CallaghanFilms
Veteran
The Day the Earth Stood Still
is one of the best films ever made in my book...in any genre
(I have it at #79 all time)
Writing 'classic' style scifi movie
- Thread starter David W. Richardson
- Start date
The Day the Earth Stood Still
is one of the best films ever made in my book...in any genre
(I have it at #79 all time)
dougspice
Veteran
If you don't mind taking a shortcut, just check out The Iron Giant. It's one of my favorite films, and at least on paper sounds very much like what you're trying to do. It's also a kids movie that actually made me cry. But it nails many of the genre conventions: the Cold War paranoia, the outsider culture, the lone hero who knows the truth no one else will believe, the confrontation between him and government authority... it's a good model. And you're likely to enjoy it more than watching a stack of actually awful movies from the period (although you should do that, as well).
Having written a feature that I only realized afterwards was very much in the classic '50s sci-fi vein, there's a lot of things you can play with in this area. The main thing is to have a compelling (possibly reluctant) protagonist and good relationships around him, and then to make it clear as early as possible how s/he fits into the larger world. You also should have a clearly realized vision of what the alien menace/evil virus/supercomputer/whatever is doing invading this world, why it exists, and so on and so forth, even if you never explicitly reveal all of that homework you're doing. It matters.
Having written a feature that I only realized afterwards was very much in the classic '50s sci-fi vein, there's a lot of things you can play with in this area. The main thing is to have a compelling (possibly reluctant) protagonist and good relationships around him, and then to make it clear as early as possible how s/he fits into the larger world. You also should have a clearly realized vision of what the alien menace/evil virus/supercomputer/whatever is doing invading this world, why it exists, and so on and so forth, even if you never explicitly reveal all of that homework you're doing. It matters.