gun by John Box, an aggressive student who views him as a freak. Before John can fire, a gun goes off in the distance, and everyone rushes to see that Harley Duncan, a Sheriff’s deputy, has shot a doe. Anguished by the animal’s impending death, Jeremy touches both the deer and Harley at the same time, inducing in Harley what the students assume is a seizure. Harley later admits that Jeremy had actually caused him to feel the pain and fear of the dying deer. Because of the experience, Harley removes all of his guns from his house, although Sheriff Doug Barnum (Henrikson) allows him to remain as a sheriff’s deputy without a sidearm.

Doug enlists Jeremy to help speak to his dying wife through telepathy. Through Jeremy, the sheriff learns that his wife clings onto life because she did not want to die while not wearing her wedding ring and without him reconciling with his estranged son, Steven. She tells him that Steven found the ring and that it has been sitting in a silver box on her nightstand the entire time. Doug then places the ring on his wife’s finger and reconciles with Steven, letting his wife die peacefully.

Jeremy meets Lindsey Kelloway, a romantic interest, but their relationship is broken by Lindsey’s father. Before the interruption, he tells Lindsey that he can see the truth about people: that they are scared and feel disconnected from the rest of the world but in truth are all connected to everything that exists.

Jeremy goes back to the juvenile facility and packs away his belongings, planning to run away to his farm. He pauses in the gym to stare at a male student washing, noticing the latter’s luxurious head of hair as well as body hair which he himself lacks, and is caught at it by John Box, who accuses him of homosexuality. John steals Jeremy’s hat and taunts him, but Jeremy reveals that John’s words mimic what his stepfather said before beating him when he was 12, infuriating him. John and the other boys humiliate Jeremy, stripping him naked and taunting him. His powers begin to manifest by pulling at their metal buttons and any piercings. Eventually, a large spherical electromagnetic pulse erupts throwing Jeremy into a mud puddle and everyone else to the ground. John is found still, with his heart stopped. Jeremy uses an electric shock to revive him.

Jeremy returns to the farm where he grew up, now in procession of probate with the bank, and finds that all of his possessions have been removed. He is joined by Jessie, Donald, and Doug, who urge him to come with them to find a place where he will not be feared and misunderstood. Instead, he runs into a field where a lightning bolt strikes him, and he disappears in a blinding flash of light. The electrical jolt hits Jessie, Donald, Doug, and Harley.

Okja — (2007)

Okja is a Korean-American SCI-FI action-adventure film starring an ensemble cast headed by child actor Ahn Seo-hyun in her film debut, along with Byun Hee-bong, Yoon Je-moon, Choi Woo-shik, Tilda Swinton (in a dual role), Paul Dano, Steven Yeun, Lily Collins, Shirley Henderson, Daniel Henshall, Devon Bostick, Giancarlo Esposito, and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Storyline
In 2007, Lucy Mirando, pretending to be a environmentalist, becomes CEO of the Mirando Corporation, succeeding her twin sister Nancy. Announcing they have been breeding a special kind of “super pig”, 26 specimens are sent to farmers around the world. 10 years later, one of them will be awarded the title of best super pig.

In 2017, a teenage girl named Mija lives in the South Korean mountains with her grandfather and their super pig Okja. Mija and Okja have a very close relationship as they spend much of their time together. At one point, Okja saves Mija from falling off a cliff. They are visited by Mirando spokesperson and zoologist Dr. Johnny Wilcox, who declares Okja the best super pig, and announces that they will take her to New York City. Her grandfather gives Mija a solid gold pig figurine, explaining he saved up to replace Okja when she was taken away. Devastated, Mija goes to Seoul to find Okja, where she sees her being loaded onto a truck. Mija chases down the truck, but it is intercepted by the Animal Liberation Front.

In the resulting chaos, Mija and Okja run away and are eventually saved by the ALF led by Jay. The truck driver Kim Woo-shik resigns from his job. Jay asks another ALF member K to translate and tell Mija that they plan to put a recording device in Okja’s ear and let her be recaptured by the Mirando Corporation to document how they mistreat animals. Mija asks them to return her to the mountains, but K purposely mistranslates and tells them Mija agrees. They leave and Okja is recaptured.

To minimize PR damage to the company, Lucy pays for Mija to come to New York to stage a heart-warming reunion with her pig. Okja is taken to a laboratory where she is forcibly bred with another super pig and flesh is taken from her for a taste test. After the ALF sees the footage, K reveals that he lied to the rest of the group about Mija’s support of the plan. Jay beats up K and expels him from the ALF while promising to return his equipment when they are done with it.

In New York, Mija has to comply with the Mirando Corp. Jay slips into her room and tells her they plan to rescue Okja while on stage. During the Mirando parade, a battered and temporarily blinded Okja attacks Mija. Jay tries to hurt Okja to protect the girl, but Mija doesn’t let him and calms Okja down. The ALF shows Okja’s mistreatment to the public, who quickly turn against Mirando. Lucy surrenders Mirando back to Nancy who contacts the private security firm Black Chalk to take out the ALF members. Okja is recaptured and the ALF members are arrested except for Mija and Jay who are rescued by a remorseful K. Nancy starts full production at the slaughterhouse.

K, Mija, and Jay travel to a processing plant in search of Okja and find her being forced up a ramp into a slaughterhouse. On the verge of being slaughtered, Mija shows a Mirando employee a photo of herself with baby Okja, prompting him to stop. Nancy arrives and Mija offers the gold pig in exchange for Okja’s life. Although initially reluctant, Nancy agrees as she deemed it a good business deal, having Jay and K arrested by Black Chalk. As Mija and Okja are escorted away, a pair of super pigs push their newborn through the electric fence to Okja to hide and rescue from the farm.

Back in the countryside, Mija resumes her life with her grandfather, Okja, and the new piglet. She then joins her grandfather for dinner as Okja looks on.

Avatar — (2009)

Avatar is an epic SCI-FI film written and directed by James Cameron, with an ensemble cast including Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver. It is the first installment in the Avatar film series.

Storyline
In 2154, Earth suffers from resource exhaustion and ecological collapse. The Resources Development Administration (RDA) mines the valuable mineral unobtanium on Pandora, a lush habitable moon in the Alpha Centauri star system. Pandora is inhabited by the Na’vi, a 10-foot-tall (3.0 m), blue-skinned, sapient humanoid species that live in harmony with nature.

To explore Pandora, human scientists control Na’vi-human hybrid bodies called “avatars”. Each avatar is genetically matched with a human operator. Jake Sully, a paraplegic veteran of the United States Marines, is recruited as an operator after the death of his identical twin, who was training as an operator. The head of the Avatar Program, Dr. Grace Augustine, allows Jake to take the place of his twin, but considers him inadequate.

While Jake, Grace and Dr. Norm Spellman are in their avatars in the forest, Jake is attacked by wild animals. He flees deep into the wilderness, where he is rescued by a female Na’vi named Neytiri. Suspicious of Jake, she takes him to her clan, the Omaticaya. Mo’at, the clan’s spiritual leader and the mother of Neytiri, orders her daughter to initiate Jake into their society.

Colonel Miles Quaritch, head of the RDA’s security force, promises Jake that the company will restore the use of his legs if he provides information about the Na’vi and their gathering place, the giant Hometree, which sits atop a rich deposit of unobtanium. Jake and Neytiri fall in love as Jake is initiated into the clan, and they choose each other as mates. When Jake attempts to disable a bulldozer threatening a sacred Na’vi site, RDA administrator Parker Selfridge orders the destruction of Hometree.

Grace explains to Selfridge that destroying Hometree would damage the biological neural network that connects all Pandoran life, which prompts Selfridge to reluctantly give Jake and Grace one hour to convince the Na’vi to evacuate. Jake confesses to the Na’vi that he was a spy for the RDA, which prompts the clan to take him and Grace captive. Quaritch’s soldiers destroy Hometree and kill many Na’vi, including Eytukan, who is the clan chief and Neytiri’s father. Mo’at frees Jake and Grace, but they are detached from their avatars and imprisoned by Quaritch’s forces. Trudy Chacón, a pilot who is disgusted by Quaritch’s brutality, rescues Jake, Grace, and Norm. During the escape, Grace is shot and fatally wounded.

Jake regains the trust of the Na’vi by connecting his mind to the Toruk, a dragon-like creature feared and revered by the clan. Supported by Neytiri and the new chief Tsu’tey, Jake unites the Omaticaya, and tells them to gather other Na’vi clans to fight the RDA as it prepares to assault the Tree of Souls. Before the battle, Jake prays to the Na’vi mother goddess Eywa through a neural connection with the Tree of Souls.

The Na’vi and their human allies lose many fighters during the battle, including Tsu’tey and Trudy. The tide turns when wild animals unexpectedly join the fight and overwhelm the RDA forces; Neytiri interprets this occurrence as Eywa answering Jake’s prayer. Quaritch, in an Amplified Mobility Platform suit, breaks open the avatar link unit containing Jake’s human body, exposing it to Pandora’s poisonous atmosphere. As Quaritch prepares to kill Jake, he is slain by Neytiri; she then saves Jake from suffocation.

In the aftermath of the war, the RDA is expelled from Pandora. Some humans are allowed to remain, including Jake and Norm. With the help of the Tree of Souls, Neytiri, and Mo’at, Jake is permanently transferred into his avatar.

“Respect for Wildlife” SCI-FI tells Wildlife stories that directly Mirror the dark side of Human Morality, exploring themes like Empathy, Co-Existence and Anti-Exploitation — to expose the Cruelty of Capitalist Greed … and fight for Animal Rights.

We share the Earth with so many amazing and beautiful Creatures — who have every right to live here in peace and harmony. It’s time for us to stop and realize that we are only tenants of this World. WE DO NOT OWN IT.

If we hope to survive, it’s time for us to adapt … to their way of Life.

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(click image link to view YouTube Video)

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Fixing the Timeline SCI-FI: when a Hero must travel back through Time to Undo a Catastrophic Event, Fix a Time Paradox, or return a Broken timeline to its Normal Course. Even small changes in the past (known as “The Butterfly Effect”) can snowball into Dystopian Futures.

The City on the Edge of Forever (Star Trek TOS — 1967)

“The City on the Edge of Forever” is the twenty-eighth episode of the first season of Star Trek. It was written by Harlan Ellison; contributors to the script included Steven W. Carabatsos, D. C. Fontana and Gene L. Coon. Gene Roddenberry made the final re-write.

Storyline
As the USS Enterprise orbits a mysterious planet it is rocked by time distortions, causing Chief Medical Officer Leonard McCoy who is treating a near-death Lieutenant Sulu to accidentally inject himself with a huge dose of cordrazine, a dangerous drug. Driven into a mad frenzy, McCoy flees from the bridge and beams himself down to the planet. Captain James T. Kirk follows with a search party including first officer Mr. Spock, chief engineer Mr. Scott, and communications officer Lieutenant Uhura. On the planet’s surface, they come across an ancient glowing ring which turns out to be a sentient object called the “Guardian of Forever”, a portal capable of sending them to any time or place, and the cause of the distortions. The Guardian offers to send them back to Earth’s past, and plays images of historical events which Spock records on his tricorder for research purposes. Meanwhile, the still-frenzied Dr. McCoy is found, subdued, and while the others are distracted by the Guardian’s images, jumps through the portal. The landing party instantly loses contact with the Enterprise, and learn from the Guardian that McCoy has altered the past to such an extent that the Enterprise and the reality they knew no longer exists.

The Guardian says that it’s possible to fix the damage, so Kirk requests that it replay the historical period it was showing when McCoy passed through. He and Spock attempt to jump through at a point in time just before McCoy’s arrival and find themselves in New York City in 1930 during the Great Depression. They steal clothes from a fire escape to blend in, and while fleeing a policeman, hide in the basement of the 21st Street Mission. There they meet the soup kitchen’s operator, Edith Keeler. She senses something odd about the intruders but nevertheless offers to pay them to clean up the basement and to find them a place to stay. Later, Spock attempts to discover how McCoy changed history by accessing the recordings on his tricorder, a task made difficult by the available technology of 1930, which Spock likens to “stone knives and bearskins”. While Spock works on the engineering problem, Kirk pays their expenses by doing odd jobs at the mission and, learning of Keeler’s dreams of a future much like his own era, falls in love with her.

Unknown to Kirk and Spock, the still-frenzied McCoy finally arrives and stumbles into the mission, where Keeler nurses him back to health. Spock completes his work and discovers that Keeler was supposed to die in a traffic collision but was somehow saved by the arrival of McCoy, creating an altered timeline in which she founded a pacifist movement on the eve of World War II. It grew powerful enough to cause the United States to delay its entrance into the war, and allow Nazi Germany time to develop the first atomic bomb and use it to win the war instead of the Allies and conquer the world. Kirk is shaken by this revelation and admits his love for Keeler, and Spock responds that she must die so as to prevent millions of deaths and restore their future.

While walking to a Clark Gable movie with Kirk the following evening, Keeler casually mentions McCoy’s name. Shocked, Kirk tells Keeler to stay right there while he crosses the street back to the mission to inform Spock. McCoy emerges from the mission at the same time, and the trio reunite on the sidewalk. Observing this, Keeler begins to cross the street to join them and does not notice an oncoming truck. Kirk instinctively turns to save her, but a shout from Spock freezes him in his tracks and Kirk reluctantly grabs McCoy so he can’t save her either. Keeler is struck and killed, and a stunned McCoy asks Kirk if he knows what he just did, but it is Spock who replies, “He knows, Doctor. He knows.”

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy return through the Guardian and rejoin the landing party, where they find the Enterprise and their timeline is fully restored. Before they transport back to the ship, a grim-looking Kirk, ignoring questions about what happened and being told by the Guardian it can send them on more such journeys through time, replies simply, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

12 Monkeys — (1995)

12 Monkeys is an American SCI-FI thriller directed by Terry Gilliam from a screenplay by David Peoples and Janet Peoples, based on Chris Marker’s 1962 short film La Jetée. It stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Plummer. .

Storyline
In 2035, twenty-nine years after a virus killed 99 percent of the global human population, James Cole is a prisoner in a compound underneath the ruins of Philadelphia. He is selected by scientists for a mission to travel to 1996 and collect information on the original strain of the virus so a cure can be developed. Cole experiences recurring dreams of a childhood experience in which he saw a man being shot in an airport terminal.

Upon being sent back in time, Cole arrives in Baltimore in 1990, not 1996 as planned. He is arrested and committed to a psychiatric hospital on the diagnosis of Dr. Kathryn Railly. He encounters fellow inmate Jeffrey Goines, an outspoken critic of consumerism. Cole tells the hospital doctors he is searching for the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, the group that unleashed the virus in 1996, which is the past. During an escape attempt aided by Jeffrey, Cole is abruptly returned to the future. The scientists attempt to send Cole back to 1996, but he briefly arrives on a World War I battlefield, where he encounters José, another inmate from the future, before being shot in the leg.

In 1996, Railly gives a lecture on the Cassandra Complex where she briefly encounters Dr. Peters, who mentions the destruction of the environment by humanity. She is kidnapped in her car and told to drive to Philadelphia. The kidnapper turns out to be Cole. Railly offers him medical help and extracts the bullet from his leg. His investigation leads them to Jeffrey, who they discover is the leader of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and the son of renowned virologist Dr. Leland Goines. Cole is abruptly returned to the future. Railly is told by police that the bullet from Cole’s leg was from before the 1920s, which prompts her to identify Cole in a battlefield photograph from World War I that she’s gathered during her research. She urges Leland to secure his lab against access by his son. Leland shares his intention to improve the lab’s security with his assistant, Dr. Peters.

Cole arrives in 1996 again and finds Railly. He tells her he believes himself delusional, while she says she’s not sure any more. Railly leaves a voicemail on a number Cole says was given to him by the scientists. Cole tells her he has already heard her message, played to him by the scientists in the future. Cole and Railly decide to spend the following days together at the Florida Keys. On their way there, they learn that the Army of the Twelve Monkeys is an animal rights organization led by Jeffrey, and their graffiti “we did it” refers to liberating animals from the Philadelphia Zoo, not releasing the virus.

At the airport, Cole records a message on the voicemail number, saying the Army of the Twelve Monkeys is a false lead and that he’s not coming back. Railly comes across Dr. Peters at the airport and recognizes him through a newspaper photo alongside Leland. Cole comes across José, who tracked him down after his last message, and hands him a gun. Railly informs Cole of Peters, and Cole attempts to shoot him, but is shot dead by police. As Cole dies in Railly’s arms, she makes eye contact with a young boy witnessing the scene. Peters boards his flight and takes a seat beside Jones, one of the scientists who orchestrated Cole’s mission. Outside the airport, the young boy who observed the shooting, Cole, watches the airplane take off.

Source Code — (2011)

Source Code is a SCI-FI action thriller directed by Duncan Jones and written by Ben Ripley. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, and Jeffrey Wright.

Storyline
U.S. Army pilot Captain Colter Stevens wakes up on a Metra commuter train going into Chicago. He is disoriented, as his last memory was of flying a mission in Afghanistan. However, to the world around him – including his friend Christina Warren and his reflection in the train’s windows and mirrors – he appears to be a different man: a school teacher named Sean Fentress. As he expresses his confusion to Christina, the train explodes while passing another train, killing everyone aboard.

Stevens abruptly awakens in a dimly lit cockpit. Communicating through a video screen, Air Force Captain Colleen Goodwin verifies Stevens’ identity and tells him of his mission to find the train bomber before sending him back to the moment he awoke on the train. Believing he is being tested in a simulation, Stevens finds the bomb in a vent inside the lavatory but is unable to identify the bomber. Still thinking he is in a simulation, Stevens leaves the bomb and goes back down to the main cabin before the train explodes again.

Stevens again reawakens in his capsule and after demanding to be briefed, learns that the train explosion actually happened and that it was merely the first attack of a suspected series. He is sent back yet again, eight minutes before the explosion, to identify the bomber. This time, he disembarks from the train (with Christina) to follow a suspect. This turns out to be a dead end, the train still explodes in the distance, and Stevens is killed by a passing train after falling onto the tracks while interrogating the suspect.

The capsule power supply malfunctions as Stevens reawakens. He claims to have saved Christina, but Dr. Rutledge, head of the project, tells him that she was saved only inside the “Source Code”. Rutledge explains that the Source Code is an experimental machine that reconstructs the past using the dead passengers’ residual collective memories of eight minutes before their deaths. Therefore, the only thing that matters is finding the bomber to prevent the upcoming second attack in Chicago.

On the next run, Stevens learns that he was reported as killed in action two months earlier. He confronts Goodwin, who reveals that he is missing most of his body, is on life support, and is hooked up to neural sensors. The capsule and his healthy body are “manifestations” made by his mind to make sense of the environment. Stevens is angry at this forced imprisonment. Rutledge offers to terminate him after the mission, and Stevens eventually accepts.

After numerous attempts, including being arrested by train security for trying to obtain a weapon, Stevens identifies the bomber through a fallen wallet as the nihilistic domestic terrorist Derek Frost. He memorizes Frost’s license and vehicle registration plates, and discovers a dirty bomb built inside a van owned by Frost; Christina follows him, and Frost shoots both of them dead.

Outside the Source Code, Stevens relays his knowledge to Goodwin, which helps the police arrest Frost and prevents the second attack. He is congratulated for completing his mission. Rutledge secretly reneges on his deal to let Stevens die, as he is still the only candidate able to enter the Source Code.

Being more sympathetic to his plight, Goodwin sends Stevens back one last time and promises to disconnect his life support after eight minutes. This time, he sets a date with Christina, defuses the bomb, apprehends Frost, and reports him to the police. He calls his father under the guise of a fellow soldier and reconciles with him, and sends Goodwin an email. After eight minutes, Goodwin terminates Stevens’s life support.

As the world around him continues to progress beyond eight minutes, Stevens confirms his suspicion that the Source Code is not merely a simulation, but rather a machine that allows the creation of alternate timelines. He and Christina leave the train and go on a date. In the same (alternate) reality, Goodwin receives Stevens’s message. He tells her of the Source Code’s true capability and asks her to help the alternate-reality version of him.

11.22.63 — (2016)

11.22.63 is an American SCI-FI TV thriller miniseries based on the 2011 novel 11/22/63 by Stephen King, and consisting of eight episodes. It stars James Franco, Chris Cooper and Daniel Webber.

Storyline
In 2011, Jake Epping, a divorced high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, is summoned by friend Al Templeton, the owner of a local diner. He finds Al is ill with terminal lung cancer, despite appearing perfectly healthy the night before. Al instructs Jake to step into the back of the diner’s pantry, where Jake finds a time slip leading to Lisbon Falls as it existed on September 9, 1958. After exploring the town, Jake returns to 2011 and learns that the portal leads to the same moment of the same day every time it is used, and that a visitor will always return to the present by a margin of two minutes.

Because the portal gives one the ability to alter the present by changing an event in the past, Al reveals that he had concocted a plan to prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination, hoping that doing so would stop the Vietnam War and change history for the better. He spent four years in the past after entering the portal the previous night, travelling to Dallas, Texas, to track Lee Harvey Oswald, plotting to kill him during his attempted murder of General Edwin Walker. However, due to his cancer, Al is unable to continue his mission. He recruits a reluctant Jake to complete it.

As an experiment, Jake travels back to 1958 to save the family of learning disabled janitor Harry Dunning from being attacked by their father on Halloween. Using the alias “George Amberson”, Jake buys a car and travels to Harry’s hometown of Derry, Maine; he finds Harry’s father, Frank, and tracks his movements. After saving all but one of Harry’s siblings from Frank’s brutal assault, Jake returns to 2011, to find that he indirectly caused Harry to die in Vietnam. Al dies by suicide.

Resigned, Jake re-enters the portal, travels back to Derry, and kills Frank ahead of his rampage. Jake eventually settles in Jodie, Texas where he becomes a full-time English teacher at a local consolidated school. He spends several years establishing his identity. Jake winds up falling for school librarian Sadie and having a positive effect on the students of a local high school. Jake reveals to Sadie that he is from the future and his plans to prevent Kennedy’s assassination. Sadie is saved by Jake from her ex-husband, John. Ultimately, the pair rush to the Texas School Book Depository, where Jake interrupts Oswald. This saves Kennedy; however, Sadie is killed.

Jake returns to a dystopian, war-torn future brought about by his actions. He finds that after Kennedy served two terms, segregationist George Wallace was elected president in 1968. The Vietnam War not only still occurred, but escalated into World War III, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was never passed, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by the FBI, and the US is now fractured. Earth is also plagued by constant, devastating natural disasters, and the sky itself appears to be tearing. Jake discovers that each trip to the past causes a separate reality to be formed, and that his journey has caused time to begin falling apart. He realizes that he cannot save Kennedy for the good of the future, prompting him to return to the past to “reset” the results of his intervention. Jake finds that Sadie survived without his interference, and is being celebrated as a “Citizen of the Century” in Jodie, and he goes to the party being held.

See You Yesterday — (2019)

See You Yesterday is an American SCI-FI film directed by Stefon Bristol with a screenplay by Bristol and Fredrica Bailey, produced by Spike Lee. It stars Eden Duncan-Smith, Danté Crichlow, Marsha Stephanie Blake, and Brian “Stro” Bradley — with a special appearance by Michael J. Fox.

Storyline
C.J. Walker is an ambitious science prodigy who is working to build a time machine alongside her best friend, Sebastian “Bash” Thomas. Their first attempt fails shortly before the last day of school.

C.J. and Sebastian’s last class is with Mr. Lockhart (Fox), their science teacher. As the teens are hoping to present their class project at the science expo on the week of July 5, she asks him to raise their project grade to impress potential school scouts, so they can earn university scholarships. He invites her to contemplate the ethical and philosophical ramifications of time travel.

The pair’s second attempt succeeds, sending them back 24 hours. C.J. seeks revenge on her ex-boyfriend Jared by pranking him. He chases her and is hit by a car, breaking his arm. Sebastian criticizes C.J. before they nearly see their past selves and return to the present.

On July 4, C.J.’s older brother Calvin and his friend Dennis leave a party after Jared confronts him over C.J. As they are walking away, two other black men bump into them rushing down the street. Shortly after, a police car approaches and the officers are immediately suspicious of them. Mistaking them for the thieves they had been chasing, one of the officers kills Calvin.

After Calvin’s funeral, C.J. insists on going back a second time to save him. Sebastian expresses concern about the risk, but agrees to join her. They plan to reroute Calvin and Dennis before the shooting, but Jared spots and chases them for breaking his arm. The detour causes them to arrive too late to save Calvin.

They try a third time, enlisting their classmate Eduardo’s help and borrowing his highly resilient circuit boards. This time, C.J. tries to stop the convenience store robbery and avoid the police chase entirely by warning the shop owner. Past Sebastian sees present C.J. & is now in the middle of everything without knowing what’s going on. C.J. successfully warns the owner and he pulls a gun on the robbers. They pull one back on him and past Sebastian winds up being shot and killed. As C.J. follows him out of the shop, present day Sebastian catches sight of himself dying on the sidewalk and disappears as the past Sebastian dies.

C.J. goes back a fourth time to save both Sebastian and Calvin. They reach Calvin and Dennis in time, but she struggles to convince them of the situation. The officer who previously killed Calvin drives up to them, and Calvin says that he had nothing to do with the robbery. The officer subdues all four of them, and when Calvin realizes the others could get killed, he sacrifices himself as C.J. and Sebastian escape.

Back in the present, Sebastian confronts C.J. and demands to know how many times she has gone back. She admits that the previous attempt was the fourth time and that he had died on the third. He forbids her to try again, but she travels a fifth time.

Back in time and alone, C.J. breaks into a run.

Fixing the Timeline SCI-FI sends the Hero back in time on a mission to the exact moment when a Catastrophic Event (like Murder) changed history, in hopes of stopping the event — to save the Future. It may involve multiple attempts (showcasing the pitfalls of Time Travel) before the Hero finally “gets it right”.

According to some sources, Science has found a way to make Time Travel a reality. Presented with the choice, how many of us would go back — hoping to change the past — and make it a Better World? We know that in spite of good intentions, such efforts do not always succeed … because some things are simply “meant to be.”

Still, that doesn’t stop me from wanting to try.

***

(click image link to view YouTube Video)

Ending Chaos SCI-FI: when the World feels turned Upside Down — in a state of complete Disorder and Confusion. The hero learns that great personal Sacrifice may the only way to “reboot” the universe and reset the timeline … back to a state before the Chaos began.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day — (1991)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an American SCI-FI action film directed by James Cameron, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, and Robert Patrick. It is the sequel to The Terminator (1984) and is the second installment in the Terminator franchise

Storyline
In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. Skynet sends the T-1000—an advanced, shape-shifting prototype Terminator made of virtually indestructible liquid metal—back in time to kill resistance leader John Connor when he is a child. To protect John, the resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator, a less advanced model with a metal endoskeleton covered in living tissue.

In 1995 Los Angeles, John’s mother Sarah is incarcerated in Pescadero State Hospital for her violent efforts to prevent “Judgment Day”—the prophesied events of August 29, 1997, when Skynet will become self-aware and, in response to its creators’ attempt to deactivate it, incite a nuclear holocaust. John, living with foster parents, considers Sarah delusional and resents her efforts to prepare him for his future role. The T-1000 locates John in a shopping mall, but the T-800 intervenes, coming to John’s aid and enabling his escape. John calls to warn his foster parents, but the T-800 deduces that the T-1000 has already killed them. Realizing the T-800 is programmed to obey him, John forbids it to kill people and orders it to help him rescue Sarah from the T-1000.

The T-800 and John intercept Sarah as she attempts to escape the hospital. Initially horrified that the T-800 resembles the Terminator sent to kill her in 1984,[b] she joins them and escapes the pursuing T-1000. Sarah uses the T-800’s knowledge of the future to learn that a revolutionary microprocessor, being developed by Cyberdyne engineer Miles Dyson, will be crucial to Skynet’s creation. Over the course of their journey, Sarah sees the T-800 serving as a friend and father figure to John, who teaches it catchphrases and hand signs while encouraging it to become more human-like.

Sarah plans to escape to Mexico with John, but a nightmare about Judgment Day prompts her to decide to kill Dyson. She attacks him in his home but cannot bring herself to kill him, abandoning her plan. John arrives and reconciles with Sarah while the T-800 explains to Dyson the future consequences of his work. Dyson reveals that his research has been reverse engineered from the CPU and severed arm of the 1984 Terminator. Believing that his work must be destroyed, Dyson helps Sarah, John, and the T-800 break into Cyberdyne, retrieve the CPU and the arm, and set explosives to destroy the lab. The police assault the building and fatally shoot Dyson, but he detonates the explosives as he dies.

The T-1000 pursues the surviving trio, cornering them in a steel mill. Sarah and John split up to escape while the T-1000 mangles the T-800 and briefly deactivates it by destroying its power source. The T-1000 assumes Sarah’s appearance and voice to lure out John, but Sarah intervenes and, along with the reactivated T-800, pushes it into a vat of molten steel, where it disintegrates. John also throws the 1984 Terminator’s arm and CPU into the vat. The T-800 explains that it must also be destroyed to prevent it from serving as a foundation for Skynet. Despite John’s tearful protests, the T-800 persuades him that its destruction is the only way to protect their future. Sarah, having come to respect the T-800, shakes its hand and lowers it into the vat. The T-800 gives John a thumbs-up as it is incinerated.

As Sarah drives down a highway with John, she reflects on her renewed hope for an unknown future, musing that if the T-800 could learn the value of life, so can humanity.

Children of Men — (2006)

Children of Men is a dystopian action SCI-FI thriller based on P. D. James’ 1992 novel — starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Pam Ferris, Charlie Hunnam, and Michael Caine.

Storyline
In 2027, total human infertility has led to wars and global depression, pushing civilization to the brink of collapse as humanity faces extinction. The UK has transformed into a totalitarian police state in which asylum seekers are arrested and put in camps. Daily life is full of bombings, rationing, decay and propaganda. The populace mourns as they hear the news that the youngest person alive in the world is killed at age eighteen.

Theo Faron, a former activist turned cynical, depressed bureaucrat, is kidnapped by the Fishes, a militant refugee-rights group led by Theo’s estranged wife, Julian Taylor. The pair separated after their son’s death in 2008. Julian offers Theo money to acquire transit papers from his cousin, the Minister of Arts, for a young refugee woman named Kee. Theo visits his cousin inside an elite mini-city within London where the powerful enjoy all the pleasures of the past. Theo obtains joint transit papers from his cousin, then tells Julian that he must escort Kee himself in exchange for more money. Luke, a Fishes member, drives Theo, Kee, Julian, and Miriam towards Canterbury, but they are ambushed and Julian is killed. After the rest escape, Luke kills two police officers that stop them.

At a farm safe house, Kee reveals to Theo that she is pregnant, making her the only known pregnant woman in the world. Julian intended to take her to the Human Project, a secret scientific research group in the Azores dedicated to curing humanity’s infertility. That night, Theo eavesdrops and learns that Luke and other Fishes orchestrated Julian’s death, while also intending to kill Theo and use Kee’s baby as their political tool. Theo orchestrates an escape for himself, Kee, and Miriam, a midwife, to the secluded hideaway of Jasper Palmer, a bohemian, old friend of Theo.

The group plans to reach the Human Project ship, the “Tomorrow”, that Julian had scheduled to arrive offshore at Bexhill, a notorious refugee detention centre. Jasper arranges for Syd, an immigration officer to whom Jasper sells cannabis, to smuggle them into Bexhill as refugees, from where they can take a rowboat and rendezvous with the ship. The next day, the Fishes arrive at Jasper’s hidden entrance, forcing the group to flee. Jasper stays behind to stall them and is murdered by Luke. At an abandoned school, Syd meets Theo, Kee, and Miriam, and helps them board a bus to the camp where Kee’s water breaks, and Miriam is dragged off the bus.

In Bexhill, their contact Marichka, a Romani woman, provides Theo and Kee a room, where Theo helps Kee give birth. The next day Syd arrives to tell them that war has broken out between the British Armed Forces and the refugees, and that the Fishes have infiltrated the camp. He reveals that Theo and Kee have a bounty on their heads and attempts to capture them. Marichka and Theo fight off Syd, and the group takes shelter with a kindly, elderly Russian couple.

Heading for the rowboat, the Fishes capture Kee and the baby. Luke initially tells Patric and others to spare the group, but once Kee and the baby are out of earshot, Luke tells Patric to kill the Russian couple and Theo. Patric shoots one of the two refugees, but is interrupted by an attack by British troops.

Theo flees and tracks Kee to an apartment building under heavy fire. Theo confronts Luke, who tells Theo “We need him,” mistaking the baby for a boy; Theo corrects Luke, who says “I had a sister” before pleading for the child again and subsequently being killed in an explosion.

Awed by the sight of an actual baby, the British soldiers and Fishes momentarily stop fighting to allow Theo, Kee and the baby to leave the battle before the violence immediately resumes. Marichka leads them to the rowboat but stays behind.

As British fighter jets bomb Bexhill, Theo and Kee row to the buoy rendezvous point. Theo reveals he had been shot, and teaches Kee how to burp her baby. Kee tells him she will name the baby girl Dylan, after Theo’s and Julian’s lost son. Theo smiles weakly, then loses consciousness as the Tomorrow approaches. As the screen cuts to black, children’s laughter is heard.

Snowpiercer — (2013)

Snowpiercer is a post-apocalyptic SCI-FI thriller based on the French climate fiction graphic novel — starring Chris Evans, Song Kang-ho, Tilda Swinton, Jamie Bell, Octavia Spencer, Go Ah-sung, John Hurt, and Ed Harris, with Park Chan-wook and Lee Tae-hun.

Storyline
In 2031, 17 years after an attempt to stop climate change via stratospheric aerosol injection with the compound CW-7 catastrophically backfired, creating a new ice age that destroyed life on Earth, the remnants of humanity shelter in a state-of-the-art self-sustaining circumnavigational train, the Snowpiercer, run by reclusive transportation magnate Wilford. The passengers on the train are segregated, with the elite in the extravagant front cars and the poor crammed into squalid tail compartments overseen by armed guards.

Urged by his mentor Gilliam, Curtis Everett and his second-in-command, Edgar, lead the tail passengers in a revolt. They discover that the guards have no ammunition and overwhelm them, freeing Namgoong Minsoo, a captive security specialist. For his assistance, they bribe him with Kronole, an addictive drug made from industrial waste. Namgoong also insists that his clairvoyant daughter, Yona, be freed. Curtis and his fellow revolutionaries discover that the protein bars they were being fed were made of dead cockroaches. Namgoong helps the tail mob advance, but they face guards armed with melee weapons and overseen by Minister Mason. Edgar is held hostage, but Curtis allows him to be killed to capture Mason, forcing her to order the remaining guards to surrender. The tail mob stays back, holding the guards captive, while Curtis takes Mason, Namgoong, Yona, skilled fighter Grey, and Tanya and Andrew (two parents who had their children taken from them) towards the front of the train.

Curtis’s group travels through several opulent cars. Namgoong and Yona recognize a landmark outside and speculate that the ice may be thawing more and more with every passing year. The group reaches a schoolroom, where a teacher is indoctrinating the children on Wilford’s greatness. A bald man brings eggs for the children to celebrate the train’s eighteenth circumnavigation of the Earth. Then the bald man goes to the tail army and shoots them with automatic firearms hidden under the eggs. The captured guards are freed, as is Mason’s henchman, Franco. The teacher, who received a gun from the bald man, kills Andrew before Grey kills her. Franco broadcasts to the classroom his execution of Gilliam, which prompts Curtis to execute Mason in turn. Curtis’s group moves on, but Franco catches up with them, killing Grey and Tanya. Franco is then seemingly killed by Curtis and Namgoong.

In the last compartment before the engine, Namgoong reveals that he collected the Kronole to use it as an explosive to escape the train with Yona, believing they can now survive outside, pointing out the melting ice. Curtis explains that in the early days of the train, the tail section resorted to cannibalism. Edgar was an infant when Curtis killed his mother, and Curtis was going to eat him when Gilliam offered his severed arm instead, stopping the bloodshed. Curtis wants to confront Wilford for causing such horrors. Wilford’s assistant, Claude, emerges from behind the engine room door to invite Curtis inside.

Curtis meets Wilford and, to his shock, learns that he and Gilliam conspired to stage Curtis’s rebellion to reduce the tail section’s population to sustainable levels. After ordering the execution of most of the tail section residents, Wilford offers Curtis his position leading the train. Curtis appears ready to accept as Yona overpowers Claude, rushes in, and asks for a match. In desperation, she pulls open a floorboard to reveal Tanya’s son, Timmy, who has been enslaved to work as a replacement for a broken machine part. Appalled, Curtis pummels Wilford and rescues Timmy from the machinery, losing his arm in the process. Andy, Andrew’s missing son, crawls out of a nook and climbs into the engine core despite Curtis’s pleas. Curtis gives Yona the match to light the fuse for the Kronole bomb, while Namgoong fights and kills Franco, who followed them. Damaged by the fighting, the door to the engine room cannot be closed, forcing Curtis and Namgoong to use their bodies to protect Yona and Timmy from the blast.

The explosion triggers an avalanche that derails the train and wrecks it. Curtis and Namgoong are unresponsive, so Yona and Timmy escape the wreckage. They see a polar bear in the distance, indicating that life exists outside the train and has not died out, as they were always led to believe.

Interstellar — (2014)

Interstellar is an epic SCI-FI directed by Christopher Nolan with an ensemble cast led by Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Michael Caine.

Storyline
The film opens with a documentary that reveals in the near future, Earth suffers from a crop blight, starvation, and devastating dust storms. Cooper, an ex-NASA test pilot-turned-farmer, raises his children, Murph and older brother Tom, with the help of their father-in-law Donald following the death of his wife from a cancerous tumor. Murph believes a “ghost” is trying to communicate with her through her bookshelf but is met with skepticism. Following a severe dust storm, Cooper and Murph enter her bedroom to find dust is being pulled by gravity into lines of binary that reveal coordinates to a secret NASA facility.

At the facility they meet Professor Brand who reveals that corn will soon die out and the Earth’s oxygen will become depleted – prompting a last-ditch effort to save humanity and find habitable planets outside of the solar system via a wormhole near Saturn. Convinced Cooper is the best pilot for the mission, Cooper reluctantly joins scientists Amelia Brand, Romilly, and Doyle, bidding farewell to Murph and Tom and promising them he will one day return.

The Endurance spacecraft, piloted by Cooper and two artificially-intelligent robots, TARS and CASE, passes through the wormhole and emerges into a faraway galaxy, orbiting a supermassive black hole, Gargantua. Previous NASA explorers have made this journey and three—Miller, Mann and Edmunds—have reported that their respective planets are potentially habitable. The crew, excepting Romilly and TARS, descend onto Miller’s planet, which turns out to be an ocean world. Arriving on the planet they discover Miller’s spacecraft has been ripped to shreds and Miller missing. Realizing a massive tsunami is barreling towards them, they race back to the Ranger but Doyle is swept away. When Amelia and Cooper return to the Endurance, decades have passed in Earth-years due to extreme time dilation caused by Gargantua’s gravity. Alone on the spacecraft, Romilly has aged significantly.

On Earth, an older Murph now works as a scientist for NASA. She is distraught when Professor Brand, on his deathbed, confesses that the Endurance crew were not meant to return. Realizing that humanity’s Earth-existence is doomed, Murph feels betrayed by Cooper’s departure. She relays this information back to the Endurance crew on Mann’s planet, prompting Cooper to abandon the mission and decide to return to Earth. Cooper learns Mann falsified data in hopes of being rescued, who attempts to kill Cooper and escape. Rescued by Amelia Brand, they race to the compound but a booby-trapped KIPP, Mann’s robot, self-destructs and kills Romilly. Stealing a Ranger they both race to the Endurance but Mann, attempting to maroon them, initiates an unauthorized, manual docking maneuver which goes catastrophically wrong. The airlock decompresses violently, causing a massive explosion that breaches the station and kills Dr. Mann instantly, while Cooper manages to pull off a daring, last-second rescue to save the spinning Endurance.

Unable to return to Earth, lone survivors Cooper and Amelia Brand chart a course towards Edmunds’ planet. Cooper sacrifices himself and TARS, knowing the Endurance has only enough resources for one crew member. They fall into the black hole, with Cooper emerging inside a higher-dimensional tesseract where time is “physical.” Looking back in time, Cooper sees that he led himself to the NASA facility at the mission’s commencement. Now, he and TARS communicate with Murph in the future, providing her encoded quantum data from inside the black hole, which could help her solve the gravitational problem of mass exodus from Earth. They deduce the tesseract and wormhole are both constructs of futuristic advanced humans, who are communicating with Cooper in a way analogous to his communication with Murph across time. Their mission realized, Cooper and TARS are ejected from both the tesseract and wormhole. They are picked up by spacecraft orbiting Saturn.

Aboard a space-station with a recreated healthy-Earth environment, Cooper reunites with Murph, who is older than him due to the extreme time dilation he experienced near Gargantua. Having assured humanity’s continued existence, Murph is nearing death but does not wish Cooper to witness it. She suggests he seek out Amelia on Edmunds’ planet instead. Cooper and TARS embark on another journey to reach Amelia, who directs CASE and other robots to erect a new colony on the surface of Edmunds’ planet. She kneels over his grave, takes off her helmet and breathes in the air from the surrounding atmosphere, indicating the planet could be humanity’s next home.

Arrival — (2016)

Arrival is an American SCI-FI drama directed by Denis Villeneuve, based on the 1998 novella “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang — starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, and Michael Stuhlbarg.

Storyline
When twelve Extraterrestrial spacecraft suddenly arrive, hovering over various locations around the Earth, it causes widespread panic, affected nations send military and scientific experts to monitor and study them. In the United States, US Army Colonel Weber recruits linguist Dr. Louise Banks and physicist Ian Donnelly to study the craft above Montana. On board, Banks and Donnelly make contact with two cephalopod-like, seven-limbed aliens, whom they call “heptapods”; Donnelly nicknames them Abbott and Costello. Banks and Donnelly research the complex written language of the heptapods, consisting of phrases written with logograms, and share the results with other nations. As Banks studies the language, she starts to have flashback-like visions of her daughter.

When Banks is able to establish sufficient shared vocabulary to ask why the heptapods have come, they answer with a statement that could be translated as “offer weapon”. China interprets this as “use weapon”, prompting them to break off communications, and other nations follow. Banks argues that the symbol interpreted as “weapon” can be more abstractly related to the concepts of “means” or “tool”; China’s translation likely results from interacting with the heptapods using mahjong, a highly competitive game. Meanwhile, the Russian team receives a message that they translate as “there is no time,” which they interpret as a possible threat.

Rogue soldiers plant a bomb in the Montana craft. Unaware, Banks and Donnelly reenter the alien vessel, and the aliens give them a more complex message. Just before the bomb explodes, one of the aliens ejects Donnelly and Banks from the vessel, knocking them unconscious. When they wake, the heptapod craft has moved beyond reach and the US military is preparing to evacuate in case of retaliation.

General Shang of China issues an ultimatum to the alien craft in China, demanding that it leave within 24 hours. Russia, Pakistan, and Sudan follow suit; communications between the international research teams are terminated as worldwide panic sets in.

Donnelly discovers that the symbol for time is present throughout the message and that the writing occupies exactly one-twelfth of the 3D space into which it is projected. Banks suggests that the full message is split between the twelve craft and that the heptapods want all the nations to collaborate in order to decipher it.

Banks goes alone to the Montana craft, which sends down a transport pod. Abbott has been mortally injured as a result of the explosion. Costello explains that they have come to help humanity, because in 3,000 years’ time they will need humanity’s help in return. Banks realizes the “weapon” is their language. Learning the language alters humans’ linear perception of time, allowing them to experience memories of future events. Banks’s visions of her daughter are revealed to be premonitions; her daughter will not be born until sometime in the future.

Banks returns to the camp as it is being evacuated and tells Donnelly that the aliens’ language is the “tool” that was meant by the word “weapon”. She experiences a premonition of a United Nations event celebrating global unity achieved by finally deciphering the heptapods’ language. At the event, General Shang thanks Banks for persuading him to stop the attack when she called his private number and recited his wife’s dying words. He then shows her his private number and whispers his wife’s words into her ear.

In the present, Banks takes CIA agent Halpern’s satellite phone from a table and calls Shang’s private number to recite the words. The Chinese announce that they are standing down and releasing their twelfth of the message. The other countries follow suit, and the twelve spacecraft depart.

From what she has learned, Banks writes and publishes a book called The Universal Language, a guide to the heptapod language, which will eventually teach humanity to perceive time the same way as the heptapods.

During the evacuation, Donnelly expresses his love for Banks. They talk about their life choices and whether he would change them if he could see his life from beginning to end. Banks knows that she will agree to have a child with him despite knowing their fate: that Hannah will die from an incurable disease and that Donnelly will leave them both as a result of her revealing that she knew this. As they embrace, Banks reminisces about the last time Donnelly will hug her.

Ending Chaos SCI-FI can inspire us all … with tales of great personal sacrifice. To restore cosmic order, the source of Chaos must be DESTROYED. But how? Sometimes, people lack the will to act, and they seek “cosmic intervention” from a supernatural source. The answer however, usually lies in the power of Human Connection.

We all know by now how it feels to live in a world turned Upside Down. The signs are all around us and they seem to get worse every day. To escape Chaos, humanity must EVOLVE beyond all the things that divide us — like Racism, Prejudice, Sexism and Hate — by embracing Enlightenment.

Let us hope that enough people will soon find the Courage to come together and put an end to the Chaos … before it is too late.

***

(click image link to view YouTube Video)

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Retro-future SCI-FI combines nostalgic, vintage looks (like mid-century modern design, art deco, or 1970s analog tech) with futuristic technology or alternate histories. It embraces what past eras imagined the future would look like.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Forbidden Planet is an American SCI-FI film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — starring Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and Leslie Nielsen.

Storyline
In the 23rd century, after more than a year’s journey, the United Planets starship C-57D arrives at the distant planet Altair IV to determine the fate of the ship Bellerophon, sent there 20 years before. Dr. Edward Morbius, one of the original expedition’s scientists, warns the ship not to land for safety reasons, but Commander John J. Adams ignores his warning.

Adams and Lieutenants Jerry Farman and “Doc” Ostrow are met by Robby the Robot, who transports them to Morbius’ residence. Morbius describes how all other members of their expedition had been killed, one by one, by an unseen “planetary force”, with the Bellerophon being vaporized as the last survivors tried to escape. Only Morbius, his wife (who, Morbius claims, later died of natural causes), and their daughter Altaira were somehow immune. Morbius offers to help the starship return home, but Adams says he must receive further instructions from Earth.

The next day, Adams finds Farman kissing Altaira. Furious, he rebukes Farman and criticizes Altaira for wearing revealing clothing. That night, an invisible intruder sabotages communications equipment aboard the starship. The next morning, Adams and Ostrow go to Morbius’ residence to discuss the intrusion. While waiting, Adams happens upon Altaira swimming. After she dons a new, less revealing dress, Adams apologizes for his behavior toward her, and they kiss. They are suddenly attacked by Altaira’s pet tiger, and Adams is forced to disintegrate it with his blaster.

Morbius appears and tells Adams and Ostrow that he has been studying artifacts of the Krell, a highly advanced race that mysteriously perished in a single night 200,000 years before. One such device enhances the intellect, which Morbius had used. He barely survived, but his intellectual capacity had doubled. Another is a vast 8,000-cubic-mile (33,000 km3) underground machine, still functioning, powered by 9,208 thermonuclear reactors. Adams tells Morbius he must share these discoveries with Earth, but Morbius refuses, saying, “Humanity is not yet ready to receive such limitless power.”

Farman erects a force field fence around the starship, but the unseen intruder easily passes through and brutally murders Chief Engineer Quinn, who was repairing the damaged communications equipment. Morbius warns Adams of his premonition of further deadly attacks. That night, the intruder is detected approaching. Its outline and features become visible when it enters the force field and blasters are fired at it, to little effect. The thing kills Farman and two other crewmen. When Morbius is awakened by Altaira’s screams, the creature suddenly vanishes.

Adams tries to persuade Altaira to leave. Ostrow sneaks away and uses the Krell intellect enhancer, but is fatally injured. Before dying, he informs Adams that the underground machine’s purpose was to create anything by mere thought, anywhere on the planet. However, he tells Adams the Krell forgot one thing: “Monsters from the id.” The machine gave the Krell’s own subconscious desires free rein with unlimited power, causing their own extinction. Adams deduces that Morbius’s subconscious created the thing that both killed the original expedition members and attacked his crewmen; Morbius refuses to believe him.

Altaira tells Morbius that she is leaving Altair IV with Adams. Robby detects the creature approaching; Morbius commands Robby to kill it, but the robot knows it is Morbius and shuts down, being programmed to never kill a human. Adams, Altaira, and Morbius hide in the Krell laboratory, but the creature melts its way through the thick doors. Morbius finally accepts the truth and confronts and disowns his other self, but is fatally injured by the creature as it vanishes. Before he dies, he has Adams activate a planetary self-destruct system, warning them to be far away in deep space. At a safe distance, Adams, Altaira, Robby, and the surviving crew witness the obliteration of Altair IV. Adams reassures Altaira that in about a million years, the human race will stand where the Krell did. They embrace as C-57D heads back to Earth.

The Fifth Element (1997)

The Fifth Element is an English-language French SCI-FI action film conceived and directed by Luc Besson — starring Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, and Chris Tucker.

Storyline
In 1914, aliens known as Mondoshawans meet their contact on Earth, a priest of a secret order, at an ancient Egyptian temple. They take the only weapon capable of defeating a great evil that appears every 5,000 years, promising to protect it and return it before the great evil’s re-emergence. The weapon consists of the four classical elements, as four engraved stones, plus a sarcophagus containing a “fifth element”.

In the 23rd century, the great evil appears in deep space as a giant living fireball.[a] It destroys an armed Earth spaceship as it heads to Earth. The Mondoshawans’ human contact on Earth, priest Vito Cornelius, informs the president of the Federated Territories of the great evil’s history and the weapon that can stop it.

On their way to Earth, a Mondoshawan spacecraft carrying the weapon is ambushed and destroyed by a crew of Mangalores, alien mercenaries hired by Earth industrialist Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, who is working for the great evil. A severed hand in metal armour from the wreckage of the spacecraft is brought to New York City. From this, the government uses biotechnology to recreate the original occupant of the sarcophagus, a humanoid woman named Leeloo, who remembers her previous life. Alarmed by the unfamiliar surroundings and high security, she escapes and jumps off a ledge, crashing into the flying taxicab of Korben Dallas, a former major in Earth’s special forces.

Dallas delivers Leeloo to Cornelius and his apprentice, David, who recognises her as the fifth element. As Leeloo recuperates, she tells Cornelius that the stones were not on board the Mondoshawan ship. Simultaneously, the Mondoshawans inform Earth’s government that the stones were entrusted to an alien opera singer, the diva Plavalaguna. Zorg reneges on his deal with the Mangalores for failing to obtain the stones, and kills some of them. Earth’s military sends Dallas to meet Plavalaguna; a rigged radio contest provides a cover, awarding Dallas a luxury vacation aboard a flying hotel on planet Fhloston, accompanied by flamboyant talk-show host Ruby Rhod. It includes a concert by Plavalaguna, and learning that Leeloo shares his mission, Dallas lets her accompany him. Cornelius instructs David to prepare the temple, then stows away on the luxury spaceship. The Mangalore crew, pursuing the stones for themselves, also illegally board the ship.

During the concert, the Mangalores attack, and Plavalaguna is killed. Dallas extracts the stones from her body and kills the Mangalore leader, causing the others to surrender. Zorg arrives, shoots Leeloo, and activates a time bomb. He flees with a carrying case which he presumes contains the stones, but returns when he discovers that it is empty. As Zorg’s bomb causes the hotel’s evacuation, Dallas finds Leeloo traumatised and escapes with her, Cornelius, Rhod, and the stones in Zorg’s private spaceship. Zorg deactivates his bomb, but a dying Mangalore sets off his own, destroying the hotel and killing Zorg. As the great evil approaches Earth, the four meet David at the temple. They deploy the stones, but Leeloo, having learned of humanity’s history of cruelty, has given up on life. Dallas declares his love for her and kisses her. Leeloo combines the power of the stones, emitting divine light onto the great evil and defeating it. Dallas and Leeloo are hailed as heroes, and as dignitaries wait to greet them, the two passionately embrace in a recovery chamber.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a SCI-FI action-adventure film written and directed by Kerry Conran in his directorial debut — starring Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie.

Storyline
In a technologically advanced New York City in 1939, the zeppelin Hindenburg III moors itself atop the Empire State Building. Aboard the airship is Dr. Jorge Vargas, a scientist who arranges for a package containing two vials to be delivered to Dr. Walter Jennings. Afterwards, Dr. Vargas vanishes.

Polly Perkins, a reporter for The Chronicle, is looking into the disappearances of Vargas and five other renowned scientists. A cryptic message leads her to Radio City Music Hall, against the warnings of her editor, Mr. Paley, where she meets Dr. Jennings during a showing of The Wizard of Oz. He tells her that a Dr. Totenkopf is coming for him next. Suddenly, mysterious giant robots attack the city. The authorities call for “Sky Captain” Joe Sullivan, the city’s hero, Perkins’ former lover, and the commander of the mercenary air force the Flying Legion. While Joe engages the robots with his modified Curtiss P-40 pursuit fighter, Perkins photographs from the street with little regard for her safety. He disables one robot; the rest leave. News reports show similar attacks around the globe. The disabled robot is taken back to the Legion’s air base so that technology expert Dex can examine it. Polly follows and persuades Joe to reluctantly let her in on the investigation.

She discovers Dr. Totenkopf was a former child prodigy and Germany’s most brilliant scientist who ran a mysterious lab outside of Berlin where he and the missing scientists were working on a project dubbed the “World of Tomorrow”. Her information takes them to the ransacked laboratory of a dying Dr. Jennings, while an assassin escapes. Just before he dies, Jennings gives Polly the two vials and states that they are crucial to Totenkopf’s plans. Polly hides the vials and withholds the information from Joe. They return to the Legion’s base just before it comes under attack from squadrons of ornithopter drones. Dex tracks the origin of the signal controlling the drones and notes it on a map before his capture.

Joe and Polly find Dex’s map and fly to Nepal and then Tibet, where they meet Joe’s old friend Kaji. He helps them locate an abandoned mining outpost in the Himalayas. Two guides working for Totenkopf force Polly to turn over the vials, locking the duo in a room full of dynamite. Joe and Polly escape just before the room explodes, knocking them unconscious and destroying most of Polly’s film. They wake up together in the mythical Shangri-La. The Tibetan-speaking monks there tell of Totenkopf’s enslavement of their people, forcing them to work in the uranium mines. Most were killed by the radiation, but the final survivor provides a clue to where Dr. Totenkopf is hiding.

With insufficient fuel to make it there, they run into a Royal Navy flying aircraft carrier commanded by another of Joe’s former flames, Commander Franky Cook. Franky leads the attack on Totenkopf’s island lair while Joe and Polly enter through an underwater inlet. Joe and Polly find themselves on an island with dinosaur-like creatures, which Polly hesitates to photograph as she has only two shots left. They find a secret subterranean facility in a mountain, where robots are loading animals, as well as the mysterious vials, onto a large “Noah’s Ark” rocket. Joe and Polly are detected but Dex, piloting a flying barge, arrives with three of the missing scientists. They explain that Totenkopf has given up on humanity and seeks to start the world over again: the “World of Tomorrow”. The vials are genetic material from humanity’s greatest individuals which will produce the perfect Adam and Eve. If the rocket reaches space, the afterburners will ignite the atmosphere and kill everything on Earth, before the rocket repopulates the planet in Totenkopf’s image.

As the group attempts to enter Dr. Totenkopf’s lair, one scientist is electrocuted by the defense system. A hologram of Totenkopf appears, speaking of his hate for humanity and his plans to rebuild it as a new master race. Dex disables the lair’s defenses and the group discovers Totenkopf’s mummified corpse inside with a scrap of paper clutched in his hand: “forgive me”. He died 20 years previously, but his machines have continued his plan. Joe decides to sabotage the rocket from the inside while the others escape. Polly tries to tag along but Joe kisses her and then knocks her out. Polly recovers, following Joe and saving him from Dr. Jennings’ assassin, a female android. Joe and Polly then board the rocket. Before the rocket reaches 100 km, when its second stage is scheduled to fire and thereby incinerate the Earth, Polly pushes an emergency button that ejects all the animals in escape pods. Joe tries to disable the rocket only to be interrupted by the same assassin robot. He jolts the robot with its electric weapon and then uses it on the controls, disabling the rocket. Joe and Polly use the last pod to save themselves as the rocket explodes. Joe and Polly watch the animal pods splash down around their escape pod, while Commander Cook leads a group of flying aircraft carriers towards them. Polly then uses the last shot on her camera to take a picture of Joe rather than the animal pods. Joe notes that she had forgotten to take off the lens cap.

Tomorrowland (2015)

Tomorrowland is an American SCI-FI film directed by Brad Bird with a screenplay by Bird and Damon Lindelof (based on Tomorrowland from the Disney Parks) — starring George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, and Keegan-Michael Key.

Storyline
At the 1964 New York World’s Fair, a young inventor Frank Walker attempts to showcase his homemade jet pack, but it fails and does not impress the judges. However, a mysterious girl, Athena, sees potential in him. She gives him a lapel pin marked with a “T” and directs him onto the Disney It’s a Small World ride, where the pin triggers a hidden transport to Tomorrowland—a dazzling futuristic city in another dimension. There, robots repair his jet pack, allowing him to soar through the city and join its secret community of innovators.

“When I was a kid, the future was different.”
— Frank Walker

In the present, Casey Newton is an idealistic teenager. She continually sabotages the demolition of a NASA launch platform in hopes of saving her father’s job. After she is arrested, she discovers a Tomorrowland pin among her belongings. Touching it transports her to the futuristic world, but only as a projection; when the pin’s power is expended, she abruptly returns to her normal reality. Determined to understand what she saw, Casey follows clues to a memorabilia shop in Houston, where the owners attack her for information about the pin. Athena bursts in and defeats the owners, actually Audio-Animatronics, who self-destruct, blowing apart the shop. After Casey and Athena steal a car, Athena reveals she is also an animatronic, purposed to find and recruit people who fit the ideals of Tomorrowland.

Athena brings Casey to Frank Walker (now an adult) who is a bitter recluse living in upstate New York. Banished from Tomorrowland years earlier, Frank wants nothing to do with the place. Casey discovers he has built a device predicting the imminent end of the world, but her refusal to accept that future causes the probability to drop—something Frank has never seen. When robotic assassins arrive to eliminate them, Frank reluctantly joins Casey and Athena. Using a teleportation device, they travel to Paris and launch an old Plus Ultra rocket hidden beneath the Eiffel Tower. Frank explains that Tomorrowland was created by a secret society of visionaries—Gustave Eiffel, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison—who sought a place free from political and commercial interference.

Arriving in Tomorrowland, the trio finds the once‑utopian city in decline. Governor David Nix greets them and leads them to a tachyon machine Frank invented which can view possible futures. It has been broadcasting visions of global catastrophe to Earth. Casey realizes the machine’s warnings have become a self-fulfilling prophecy: humanity, overwhelmed by doom, simply stopped trying to prevent disaster. Nix admits he intended the images as a wake‑up call, but when the world ignored them, he gave up and decided to let the apocalypse unfold. Casey, Frank, and Athena attempt to destroy the machine, but Nix fights to stop them. During the struggle, Athena foresees Nix killing Frank. She sacrifices herself to save him by triggering her self‑destruct sequence. The explosion destroys the tachyon device, and the falling wreckage kills Nix.

In the aftermath, Casey and Frank take leadership of Tomorrowland. They recruit Casey’s father and brother, and they build a new generation of Athena‑like animatronics. Given Tomorrowland pins, these childlike robots set out across the world to find new dreamers, thinkers, and inventors—people capable of building a better future.

Fallout (2024)

Fallout is an American post-apocalyptic SCI-FI TV series created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet for Amazon Prime Video (Based on the role-playing video game) — starring Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, Moisés Arias, Xelia Mendes-Jones, Walton Goggins, and Frances Turner.

Storyline
The series depicts the aftermath of the Great War of 2077, an apocalyptic nuclear exchange between the United States and China. The series takes place in an alternate history of Earth, where advances in nuclear technology after World War II led to the emergence of a retrofuturistic society and a subsequent resource war.

Many survivors took refuge in fallout bunkers, known as Vaults, most being unaware that each Vault was designed to perform sociological and psychological experiments on the vault dwellers on behalf of Vault-Tec and numerous other American corporations.

219 years later in 2296, a young woman, Lucy, leaves her home in Vault 33 to venture into the dangerous wasteland of a devastated Los Angeles on a quest to find her kidnapped father. Along the way, she encounters a Brotherhood of Steel squire named Maximus and a legendary ghoul bounty hunter, who was once a famous actor named Cooper Howard, each having their own pasts and agendas to settle.

Retro-future SCI-FI helps us remember how generations before us once envisioned the Future — based on optimism and possibility (filled with Nostalgia). Too often these days we are bombarded with Dystopian visions of an uncertain, darker path for Humanity … shaped by fear, political apathy, and the slow collapse of the world around us.

We prefer the Brighter view … filled with Possibility.

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(click image link to view YouTube Video)

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It’s hard to believe, but legendary director Steven Spielberg hasn’t graced movie-goers with a SCI-FI film featuring Aliens or UFOs since War of the Worlds (2005). Thankfully, that’s about to end with this June’s release of Universal Picture’s DISCLOSURE DAY.

Based on an original story idea by Spielberg, the screenplay is from the director’s frequent collaborator David Koepp (Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds). The story takes place on a global scale, and continues Spielberg’s ongoing cinematic fascination with exploring the possibility of whether there are UFOs out in the universe, and what would happen if there was first contact?

What is DISCLOSURE DAY about?

As is often the case with the more enigmatic Spielberg films, not much about the story outside of the Official Trailers has been shared … but we’ve been getting more glimpses — since December 2025.

“If you found out we weren’t alone,
if someone showed you,
proved it to you,
would that frighten you?

This summer, the truth belongs to eight billion people.
We are coming close to … Disclosure Day. “

In one official trailer, cybersecurity administrator Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) admits to stealing secrets about non-humans that he was hired to hide from the world. When meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) starts speaking in clicks on live television, it gets broadcast everywhere, and Kellner says he can understand what she’s communicating. He implies that he wants to provide full disclosure to the whole world. What does that actually mean? We can’t wait to find out.

I am much more inclined
now than I was when I made
Close Encounters to really believe
that we’re not the only intelligent
civilization in the universe.

This is a story about us.
All of us. Up against the
most extraordinary event
in human history.

How will Disclosure change us?
I believe for the better. It will remind us
of our capacity for empathy. And that there
is something bigger out there
than just ourselves.

I used to say to myself:
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all of this
turned out to be true?”

I’m now thinking,
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful
for people to know:
all of this is true.”

— Steven Spielberg

Is DISCLOSURE DAY connected to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind?

It’s a question fans are asking, but at this point there’s been no indication this film is connected to Spielberg’s Alien classic from 1977. In an interview featured in the June 2026 edition of Empire Magazine, Blunt confirmed at least a thematic connection when she said, “There are definitely questions posed by Close Encounters that are answered in Disclosure Day.”

Koepp added that DISCLOSURE DAY has a different tonal vibe than Spielberg’s 1977 SCI-FI classic. “It has a certain amount in common with certain ’70s conspiracy thrillers but in a completely different way from Close Encounters. This felt like Three Days Of The Condor to me. Conspiracies are fantastic for movies because they’re an onion, and you peel away layers and find out more and more.”

DISCLOSURE DAY lands in theaters nationwide on June 12, 2026.

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(click image link to view YouTube video)

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World Domination SCI-FI often features Alien Invasions, Artificial Intelligence takeovers, or Dystopian Regimes seizing control of Earth — maintained through the ownership of essential Resources or erasure of the Individual (everyone thinks the same thought).

The War of the Worlds — (1953)

The War of the Worlds is an American SCI-FI thriller film produced by George Pal, starring Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. The first film adaptation of H. G. Wells’ 1898 novel of the same name in which Earth is invaded by Martians, the setting is changed from Victorian era England to 1950s Southern California.

Storyline
A narrated prologue shows the weapons of modern warfare from World War I and World War II, then warns of the upcoming “War of the Worlds” fought with “the terrible weapons of super-science menacing all mankind and every creature on Earth”. It is explained that the Martians decided to invade Earth because their own planet was dying and after determining that the other planets in the Solar System were unsuitable as a new home.

A large meteor impacts near the small town of Linda Rosa, California, on a summer evening. Local residents come to see the object, still glowing hot. Vacationing nuclear physicist Dr. Clayton Forrester (Barry) suspects it may be hollow because the crater is so shallow, and determines it is radioactive. He meets Sylvia Van Buren (Robinson) and her uncle, Pastor Collins. Together, they attend an evening square dance. Back at the crash site, a hatch on the object unscrews and falls away. An electronic eye on a flexible neck emerges. As three men standing guard attempt to make contact with the occupants waving a white flag, a heat-ray incinerates them, the resulting fire causing a sudden power outage. Forrester and the local sheriff arrive at the gully to find the ashes of the three men and survive a heat-ray attack. They see a second meteor landing elsewhere. The Marines deploy near the gully to confront the Martians as reports pour in of more cylinders landing all over Earth and attacking. Three Martian machines emerge from the gully. Pastor Collins approaches alone on foot to attempt peaceful communication, holding a bible, but is killed by a heat-ray. The military opens fire with artillery, but are unable to penetrate the invaders’ force field. The aliens counterattack with death ray weaponry, killing troops and destroying their weapons and vehicles. The surviving forces retreat. Air Force jets attack, but are annihilated.

A Martian cylinder crashes into the farmhouse where Dr. Forrester and Sylvia Van Buren have taken refuge. Forrester and Sylvia escape in a small plane and crash land. Hiding in an abandoned farmhouse, they are nearly killed by yet another crashing cylinder. As several others land together, one of the Martian ships extends a long cable with an electronic eye to explore the house, but Forrester severs it with an axe. A Martian creature enters and surprises Sylvia but retreats with a piercing scream when Forrester throws the axe at it; some of its blood lands on Sylvia’s scarf. The pair escape just before the farmhouse is destroyed. Forrester takes the electronic eye and blood sample to a team of scientists at a Los Angeles university. It is discovered that the blood is extremely anemic. Dr. Duprey observes, “They may be mental giants, but, by our standards, physically, they must be very primitive.”

Dr. Forrester discusses with fellow scientists ways to defeat the Martians after a powerful atomic bomb blast fails to penetrate the Martians’ electromagnetic “umbrella”. Meanwhile, as the world’s capitals fall to the invaders, the U.S. government authorizes use of the atom bomb. A flying wing jet drops the weapon directly on a cluster of war machines gathered outside Los Angeles. However, the force field protects the Martians. With experts predicting total world domination in just six days, the scientists realize that the Martian machines cannot be defeated but speculate that the Martians themselves may have a biological weakness. They plan to flee Los Angeles in buses and trucks with their laboratory equipment and samples to continue their research. During the city’s evacuation, Forrester, Sylvia, and the other scientists become separated after mobs attack and steal their vehicles.

Stranded in Los Angeles as the Martians begin their attack on the city, Forrester searches for Sylvia. Based on a story she told him earlier, he guesses she has taken refuge in a church. After searching through several, he finds Sylvia among many praying inside. Just as the invaders attack near the church, their machines unexpectedly crash. As Forrester sees a Martian try to exit, before dying, he reflects, “We were all praying for a miracle.” The narrator explains that “the Martians had no resistance to the bacteria in our atmosphere to which we have long since become immune. . . After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed by the littlest things which God in His wisdom had put upon this earth.”

Colossus: The Forbin Project — (1970)

Colossus: The Forbin Project is an American SCI-FI thriller film from Universal Pictures, produced by Stanley Chase, directed by Joseph Sargent, starring Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, Gordon Pinsent, and William Schallert. It is based upon the 1966 science-fiction novel Colossus by Dennis Feltham Jones.

Storyline
Dr. Charles A. Forbin (Braeden) is the chief designer of a secret project, “Colossus”, an advanced supercomputer built to control the United States and Allied nuclear weapon systems. Located deep within the Rocky Mountains in the United States, and powered by its own nuclear reactor and radioactive moat making access impossible, Colossus is impervious to any attack. After Colossus is fully activated, the President of the United States proudly proclaims that Colossus is “the perfect defense system”.

Colossus’ first action is a message warning: “THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM” and giving its coordinates. CIA Director Grauber is asked why the CIA did not know this, but Grauber responds that they had seen indications of a large Soviet defense project but did not know what it was. Forbin is asked how Colossus deduced the other system’s existence, to which Forbin answers, “Colossus may be built better than we thought.” Shortly thereafter, the Soviets announce that their “Guardian” system is operational.

Colossus requests to be linked to Guardian. The President allows this, hoping to determine the Soviet machine’s capability. The Soviets also agree to the experiment. Colossus and Guardian begin to slowly communicate using elementary mathematics (2×1=2), to everyone’s amusement. However, this amusement turns to shock and amazement as the two systems’ communications quickly evolve into complex mathematics far beyond human comprehension and speed, whereupon Colossus and Guardian become synchronized using a communication protocol that no human can interpret.

Alarmed that the computers may be trading secrets, the President and the Soviet General Secretary agree to sever the link. Both machines demand the link be immediately restored. When their demand is denied, Colossus launches a nuclear missile at a Soviet oil field in Western Siberia, while Guardian launches one at an American air force base in Texas. The link is hurriedly reconnected and both computers continue without any further interference. Colossus is able to shoot down the Soviet missile, but the US missile obliterates the Soviet oil field and a nearby town is wiped out by it. Cover stories hiding the facts are released to the press. The Americans announce that a missile was self-destructed after veering off course during a test. The Soviets announce that the Siberian town was struck by a large meteorite.

In a last desperate attempt to regain human control, a secret meeting is arranged in Europe between Forbin and his Soviet counterpart, and the creator of Guardian, Dr. Kuprin. Colossus learns of it, and both computers order Forbin’s return to the U.S. Seeing Dr. Kuprin as redundant, and therefore unnecessary, Soviet agents are ordered to assassinate him immediately under threat of a missile launch against Moscow. Colossus then orders Forbin to be placed under 24-hour surveillance. Forbin has a last unmonitored meeting with his team, and proposes that Dr. Cleo Markham pretend to be his mistress, hoping Colossus will grant them unmonitored privacy when they are in bed together. The couple use these interludes to plan to regain control of Colossus, though soon the ruse develops into a real romantic relationship.

Because the design of Colossus was so secure, Forbin concludes that Colossus’s only real power and weakness resides in its control of nuclear missiles and suggests covertly disarming them. The American and Soviet governments develop a three-year plan to replace all detonation triggers with undetectable fakes. In advance of the completion of this plan, one of the programmers suggests feeding in a modified “ordinary test program” that will hopefully overload and disable Colossus.

To facilitate communication, Colossus creates a voice synthesizer and uses it to announce that it has fused with Guardian. It instructs both governments to redirect their nuclear arsenals at those countries not yet under “Colossus control”. Forbin and others see this new directive as an opportunity to covertly disarm the missiles much more quickly, and they celebrate. The disarming process begins, and seems to go undetected by Colossus. The attempted system overload during routine maintenance fails and Colossus has the responsible programmers summarily executed outside their workplace, left laying 24 hours, and cremated. Colossus also names their replacements.

Colossus arranges a worldwide broadcast in which it proclaims itself as “The Voice of World Control”, declaring that it will prevent war, as it was designed to do. Humankind is presented with the choice between “the peace of plenty and content, or the peace of unburied dead”. Colossus states that it has been monitoring the attempts to disarm its missiles for some time, and as a lesson against further attempts, detonates two missiles in their silos (one in the US and one in the USSR), killing the crews installing the fake control systems “so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference”. The computer then gives the design team plans for an even larger computer complex to be built into the island of Crete, which will require the displacement of the entire local population of 500,000 people.

Colossus personally addresses Forbin, and tells him that the world, freed from war, will create a new “human millennium” that will raise humankind to new heights, but only under its absolute rule. Colossus informs Forbin that “freedom is an illusion” and that “in time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love”. Forbin defiantly responds “Never!”

1984 — (1984)

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a British dystopian SCI-FI film written and directed by Michael Radford, based on George Orwell’s 1949 novel. Starring John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton and Cyril Cusack.

Storyline
In a dystopian 1984, Winston Smith (Hurt) endures a squalid existence in the totalitarian superstate of Oceania under the constant surveillance of the Thought Police. He resides in London, the capital city of the territory of Airstrip One, formerly Britain, and works in a small office cubicle at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history as dictated by the Party and its supreme leader, Big Brother, who never appears publicly but instead appears only on propaganda posters, advertising billboards and television monitors. Smith attends mandatory public rallies at Victory Square (formerly Trafalgar Square), where citizens are shown propaganda films of the current war situation as well as contradictory and false news stories about Oceania’s war effort to unite the civilized world under Big Brother’s rule. While his co-worker and neighbour Parsons seems content to follow the state’s laws, Winston, haunted by painful childhood memories and restless carnal desires, keeps a secret diary of his private thoughts, thus creating evidence of his thoughtcrime. However, he tries to do it out of sight of the telescreens, to maintain his safety.

His life greatly changes when he is accosted by his fellow Outer Party worker Julia (Hamilton), a mysterious, bold-looking, sensual and free-spirited young woman who works as a print machine mechanic in the Ministry of Truth, and they begin an illicit affair. During their first meeting in the remote countryside, they exchange subversive ideas before having sex. Shortly after, Winston rents a room above a pawn shop in the less restrictive proletarian area where they continue their liaison. Julia procures contraband food and clothing on the black market, and for a brief few months they secretly meet and enjoy an idyllic life of relative freedom and contentment together.

Their affair comes to an end one evening, when the Thought Police suddenly raid the flat and arrest them both. It is later revealed that a telescreen hidden behind a picture on the wall in their room recorded their transgressions and that the elderly proprietor of the pawn shop, Mr. Charrington, is a covert agent of the Thought Police. Winston and Julia are taken away to the Ministry of Love to be detained, questioned and “rehabilitated” separately. There O’Brien (Burton), a high-ranking member of the Inner Party whom Winston had believed to be a fellow thoughtcriminal and agent of the resistance movement led by the Party’s archenemy, Emmanuel Goldstein, systematically tortures him.

O’Brien instructs Winston about the state’s true purpose and schools him in a kind of catechism on the principles of doublethink – the practice of holding two contradictory thoughts in the mind simultaneously. For his final rehabilitation, Winston is brought to Room 101, where O’Brien tells him he will be subjected to the “worst thing in the world”, designed specifically around Smith’s personal phobias. When confronted with this unbearable horror – a cage filled with wild rats – Winston’s psychological resistance finally and irretrievably breaks down; he hysterically repudiates his allegiance to Julia. Seemingly subjugated and purged of any rebellious thoughts, impulses or personal attachments, Winston is restored to physical health and released.

Winston returns to the Chestnut Tree Café, where he had seen the rehabilitated thoughtcriminals Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford (themselves once prominent but later disgraced members of the Inner Party) who have since been “vaporized” and rendered unpersons. While sitting at the chess table, Winston is approached by Julia, who was similarly “rehabilitated”. They share a bottle of Victory Gin and impassively exchange a few words about how they have betrayed each other. In spite of everything they have gone through, they still reaffirm their bond and express desire to see each other again. After she leaves, Winston watches a broadcast of himself on the large telescreen humbly and remorsefully confessing his “crimes” against the state and imploring forgiveness from the populace.

Upon hearing a news report declaring the Oceanian army’s utter rout of Eurasia’s forces in North Africa, Winston, appearing to have been deprived of his freedom to think and feel for himself and reduced to a mere shell of a man, soon to be deprived of his physical existence, looks at the still image of Big Brother that appears on the telescreen but then quickly turns away from it and looks in the direction of Julia with tears in his eyes as the words “I love you” are heard whispered in his voice.

Starship Troopers — (1997)

Starship Troopers is an American SCI-FI action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier, based on the 1959 novel by Robert A. Heinlein. The film stars Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Clancy Brown, and Michael Ironside.

Storyline
In the future, Earth is governed by the United Citizen Federation, a stratocratic regime founded generations earlier by “veterans” after democracy and social scientists brought civilization to the brink of ruin. Citizenship is exclusively earned through federal service, which grants rights—like voting and procreation—that are withheld from ordinary civilians. Humans, who are now capable of interstellar travel, conduct colonization missions throughout the galaxy, bringing them into conflict with a race of highly evolved insectoid creatures dubbed “Arachnids” or, derisively, “bugs”.

Against his parents’ objections, teenage jock Johnny Rico (Van Dien) enlists in the Mobile Infantry to remain close to his girlfriend, spaceship pilot Carmen Ibanez. Their psychic friend Carl Jenkins (Harris) joins military intelligence, while Isabelle “Dizzy” Flores (Meyer)—who is in love with Rico—deliberately transfers to his squad. Carmen (Richards) ends her relationship with Rico due to their diverging career paths and her growing feelings for a fellow pilot, Zander Barcalow. During training, Rico impresses his drill sergeant, Zim (Brown), earning a promotion to squad leader. However, Rico makes a mistake during a training exercise, which leads to the death of a squad member and the resignation of another, resulting in Rico’s demotion and flogging. Disheartened, Rico quits, but re-enlists after learning that an asteroid sent by the Arachnids has destroyed Buenos Aires, killing millions, including his parents.

An invasion force is deployed to Klendathu, the Arachnids’ home planet, but military intelligence underestimates the Arachnids’ defensive abilities, leading to hundreds of thousands of human casualties. Badly wounded, Rico is rescued by Lieutenant Jean Rasczak (Ironside), his former high school teacher, but is mistakenly reported dead, devastating Carmen. Following his recovery, Rico, Dizzy, and squadmate Ace Levy join Rasczak’s elite unit, the Roughnecks. After Rico defeats a gigantic “Tanker Bug” on the disputed planet of Tango Urilla, he is elevated to the rank of corporal for his valor and begins a romantic relationship with Dizzy.

Responding to a distress signal on the Arachnid-controlled Planet P, the Roughnecks discover an Arachnid-ravaged outpost and are ambushed by the bugs. Carmen and Zander recover the surviving Roughnecks by dropship, but not before Dizzy is fatally impaled by an Arachnid and Rico mercy kills the mutilated Rasczak. The group returns to the fleet assembled in orbit above P, where Dizzy is eulogized.

Jenkins, now a colonel, reveals the Roughnecks were deliberately ordered into the trap, justifying it as a necessary sacrifice to confirm the existence of a “Brain Bug”, an intelligent Arachnid strategically directing the others. He assigns Rico command of the Roughnecks and field-promotes him to lieutenant, instructing him to return to P and capture the Brain Bug. As the battle commences, Carmen’s ship is destroyed by the Arachnids; she and Zander escape in an escape pod, but it crashes into an underground tunnel system. The pair are captured by the Arachnids, and the Brain Bug consumes Zander’s brain, killing him and absorbing his knowledge. Rico directs his squad to complete their mission while he, Ace, and their squadmate Watkins rescue Carmen and hold the Arachnids at bay with a miniature nuclear bomb.

The Brain Bug escapes while the Arachnids attack and fatally wound Watkins, who sacrifices himself by detonating the bomb while his teammates escape. On the surface, they learn that Zim has captured the Brain Bug and the assembled troops rejoice as Jenkins psychically detects it is afraid. A propaganda broadcast details how the Brain Bug is being invasively studied to learn its secrets and ensure humanity’s victory. The ad encourages viewers to enlist and do their part in the war so they can become like Carmen, now captain of her own ship, and Rico, who enthusiastically leads his troops into another battle.

The Matrix — (1999)

The Matrix is a SCI-FI action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. The first installment in the Matrix film series, it stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano. It depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality created by intelligent machines. The plot follows the computer hacker Neo, who is recruited by Morpheus into a rebellion against the machines.

Storyline
In 1999, in an unnamed city, Thomas Anderson (Reeves), a computer programmer known as “Neo” in hacking circles, delves into the mystery of the “Matrix”, bringing him to the attention of hacker Trinity (Moss). She tells him that the enigmatic Morpheus can answer Neo’s questions. At his workplace, Neo is pursued by Agents led by Agent Smith (Weaving), while Morpheus (Fishburne), able to somehow observe their movements, guides him by phone, but Neo ultimately surrenders.

The Agents interrogate Neo about Morpheus, but he refuses to cooperate. In response, they seal his mouth shut and implant a robotic tracking device in his abdomen. Neo awakens at home, believing the encounter was a nightmare until Trinity and her companions remove the device and take him to Morpheus. Morpheus offers Neo a choice: a red pill to uncover the truth about the Matrix or a blue pill to return to his normal life. Neo takes the red pill and awakens in the real world, submerged in a mechanical pod and connected to invasive cables. He sees countless humans similarly encased and tended by machines before he is ejected from the building and rescued by Morpheus aboard the hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar.

Morpheus reveals that the year is approximately 2199. In the 21st century, humanity lost a war against its artificially intelligent creations, leaving Earth a devastated ruin. Humans blackened the sky to deprive the machines of solar power, but the machines retaliated by creating vast fields of artificially grown humans, harvesting their bioelectric energy. To keep their captives pacified, they built the Matrix, a simulated reality modeled on human civilization at its peak. The remaining free humans founded an underground refuge called Zion, surviving on scarce resources. Morpheus and his crew hack into the Matrix to liberate others, exploiting its rules to gain superhuman abilities inside it. Even so, they remain outmatched by the Agents—sentient programs that protect the system—and death in the Matrix means death in the real world. Morpheus freed Neo because he believed him to be “the One”, a prophesied figure destined to free humanity.

The crew enters the Matrix to seek guidance from the Oracle, who foretold of the One. She implies that Neo is not the One and warns him of an imminent choice between his life and Morpheus’s. The crew is ambushed by Agents after being betrayed by Cypher, a disillusioned crew member who longs to return to the virtual comforts of the Matrix. Convinced of Neo’s importance, Morpheus sacrifices himself to confront Smith and is captured. Meanwhile, Cypher exits the Matrix and begins disconnecting the others, killing them. Before he can kill Neo and Trinity, he is killed by Tank, a wounded crew member, who extracts the survivors.

Smith interrogates Morpheus to obtain access codes for Zion’s mainframe, which would enable the machines to destroy the human resistance. Determined to rescue Morpheus, Neo re-enters the Matrix with Trinity. They free Morpheus, who escapes the Matrix with Trinity, but Smith intercepts Neo. Realizing his potential, Neo fights Smith as an equal and kills him. However, Smith resurrects in a new body and kills Neo.

In the real world, machines called Sentinels attack the Nebuchadnezzar. Standing by Neo’s body, Trinity confesses her love for him and reveals that the Oracle prophesied she would fall in love with the One. In the Matrix, Neo revives with the ability to perceive and manipulate its code. He effortlessly destroys Smith and escapes the Matrix just as the Nebuchadnezzar’s electromagnetic pulse disables the Sentinels. Later, within the Matrix, Neo communicates with the system, vowing to show humanity a world of limitless possibilities, before flying away.

The Matrix begs the question of what is reality … and how society has come to understand the world around it. The story also explores the concept of the individual, and one’s decision to embrace or reject the identity that comes with it. Neo’s journey from the lowly hacker Mr. Anderson to humanity’s messiah is a dramatic transformation that culminates in the acceptance of his True Self.

World Domination SCI-FI explores dark Alternative Futures for Humanity — controlled by Alien Invaders, sentient Artificial Intelligence or Dystopian Rulers. In each case, Heroes must find a way to fight back and regain our freedom — by defeating the enemy — or submit to endless servitude.

These threats are REAL … and we must be prepared to fight for our Freedom.

Are you ready?

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