NEWS FEATURE: Plethora of sci-fi films explore creation, human nature

c. 1997 Religion News Service HOLLYWOOD _ As planet Earth hurtles toward the year 2000, Hollywood has turned, once again, to outer space to explore the mysteries of creation and the meaning of life.”I think there’s more of an interest in science fiction as we approach the millennium,”says D.C. Fontana, one of TV’s top sci-fi […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

HOLLYWOOD _ As planet Earth hurtles toward the year 2000, Hollywood has turned, once again, to outer space to explore the mysteries of creation and the meaning of life.”I think there’s more of an interest in science fiction as we approach the millennium,”says D.C. Fontana, one of TV’s top sci-fi writers, whose long list of credits includes”The Six Million Dollar Man,””Logan’s Run,”and”Star Trek.””There’s a rise in superstition and feelings (as we) change into a new century,”Fontana says.

The coming new millennium _ if that’s Hollywood’s excuse _ has filmmakers probing the cosmic unknown at a furious pace.


From last summer’s”Independence Day”and”Mars Attacks!”to this summer’s”Fifth Element,””Men in Black,”and”Contact,”sci-fi films of the `90s are exploring the questions that have baffled humankind for centuries: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Are we alone?

According to Hollywood, extraterrestrials hold the answers. And this summer’s intergalactic offering is just the beginning.

Disney is planning a fall release of”Rocket Man,”a comedy about a mission to Mars. Warner Bros.’ forthcoming”Sphere,”starring Dustin Hoffman and Sharon Stone, is based on a Michael Crichton novel about a 400-year-old sunken alien spaceship.

Meanwhile, some movie studios are busy remaking television’s most popular sci-fi series, such as”Lost in Space”and”The X-Files.”And Disney is making a film version of”My Favorite Martian,”with Christopher Lloyd as Uncle Martin, the martian.

America’s appetite for aliens, it seems, is insatiable.”Today, there’s a good sense of alternative worlds,”says Martin E. Marty, a professor of Religion History at the University of Chicago.”Everything today is `out there,’ and, therefore, the imagination is open to a wider range. The repertory of options for filmmakers and authors is broader.” Hollywood, it seems, has moved light years into that new, broader approach to explain the celestial unknown _ and God’s possible involvement in it. Unlike science fiction of the 1950s, today’s films no longer contain obscure references to and symbolic representations of God and his involvement with humankind and the universe.

For example, 1951’s”The Day the Earth Stood Still”depicted a super-intelligent, Christ-like alien: Similar to the Gospel accounts of Jesus, the alien dies and is brought back to life to preach a message of universal peace.

That same year,”When Worlds Collide,”which begins with a passage from the biblical book of Genesis, told the story of a renegade planet on a collision course with Earth. A 20th-century Noah’s Ark-like spaceship carries a select group of humans, along with goats and chickens, to safety.


And in the 1953 classic”The War of the Worlds,”believers pray outside a church for God to combat a fiery alien invasion. In an apparent answer to their prayer, God sends one of his creations _ bacteria _ to destroy the saucers and save humanity.

Later sci-fi thrillers substitute belief in God with confidence in the abilities of superhuman aliens.

For example,”2001: A Space Odyssey”(1968),”Close Encounters of the Third Kind”(1977), and”Communion”(1989) suggest that UFOs hold the answers to age-old questions about mortality and the meaning to life.

And in the 1970s, the”Star Wars”trilogy replaced God with”The Force”_ a mysterious energy that binds all living creatures and restores the universe to moral order.

By the time”Star Trek V: The Final Frontier”(1989) was released, God, according to Captain Kirk, exists only inside the human heart.”God is eclipsed and becomes progressively quieter. There is no voice left,”says Marty, senior editor of Christian Century.”But there’s always that sense that somehow we’ll be visited by aliens.” Fontana believes all science fiction substantiates, rather than eclipses, traditional religion.”If you believe that God is the creator, why not assume (he) created other intelligent beings?”she says.

MJP END ALEISS

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