Science Fiction in Film and Television

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Science Fiction in Film and Television
The Man Who Fell to Earth is a film that was produced in the year 1976, and Nicolas Roeg directed it. The science fiction film is an adaptation of a 1963 novel written by Walter Tevis that has the same title. The film follows the story of an extraterrestrial being whose planet is dealing with a severe drought. He has a crash landing on planet earth in a bid to find a way of taking water from earth to his planet. This paper uses the modes of the auteur, rhetorical, genre, narrative, and star as a means of analyzing this science fiction movie.
In terms of the auteur, the director Nicolas Roeg is the primary creative force behind The Man Who Fell to Earth movie even though Paul Mayersberg authored the work. His narrative and visual styles were always peculiar and unique, often following an editing that was considered both incoherent and disorienting. In the final moments of most of his films, an important piece of information is revealed that helps the audience to fully make sense of the movie. The consistency of these characteristics in Roeg’s work made him be known and identified by them in the filmmaking industry. The peculiarity of his style made many other renowned directors such as Christopher Nolan, and Steven Soderbergh to consider Roeg as a filmmaker that was highly influential. Evidently, in most instances, Roeg incorporated his style in his works and this explains why his influence is seen in the mentioned work. About the film during an interview, Roeg said, “I think I have never really liked the idea of genre…I like to think that we are all manners to all men,” (Olsen). This comment confirms the fact that the filmmaker liked working on those films that did not restrict him to a given genre, but instead allowed him to make his own choices and decisions. Considering these facts, it is therefore evident that the movie was largely influenced by him as can be seen by the use of the semi-coherent style in the film and the fact that the movie becomes makes more sense to the viewer at almost the very end. Roeg worked on the film with the assistance of other people. Paul Mayersberg wrote the screenplay while Anthony B. Richmond worked as the cinematographer. Hence, they both influenced the work too.
Concerning the rhetorical, The Man Who Fell to Earth film does produce the intended effect. Through the movie, it is clear that the auteur was trying to communicate some of the challenges that aliens would possibly face on earth. The most obvious problem is that of feeling like an outsider when exposed to a new environment. The alienation is felt more when the character Newton finds it difficult to communicate with the inhabitants of the earth during his early days before he learns to do so through watching the TV broadcasts on earth. Everything on earth baffles him, especially the machines. The humanoid Newton is depicted as being lonely in America since mostly everything is new and strange to him. Ideally, the film Creator, in this case, aimed to give the audience a different approach to the subject of aliens as shown in most science fiction movies. While Newton is portrayed as a lonely alien in search of water for his planet, most other movies in the same genre usually show aliens as aggressive invaders or bearers of messages of goodwill to earth. In this regard, the movie’s central message is that of alienation. Through Newton’s experiences, including his engaging in businesses on earth, it is obvious that the authors also wanted to show the effects on earth that would be witnessed in the case of alien visitation. Overall, the film succeeds in influencing the audience in the intended ways. The fact that it reached a cult status confirms that many people understood and appreciated the message and intent of the author and auteurs in the film.
The film The Man Who Fell to Earth belongs to the science-fiction genre because it largely bears the defining elements of the genre. To begin with, the central character in the movie is an alien shown in the form of a humanoid or an extraterrestrial being. This confirms the use of non-human characteristics, a feature that is specific to the sci-fi genre. Another genre feature evident in the film is the use of time travel. In the film, this is seen when in an attempt to build a spacecraft to ...