Roz Kaveney,
From Alien to The Matrix: Reading Science Fiction Film.
London & New York: I.B.Tauris, 2005.
ISBN: 1 85043 806 4
208pp
£9.99 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by I.B.Tauris)

Roz Kaveney has written a very accessible and informative book that provides a useful discussion of many science fiction films over the past 25 years. She has a clear and engaging style and displays a love of the genre that extends into an intense curiosity about the often bizarre behind-the-scenes processes that ultimately determine the shape of the film that reaches the screen. At the same time, the book suffers from a certain theoretical anorexia that reduces its value as a text that might inform academic discussion of contemporary science fiction cinema.

On the other hand, many people might see this as a good thing, as there are already more than enough turgid and impenetrable theoretical extravaganzas published about science fiction and cognate genres such as horror and fantasy. In this sense the author is exemplary in her approach, offering many valuable insights without succumbing to any temptation to dress these up in suffocating theoretical finery.

In terms of substantive content, the title of the book is misleading to the extent that it implies a chronological organization of its analyses of the many films it discusses. In fact, Alien (1979) joins the subsequent three films of the franchise in a comprehensive discussion that takes up the last third of the book, presented as ‘A Franchise Case Study: Alien and its Sequels’; while The Matrix  (USA, 1999) is discussed in the middle of the book alongside other films like Dark City  (Australia/USA, 1998) The Thirteenth Floor  (Germany/USA, 1999) Total Recall  (USA, 1990), eXistenz  (Canada/UK/France, 1999) Imposter  (USA, 2002) and The Truman Show  (USA, 1998). As Kaveney acknowledges, the book is really a “collection of writings” (1) and perhaps it was the publisher that chose its ultimate title, as Kaveney tells us that its working title was “Waking into dream” (1), a name that possibly better communicates her own engaging sense of wonder about the films she has chosen to discuss.

And herein lies the book’s single greatest strength – it has been written by someone who not only loves the genre but has made a point of seeing, discussing, and researching many interesting films, not just blockbusters and films that have attracted critical attention, but also the many other movies that seem to slip below the radar of academic surveillance. Consequently, Kaveney spends comparatively little time on Independence Day (USA, 1996), Mars Attacks  (USA, 1996) and the recent Star Wars films, and instead offers valuable analyses of lesser known movies like Small Soldiers  (USA, 1998) Strange Days  (USA, 1995) Starship Troopers  (USA, 1997) as well as the Terminator  films and those mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Kaveney also makes use of various resources that were not readily available to earlier critics, most noticeably DVDs and the Internet as a source of alternative versions of films (‘director’s cuts’), production information, gossip, and film scripts at various stages of preparation, and this allows her to reconstruct the various stages that her selected movies traveled through on their way to the screen. She makes particular use of this in her extended discussion of the Alien  Franchise, exploring the almost incredible machinations that contributed to the various Alien  films. This has considerable academic interest because this franchise has generated a range of interpretations, notably the book-length treatment by the Heideggerean scholar Stephen Mulhall (On Film . London: Routledge, 2002.), but also many that have responded to what are seen as a range of feminist themes surrounding the transformations that the Ripley character goes through in the four films. What Kaveney’s analysis shows is that the last two films were in fact theoretically and ideologically under-determined, being the products of so many false starts, compromises, misunderstandings, and creative difference and cowardice, that it is remarkable that they were finally made at all. Consequently, any future theoretical readings of these films will need to attend to the purely gratuitous and contingent nature of the versions that reached the screen.

If the Alien  films ultimately lack a single unifying conception extending across the franchise this is not the case with many of the other films that Kaveney discusses in the middle chapters of her book. Many of these – The Matrix , Dark City , The Thirteenth Floor , Total Recall , eXistenz , Imposter , The Truman Show  and Strange Days  – are films that were significantly influenced by the work of great science fiction novelists, like Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, asking “Who am I, where are you and precisely what is going on?” (63). Alongside these Kaveney discusses work of several directors who have become science fiction auteurs , especially Paul Verhoeven and James Cameron, whose influence as a director and producer extends right across the field. She also offers engaging discussions of several very funny films, including Galaxy Quest  (USA, 1999) and Small Soldiers , using her own experience within the fan community to illuminate the many in-jokes that are featured in these films.

The final point that might be noted concerns Kaveney’s efforts to define “what we may proudly call the geek aesthetic” (6) that informs both her own theoretical position and the films she discusses. Here she stresses the extent to which “geek culture – television shows, comics, cult films – is art that people not only love, but think about and through” (6). In contrast to the passive viewing that characterizes so much of mainstream popular culture, “a feature of the geek aesthetic is that popular culture is consumed in an active way”, with films and television series acting as the starting point of an interactive process and not simply as commodities to be consumed. This is exemplified by the never-ending convention circuit, fandom, websites, and fan fiction; and by the slash fiction re-writing of established characters and plotlines into gay and lesbian scenarios, and by the vidding of television and film clips into music videos.

Kaveney also confronts the argument that “popular culture inevitably debases serious themes on the rare occasions that it touches on them” (7). Her response is that it is cultural history that determines what is treated as ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, and that this view is a piece of pessimistic elitism that fails to recognize that these films and television shows are an important route “through which a large audience gets a sense of the tragic and the ecstatic” (7). And finally she cites a Guardian  article on the successful of the Lord of the Rings  film trilogy: “we are all nerds (or geeks) now” (8).

Whether one agrees with this proposition or not, one cannot deny the value of Kaveney’s efforts to analyze these films with enthusiasm and intelligence.

Mervyn F. Bendle
James Cook University, Australia.

Created on: Thursday, 2 March 2006 | Last Updated: 2-Mar-06