Georges Méliès’ Le voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) is undoubtedly the progenitor of so much cinematic science fiction that it’s impossible to overstate its influence: from the Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serials to Star Wars and beyond, the ripples can be felt even today with James Cameron’s Avatar. But more importantly, A Trip to the Moon is also arguably the first film in the modern sense, employing narrative, epic scope and dazzling special effects in a manner that is still with us today.
Made in 1902, this classic piece of early cinema is important for so many reasons, not the least of which is that, even today, it stands as a fine piece of entertainment in its own right, beyond any historical curiosity. The imagery is rich and startling: besides the famous image of the rocket lodged in the eye of the moon, the landscape of the moon itself is wonderfully realised with spires, craters and giant mushrooms, while faces appear in stars and moon inhabitants disappear in puffs of smoke. The whimsy alone carries the audience into a magical world of wonder and awe.
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Terry Gilliam’s career has come a long way since he animated the foot of Bronzino’s Cupid in Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-74). After the frustrations involved in bringing 
Pixar stand as the spiritual torchbearers of the Walt Disney’s philosophy: just as Disney pushed the limits of traditional 2D hand-drawn animation in the 1930s and 1940s, Pixar has done the same for 3D computer animation in the 1990s and early 2000s. But both Disney and Pixar were also determined to demonstrate that animation could be used to tell dramatic stories with genuine pathos and emotions. In this way, Pixar are the polar opposite of the 3D animation wing of Dreamworks, who seem more interested in letting story serve the gags than having it be the other way around.
In 1981, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were two of the hottest names in town: Lucas had made American Graffiti, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back; Spielberg, meanwhile, had directed the blockbusters Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A film produced by Lucas and directed by Spielberg would almost certainly be money in the bank.
1982 was a good year for science fiction on film: on the one hand you had Steven Speilberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, which was one of those inescapable blockbusters that was as much an event as a film; on the other hand we were given John Carpenter’s The Thing, which seemed to be the cinematic inverse of Spielberg’s offering. Transcending that dichotomy, however, was Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, a futuristic film noir that is arguably the most important science fiction film of the 1980s — certainly, it was one of the most influential.
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