16 Military SF films

 

Military SF provides some great material for the silver screen. Explosions, life-or-death drama, ethics and action are some of the major staples ofo othe Hollywood blockbusters that you typically see over the course of the summer. Military SF seems to be making a bit of a comeback this and next year, with a couple of high-profile films hitting theaters soon: Edge of Tomorrow and Ender’s Game come readily to mind, and it looks like Elysium might have some elements as well. Plus, there’s some others on the horizon, such as Starship Troopers, The Forever War, Halo and Old Man’s War that are somewhere in the movie making pipeline.

But, there’s been plenty of others to watch while we wait for those. Here’s a list of films that we’ve enjoyed watching recently:

 
Aliens

James Cameron’s epic addition to the Alien franchise is the granddaddy of all Military SF films. It’s hard to understate just how this film has impacted films and games that came afterward. It’s got a fairly good grasp on how soldiers might interact, even it feels over the top most of the time. It’s hard to dispute that the Colonial Marines are made of 100% badass.

Avatar

This drifts a bit more into the private army territory, but it fits nicely with the Resources Development Administration’s Private Military that they use to secure the planet Avatar. It’s probably one of the first and best examples of battlefield mechs put to use. While there’s some issues with the film’s content (The ‘Civilized’ civilizing the uncivilized), the military stuff is top notch.

Battle: Los Angeles

Battle: LA was critically panned for its jingoistic and over the top nature, but it’s one of the best modern Military SF films out there right now. Taking cues from the modern stylings of warfare in an urban battlefield, it’s the film that feels as though it’s the most realistic.

Enemy Mine

This classic film is full of cheese, but it’s got an interesting story on the relationships of soldiers. Humans and aliens fighting one another for years, when one of each are shot down together and must work together to survive. There’s plenty of historical examples of where enemy soldiers have come together, joined not by mission, but by mutual experiences.

Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn

This is a little bit of a cheat, but put together, it’s the first Halo film out there, and it gets a lot right, from the feel of the Military Academy (CAMS), to the creation and training of future soldiers. Plus, they did a great job making it fit into the entire Halo universe. It’ll also hold us over until we get a proper Halo film.

Independence Day

Hard to overlook this one. Like Battle: LA, it’s jingoistic and over the top, but a helluva lot of fun to watch as aliens invade the planet. We’re not sold on the taking down the mothership with a virus written on the fly, but we’ll take it.

Iron Man

The first really great Marvel film that started off their Phase 1 development is a great superhero film, but a surprisingly relevant one on the role of the military industrial complex and the war on terror. #2 wasn’t all that great, but #3 had some redeeming qualities.

The Last Starfighter

A classic of the 1980s, this film is driven more by nostalgia than quality, but it’s a fun flick, especially when it comes to the space battles, which worked nicely throughout.

Screamers

Loosely based off of a Philip K. Dick novel, this film is surprisingly very good. The CGI is very dated, but it’s a great story line in a world that feels extremely well worn and thought out. Plus, it’s a bit of a precursor to the Battlestar Galactica remake, and has a good theme running through it: what is it to be human?

Soldier

Kurt Russell as an enhanced soldier who’s made obsolete and dumped on a junk planet. It’s product of the late 1990s, and it certainly shows, but it’s entertaining.

Source Code

Duncan Jones’ followup to his fantastic flick Moon isn’t your conventional Military SF film, but there’s some really compelling points that it makes. A soldier finds himself trapped in a time loop that has him trying to track down a terrorist bomb as part of a secret military program with some very questionable ethics. It’s a very good film.

Stargate

The movie that sparked a major franchise on the Showtime / SciFi networks, with three spin-off shows (SG-1, Atlantis and Universe). The movie itself is quite a solid one, a combative take on first contact that weaves in ancient civilizations and US special forces on a desert planet. Hopefully, they’ll get around to returning at some point.

Starship Troopers

This is the love it or hate it film. Forget the book, because this film only loosely follows it, but its over the top and downright bonkers take on Heinlein’s classic novel makes it a very watchable b-movie. We hear that there’s a new version in the works, and while we’d like to see a series take on power armor, this’ll do for now.

Star Wars: A New Hope

Star Wars is an utter classic of military science fiction. It’s got the space battles, ground combat and sheer epic scale that makes it pure awesome. There’s a lot of moments to choose from in George Lucas’s playground, but ANH feels like it’s the best fit for a list like this.

War of the Worlds (Original)

The new one is… okay, but the original War of the Worlds is a great film adaptation of H.G. Well’s landmark novel. There’s some liberties taken, for sure, but it’s hard to beat.

Wing Commander

This film is nuts. It’s bad, but at the same time, in the same class of films as Starship Troopers. Plus, there’s some great space action throughout the film, interspersed with terrible dialogue.

 

So, what are your favorites, and what did we overlook?

Author Announcement: Ken Liu

 

We are very pleased to announce that author Ken Liu has enlisted into the War Stories Table of Contents with his story In The Loop.

Ken won the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and has been a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, Theodore Sturgeon and Nebula awards. His fiction has appeared at Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimovs, Analog, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and Clarkesworld Magazines, among other places. He’s worked as a programmer, lawyer and translator. His translation of the Chinese hard science fiction trilogy, The Three Body Trilogy will be published by Tor sometime in 2014.

Author Announcement: James L. Sutter

We’re at the point where we’re able to start announcing some of the authors who will be appearing in War Stories, and we’re very pleased to announce that our first author on the table of contents is James L. Sutter, with his story, Suits. 

 

James is the fiction editor for Paizo Publishing, and a co-creator of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game campaign setting. He’s the author of Death’s Heretic, which was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award for best first novel, and was ranked #3 on the list of best Fantasy releases of 2011. He’s currently writing a new novel. Additionally, his short fiction has appeared at Escape Pod, Podcastle and Pseudopod, Starship Sofa, Apex Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the anthologies Geek Love and Machine of Death.

 

Edge of Tomorrow Poster

The film formerly known as All You Need Is Kill (which is an impossible title to market, we think), has been renamed Edge of Tomorrow, which works much better. The film stars Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, and is based off of the Hiroshi Sakurazaka novel published by Haikasoru. It’s a good book, and I’ve been cautiously interested in the film adaptation, despite the fact that the lead character in the novel is Japanese, and Tom Cruise decidedly … isn’t. Despite that, the poster looks pretty badass.

Here’s the blurb:

Humanity is at war with an alien race known as Mimics, and Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Tom Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat until he is unceremoniously demoted and then dropped—untrained and ill-equipped—into what amounts to little more than a suicide mission. Cage is killed within minutes, managing to take an Alpha down with him. But, impossibly, he awakens back at the beginning of the same hellish day, and is forced to fight and die again…and again. Direct physical contact with the alien has thrown him into a time loop—dooming him to live out the same brutal combat over and over.

But with each pass, Cage becomes tougher, smarter, and able to engage the Mimics with increasing skill, alongside Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who has lain waste to more Mimics than anyone on Earth. As Cage and Rita take the fight to the aliens, each repeated battle becomes an opportunity to find the key to annihilating the alien invaders and saving the Earth.

Apparently, we’re going to get some teaser footage this Saturday at San Diego Comic Con. There’s other images floating around, and with the film dropping on June 6th, 2014, I suspect that we’ll get some more information over the course of the fall, winter and spring.

Cover Teaser

We just shared this on our Facebook and Twitter feeds. Here’s an early look at part of the War Stories cover!

The artwork is by the fantastic Galen Dara, who’s done work for other anthologies and magazines like Fireside and Lightspeed. We’re pretty thrilled to have her on board as our chief propaganda officer, and while this is just an early look at the cover, we think it’s pretty damn awesome already. We can’t wait to show you what the final version will look like. 

Let us know what you think!