As kids, we looked ahead to the imminent 21st century and thought of a big bold, sci-fi future. The robot butler and trips to the drug store in hovercars version hasn’t yet arrived, but the first 15 years of this century have been extremely fruitful for big-screen science fiction.
Sci-fi is almost as old as cinema itself —1902's Georges Méliès’ “A Trip To The Moon” is generally seen as the first example— but it became hugely popular in late 20th century filmmaking in the aftermath of “Star Wars,” if also somewhat watered down. Many so-called sci-fi blockbusters were really action movies with some fantastical trappings, rather than thoughtful, provocative examinations of the world we live in through speculation about worlds we might live in.
That’s still true to an extent, but the last decade-and-a-half have seen a flourishing of smaller-scale, ingenious sci-fi pictures, as well as some dazzling bigger-scale examples with more ideas per se than explosions and...
