Are you a fan of films like Interstellar? Do sci-fi movies give you the kicks, taking you way beyond the known, and to places human imagination can fly to?
Do you binge-watch Black Mirror every time a new season drops on Netflix? If your answers to all my questions are in the affirmative, then I have one more question for you – when was the first sci-fi movie made?
A Trip to the Moon
The answer takes us back more than a century. Because the first science fiction film was created over 120 years ago, right at the start of filmmaking. The more amazing part?
It was made by a magician. Yes, French director Georges Méliès, who made the famous Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) in 1902, was trained as a magician.
The novels behind the movie
‘Le Voyage dans la Lune' was based on Jules Verne’s ' From the Earth to the Moon: A Direct Route in 97 Hours, 20 Minutes,' a novel published in 1865.
According to Wikipedia, the novel talks about the efforts of the Baltimore Gun Club, to build an enormous space gun and launch three people – the Gun Club's president, his Philadelphian armor-making rival, and a French poet – in a projectile with the goal of a moon landing.
The other story the first sci-fi drew from was a fantastical story of a journey to the Moon by English Author HG.
In his novel 'The First Men in the Moon,' Wells tells about a scientific romance about a journey to the Moon by two Englishmen.
Special effects ahead of times
The film by Georges Méliès depicted a group of astronomers who built a bullet-shaped rocket and took off into space to land on the Moon.
Of course, the most famous image we still recall from film history is that of the rocket landing, hitting the "face" of the Moon, in the eye.
The movie featured innovative special effects for its time with a runtime of only about 14 minutes.
Méliès pushed the limits of filmmaking using painted backdrops, theatrical costumes, stop-motion techniques, and creative multiple-exposures to use visuals the world had never seen.
An international sensation
Le Voyage dans la Lune was screened throughout Europe and the United States, bringing Georges Méliès to international fame.
Unfortunately, like many inventive people in the early years, he had a difficult financial outcome, and we lost many of his films.
Today, the film is recognised as the first-ever science fiction movie, proving that even in the early 1900s, humanity was already dreaming of space travel.
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