It is hardly surprising, in the era of Extinction Rebellion, that dystopian sci-fi is once again front and centre. Sooner or later, humanity is bound to create an artificial intelligence that decides it no longer needs us, and that it would make a better guardian of the Earth than us. One suspects Greta Thunberg would (quite reasonably) agree.
Strangely, though, we also seem to be living in an era in which blockbuster futurism – and I am talking ideas-led sci-fi here, as opposed to space-era or superhero fantasy – has dwindled to the point of irrelevance. Where in the 1980s and 90s, the Alien and Terminator sagas drove all before them, creating, or at least popularising, many of the concepts that still run through their celluloid successors today, in the 21st century they have dwindled into dollar-strewing automata for the Hollywood machine. All the interesting ideas seem to be on the small screen, in shows such as Black Mirror, or independent cinema such as the recent Netflix hits I Am Mother or See You Yesterday. Blade Runner 2049, from 2017, is perhaps the last great example of futuristic cinema as spectacle to truly resonate, and it struggled badly at the box office.
In October, we will be treated to Terminator: Dark Fate, the latest instalment in the long-running man v machines saga, directed by Deadpool’s Tim Miller, and it may well be the one that resets the timeline and puts everything back on track. The trailers look cool, but all they really tell us is that Arnie looks dandy with a beard.
Even if Dark Fate does turn out to be a bravura return to the world of the Terminator, it is unlikely to tread much ground we haven’t already seen trodden many times before. The bit in the trailer in which the new Rev-9 Terminator separates its skin from its metal carapace and reforms it into another humanoid shape is a new development (even if it makes no sense at all and breaks all the laws of physics). But the movie looks to be doing most of the same things that Terminator movies have been doing since T2: Judgment Day in 1991: there are guns, robots and high-speed chases involving huge pieces of machinery. Arnie is still somehow around, even though we swear we’ve seen him lowered into molten steel at least a half-dozen times, and even Edward Furlong’s version of John Connor may return, via the magic of CGI “ghosting” tech.
Where are the new ideas? And isn’t there an obvious solution? Imagine if Netflix were to announce it had commissioned a Black Mirror-style anthology series to accompany Dark Fate, all written and directed by indie sci-fi luminaries such as Moon’s Duncan Jones (who surely deserves another chance despite the god-awful Mute), I Am Mother’s Grant Sputore and Ex Machina’s Alex Garland. The series could be used to inspire new concepts in future big-screen episodes, so we don’t all end up with the nagging feeling that we’ve seen this one before somewhere in an alternate timeline.
Disney is using a similar concept to reignite Star Wars, presumably aware that the grand old space opera saga can’t keep recycling the original trilogy’s tropes for ever. The Mandalorian, about a bounty hunter from the same planet as Boba Fett, will be among the first shows to debut on the new Disney+ streaming service later this year, where it will eventually be joined by a Star Wars prequel series based on Rogue One, starring Diego Luna, as well as Avengers and Marvel Cinematic Universe spin-offs such as WandaVision and an as-yet-untitled Loki project. The Star Wars shows should sate the desires of fans who don’t want to wait three years between big-screen episodes, but they are also likely to freshen up their celluloid counterparts – especially as there is every indication that Disney does not see these small screen spin-offs as mere easy, cheap cash-ins.
So why not take the same approach with Terminator, or Alien? The “cinematic universe” may have dwindled in popularity now everyone has worked out it isn’t as easy as Marvel makes it look, but there remains a hunger for interconnected stories that isn’t likely to go away just because Warner Bros and Universal dropped the ball on their mooted DC and Universal Monsters franchises.
Watching I Am Mother, Sputore’s remarkable vision of AI as an untrustworthy keeper of post-apocalyptic humanity’s enduring flame, I half-expected to spot Easter eggs showing that the world of Mother and Daughter was somehow connected to Terminator. And Ex Machina might easily have worked as an alternative origins story for Cameron’s franchise, too. It’s not difficult to imagine both films as calling cards left for the money men behind Alien and Terminator, to persuade them to hand their creators the keys to a larger kingdom.
So bring them in: change the picture, expand the canvas. And while you’re at it Hollywood, please let Neill Blomkamp make his long-lost Aliens movie, especially now Ridley Scott has so clearly run out of ideas. The alternative is that the kind of blockbuster dystopian sci-fi that Scott and Cameron so successfully introduced to the world more than three decades ago will soon be facing its very own extinction event.
