The fifth element

‫آﻠﻴﺔ اﻝﻬﻨﺪﺳﺔ‬ ‫ﻗﺴﻢ اﻝﻬﻨﺪﺳﺔ اﻝﻤﻌﻤﺎریﺔ‬ ‫اﻝﺪراﺳﺎت اﻝﻌﻠﻴﺎ‬ ‫ﻡﺴﺘﻘﺒﻠﻴﺎت اﻝﻌﻤﺎرة‬ Significance of Future Architecture in Science Fiction Films. Professor Name Term Assignment Khaled Dwedar. Amr Al-Gohary. Islam M.Abouhela. June 2005. Final Essay. 0 Abstract in science fiction films act as architectural signifiers used by the directors to convey there personal visions and statements, as for architecture in cinema , architecture is used as a communication tool through which directors and film makers send certain messages. This investigation will be carried out by analyzing different science fiction movies in which architecture played and important role as a good signifier, signifying different aspects of the society, (economical, political, sociological, ecological, technological, etc…). Both film and architecture operate as languages communicating through a library of signs. These signs can be divided into two parts, the signifiers, which are the physical states of signs, and the signified, which are the thoughts, ideas and notions of what the signifiers embody. For film, these signifiers succeed largely in signifying the signified, on the other hand, architecture can’t always succeed to that extent of the film, as for architecture there are different factors that get involved in the production process of a building, and these factors don’t help all the time in revealing the messages behind the architectural work. This paper concludes that our world is subjected to lots of rabid changes, resulting from the huge development of technology and capitalism, and the cinema industry plays a major role in portraying these changes, depicting the upcoming future through different science fiction movies, which act as an alarm for change. Unfortunately most of these depiction view the future city as a dystopic realm, and if we don’t manage how to fix our upcoming problems, these visions might come true. T his paper investigates how aspects of future architecture Keywords: Architecture, Future, Sci-Fi, Vision, Semiotics 1 Introduction C inema and architecture are distant arts, dynamic and static respectively, whose complex relationship gives life to each other. Sharing a mutual respect for the parallel processes involved in producing their works, the creators behind these two expressions have an understanding that one will always benefit the other. Architecture gives film its believability; setting the mood, character, time and place for the action. Film provides architecture with an outlet for realising visions that can never exist and entreats experiences that in reality have not occurred. In professional life, architecture can’t always act as a real mirror for its society or its context, this is due to the involvement of different factors in the design and building process, (financial, political, ecological, etc…). Sometimes, these factors blur the message to be sent to the viewer or the user of the architectural work, resulting in a misunderstanding in the motives behind that architectural work. In the medium of film, architects can create ‘pure’ architecture, without worrying about such things like weatherproofing, contract bidding, or building codes. Cinemarchitecture is, thus, an ideal fulfillment of what architecture can be about. In this paper a brief overview and analysis of the some important movies, (from the points of view of filmmakers, critiques and architects) will be held through discussing the significance and motivations behind these architectural forms in these movies. Discussed movies include: • • • • • • Metropolis (1927) Blade Runner (1982) Star Wars (1977 – 2005) The Fifth Element (1997) Minority Report (2002) Equilibrium (2002) 2 M etropolis, 2026: The Architecture of Metropolis (1927) Fritz Lang’s tale of class struggle relies heavily on rich set designs for its impact. This artistic re-presentation of the city of the future has remained as one of the most striking images of modernity. Lang’s early architectural training is evident in the way atmosphere and narrative are developed through the use of expressionistic and symbolic architectural signifiers. Lang visuals show us a very crowded and busy, yet extremely beautiful metropolis, where the ruling class inhabits vaulting, futuristic art deco buildings that fly up high up into the sky [Fig.1]. Lang said that Metropolis had its genesis in his trip to New York City in the October of 1924, when he saw American skyscrapers for the first time [Fig. 2 & Fig. 3]. As a whole, the film serves to reflect Lang’s vision of a technologically dependent society and in turn comments upon the industrialization of his homeland. High-rise towers act as ‘machines for living in’, streets becomes channels carrying goods and people, automobile and pedestrian traffic is separated, and activities are zoned in a primarily vertical hierarchy. Metropolis depicts an impressive traffic system inspired by William Robinson Leigh’s Visionary City (1908) [Fig. 4] and Sant Elia’s Citta Nuova (1913-14) [Fig.5]; with numerous suspended streets spanning between different buildings at various levels and a number of traffic arteries running underneath buildings. Roads are vast, straight and viciously determined. Fig. 1: The “New Tower of Babel”, Metropolis’ (1927) central skyscraper, home of the Elite Fig.2: Broadway, New York: a 1924 Photograph taken by Fritz Lang. Fig.3: Night in the streets of Metropolis (1927). 3 When looking at architecture in Metropolis there are many forms and influences. New York skyscrapers, Bauhaus, Art Deco and Gothic (Gothic Expressionist) are all style that are expressed, large or small, in Metropolis. The combination of the plot and the entire set creates a very important role for the architecture to fit into. The role of Gothic architecture in particular demonstrates the differences between the people below ground (the workers) and the people above (the livers). It has been chosen as the representational style of architecture because it shows the power and weakness between the two groups of people. The people above ground are the ones that can navigate through the perfectly ordered city, where as, the people below are at work and are almost weighed down by the imagery of this large Gothic style infrastructure. The strong, heavy, large geometric forms along with the scale of the architecture clearly shows who are in control and who is less dominate. This extreme between the strong and the weak is needed to complete the plot and capture the audience in the storyline. The Gothic architecture also enables the struggle for power to be more dramatic and stages the dominance, technology and structure in the film. It also sets great context for the viewer to feel abundant by the story and the set. Metropolis, on the other hand, is set in a futuristic world of massive buildings and infrastructure which convey a sense of power and calculated coldness that is commonly associated with the technological age. Buildings here are exact and pure, reflecting the polished physicality of the machines that support them. The buildings appear at all time to be artificially lit, revealing the smoothness of their surfaces, their repeated matrices of elements and their incredible height. Roads are vast, straight, the size and appearance of the architecture identifies the nature of its peoples as being faceless, oppressed and cold. To help us understand why the city in Metropolis (1927) is depicted in this fashion, there are a couple of important things to keep in mind about the environment in which the film was produced. Germany at the midpoint between World War I and World War II, was a country were manufacturing was still the king of the economy, even though the economy itself was “in a state of disorder, inflation was out of control and the National Socialist, or Nazi, party was starting to come to prominence”. However, the majority of the wealthy Germans lived high above the poverty of the common citizen. Metropolis thus tried to portray the city that might have risen from Germany’s despair, and has very often been considered to be just an elaborate piece of Nazi propaganda. In fact, the film was much loved by Hitler and Fritz Lang was even offered a job creating films for the Third Reich. Lang, being half Jewish, however, refused the offer and escaped to the United States where he continued his successful career. This movie could have been a foreshadowing of what the world would have been like if the industrial revolution had kept growing. Fig.4: William Robinson Leigh’s Visionary City (1908). Fig.5: Sant Elia’s Citta Nuova’s (1913) station for aero planes and trains. 4 L os Angeles, 2019: The Architecture of Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott’s 1982 film has become the most credible cinematic futuristic manifesto of our age. Through its informed vision of a future Los Angeles, the film offers a deep insight into the future of architecture and urbanism, while also providing commentaries on contemporary realities and trends. The film hypothesizes that by the year 2019, Los Angeles will be a city that supports a population of over 90 million people (Round 2002). The colonization of the elite to utopian “offworld” planets has resulted in the large scale immigration of the upper class, leaving the city populated by a mainly ethnic underclass. The cityscape is in a state of urban decay and has become totally synthetic. The middle-class suburbs have been overtaken by the city transforming into a sprawling industrial zone, while huge mega-structures now dominate the center of the city [Fig. 6]. Syd mead, production designer of Blade Runner talks about the motive and inspiration behind the set design: “I took the two world trade towers in New York City and the New York street proportions as a .today' model, and expanded everything vertically about two and a half times. This inspired me to make the bases of the buildings sloping to cover aboutsix city blocks, on the premise that you needed more ground access to the building mass.” [Fig. 7] Metropolis (1927) and Blade Runner share this sense of urban gigantism and geometrical form. While the “New Tower of Babel” dominates the skyline of Metropolis, here it is the pyramid of the Tyrell Corporation headquarters that serves as the city’s nucleus. The building’s presence is overpowering, in it evokes a strong sense of financial power. Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) like Metropolis (1927) reveals class structure through its vertical architecture. The Los Angeles of 2019 is essentially a city of contradiction; high rises, pyramids and glass towers intermingle with revival architecture, historical buildings, and the debris of past urban sprawl [Fig. 8]. The visual layering of architectural typologies from various cultural pasts creates a post-modern image of a globalized world. Due to the drain of wealth that accompanied the mass immigration, the city becomes a place where the whole economic process is slowed down. The removal of old buildings begins to cost far more than the construction of a new ones. Instead of tearing down buildings or dismantling established technologies, modifications and additions are thus added to existing structures. What results is a deeply layered city, where new use has grown over and subsumed Los Angeles’ architectural history (the film utilizes such historical Los Angeles buildings as the Bradbury Building, Union Station and the Yukon Hotel for several of its most important scenes). Fig. 8: Bloated Byzantine columns support the Bradbury Building. (Blade Runner, 1982) Fig. 7: Concept drawing for Blade Runner (1982) by Syd Mead. Megastructures loom above the decaying city beneath. Fig.6: The Tyrell Corporation’s 700-storey headquarters pyramid resembles a Mayan temple. (Blade Runner 1982) 5 New structural elements extend through old buildings to support new construction above; while ducts, signs and service pipes run, snake like, over the old façades . As the cables and generator tubes delivering air and waste go up the old buildings, the street level becomes nothing more than a service alley to the Megastructures above [Fig. 9]. “Things are retrofitted after the fact of the original manufacture because the old, consumer-based technology wasn’t keeping up with demand. Things have to work on a day-to-day basis and you do whatever necessary to make it work. So you let go of the style and it becomes pure function. The whole visual philosophy of the film is based on this social idea” Syd Mead. The aesthetic of retrofitting is very similar to the adaptive façade concept of Archigram’s Peter Cook. His 1978 Trickling Tower project [Fig. 10] starts its existence as a polished steel Megastructure. Over time, the appearance of the building changes as new elements are added, and uses changed. Also, the externalization of infrastructural services (heating, cooling, water, gas) brings to mind Richard Rogers’ and Renzo Piano’s Pompidou centre, 1977 [Fig. 11] The thoughtfulness of the underlying concept, and the layering of images and associations, makes Blade Runner one of the most discussed and influential films of our times. The film remains a compelling reminder of just how nasty life in the twenty-first century may eventually become. It depicts a road humanity is heading down now : class separation, the growing gulf between rich and poor, and the population explosion; but as such, offers no solutions. Fig. 9: The Bradbury Building’s exterior is covered with retro-fitted ducts and structural members that support the Megastructure above. (Blade Runner,1982) Fig. 10: The aesthetic of retrofitting: Peter Cook’s Trickling Tower Fig. 11: External structural members and services, Centre Pompidou. 6 A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: The Architecture of the Star Wars Universe (1977 – 2002) Architecture in the Star Wars films is primarily used by George Lucas and his team of designers in order to illustrate different cultural habits and anthropologies. The social characteristic of the different species of the Star Wars universe are passed on to the audience through the use of familiar architectural styles and forms. C oruscant Over thousands of years of civilization, Coruscant has been entirely enveloped by cities and urban sprawl resulting in a very densely populated planet. The control of ‘man’ over nature of the planet is absolute. Not only there is no sign of any natural vegetation left but the very climate of the planet is being altered through technological interventions. Vast orbital mirrors warm its upper and lower latitudes by refocusing and distributing stellar energy. The planet's heat is regulated by thousands of strategically placed CO² reactive dampers in the upper atmosphere and the city’s water network melts polar ice and pipes it across the planet. The architecture of the city appears wildly futuristic [Fig. 12], and has been criticized for lacking a historical feel. “It is rendered with a uniform palette of materials and has a very clean aluminum and glass aesthetic; a plastic engineered feel that looks like one person designed it and it was all created in a very short period of time.” Transportation has moved high into the air, weaving between the towering skyscrapers and filling the sky with the endless crisscrossing movement of an immensely busy traffic system signifying the vast technological development. Fig. 12: The architecture of the city planet Coruscant; a mix of geometric Futurist forms and 1950s science fiction inspired curvatures. (Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, 2002) N aboo Naboo is inhabited by peaceful highly cultured humans known as the Naboo, and an indigenous species of intelligent amphibians called the Gungans. The small populated planet’s river cities are shinning with classical architecture and greenery [Fig. 13]. The Art Department used Italian, Moroccan and Turkish influences to craft a romantic, retro-futuristic civilization that displays a love of peace and artistic expression. Fig. 13: The Royal Palace of Theed, Naboo: Haga Sophia meets Bernini’s Vatican Colonnade. (Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, 2002) 7 O toh Gunga Whereas Coruscant is all vertical and Naboo is all horizontal, the underwater city of the Gungans is all spheres and roundness. This organically grown city appears as a glittering cluster of jewel-like bubbles connected together in the dark waters [Fig. 14] The architecture of Otoh Gunga is sweeping in shape, lacking the rectilinear symmetry commonly found in technological human designs. Because of their strong belief in symbiotic coexistence with nature, the Gungans actually grow the building material of their cities. Fig. 14: The self grown architecture of the Gungans strongly recalls Art Nouveau architecture and furniture design. (Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, 1999) T ipoca City Rising from the violently rough seas of the ocean-planet of Kamino is Tipoca City, a Sealed air metropolis mounted on strong supports that withstand the attacking winds and waves [Fig. 15]. While the city does stand challenging against the elements, a closer look at its architecture reveals graceful curves that help redirect and deflect the winds. The designs of the city draw inspiration from numerous sources, including massive offshore oil rig structures and the retro curved science fiction cities of American pulp magazines of the 1950s. For the city's interior, the designers crafted a clean, ultramodern and antiseptic environment of glimmering white well suited to the alien race of genetic engineers that inhabits them. Fig. 15: The aero and hydro-dynamic forms of Tipoca City, Kamino. (Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, 2002) Tatooine architecture signifies a planet lacking in natural resources, settlers built their villages piece by piece over many years using there planet resources[Fig. 16]. Curved, earthen structures resemble adobe pueblos in New Mexico. In fact, much of what we see in Tatooine was filmed in Tunisia, on the northern shore of Africa. T atooine. Fig. 16: The architecture of Tatooine planet. (Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, 1999) 8 N ew York 2259:The Architecture of The Fifth Element (1997) Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997) manages to present a very rich multilayered world that extensively comments on the possibilities of future architectural developments within existing cities. The film offers a provocative vision of the future of Manhattan two hundred and fifty years from now [Fig. 17]. As a result of the planetary exportation of vast amounts of Earth’s water reserve in order to serve distant planets following the colonization of the Solar System, the level of the oceanic water-table has fallen dramatically. As a result, following an economic logic similar to that of Blade Runner’s retrofitting, real-estate developers excavated down, slicing the island into vertical canyons and instead of replacing structures constructed new additions to the existing ones not only on top but also below the old buildings. This changed the notion of a single street and ground plane for circulation, so hovering craft were envisioned to roam into stratified layers throughout the verticality. With the street layer stripped back, once-hidden infrastructures of subway shafts and city utilities are suddenly revealed giving the city a sometimes chaotic machine-like appearance [Fig. 18]. In The Fifth Element (1997) Zorg’s powerful capitalist status is also represented by architecture. The tower he inhabits [Fig. 19] represents a literal translation of being at the top of the hierarchy. The building is one of the tallest in the city but not the most prominent. In fact, the New York of 2259 seems to lack such a central vertical element. Fifth element vertical growth is indeed a distinct trait of 20th century New York, due to the physical constraint of the land (Manhattan is, in fact, an island) and the ever growing population of this city. In the year 2259, the viewer is told, the world has a population of over 200 billion and New York City has become the capital of the world. The city has, like in the past, been forced to grow taller, as a result, the metro transportation system is forced to be integrated vertically into the building [Fig. 20]. What is important about the Luc Besson’s future New York is that no matter how much it has changed, it still remains visibly recognizable as New York. Fig. 20: Due to the vast depth of the city, public transport trains travel up and down the vertical walls of the buildings. (The Fifth Element, 1997) Fig.17: New York in 2259; a bottomless urban canyon. (The Fifth Element, 1997) Fig. 18: As the street level has dropped down several hundred meters, all the services that were once buried are now fully exposed (sewers, metro lines, etc), and the old street level has become just a series of bridges for the use of pedestrians. (The Fifth Element, 1997) Fig. 19: Zorg’s tower reaches into the New York sky. (The Fifth Element,1997) 9 W ashington D.C., 2054: The Architecture of Minority Report (2002) Minority Report is probably the only film of recent years that attempts to portray not only an exciting narrative set against a futuristic backdrop, but also a credible future based on an intelligent and informed prediction of the present. Washington of 2054 has evolved into three distinct zones: the Washington Capitol area where the monuments still stand proud; the upscale “bedroom community” across the river that has developed vertically [Fig21]; and the decaying part of the city that has not kept up with the technological advances afforded by the rich. While government buildings are hostile, reflective, and metallic; the grass in the city is still green, and historic row houses still stand proud [Fig. 22] presenting the postmodernist possibility of harmony between the old and the new. The integration of infrastructure and cityscape presented so well by such films as Metropolis (1927) and The Fifth Element (1997) is here perfected. A transport network of magnetic levitation vehicles is seamlessly built into the facades of most of the new buildings [Fig. 23]. It seems that the buildings and the vehicles exist to complement each other. Inclining highways forms part of the façades dropped like waterfalls and merging with horizontal roads. The network of highways functions in all three dimensions [Fig. 21], as the road surface totally abandons its dependence on gravity. One must however question the feasibility of such vehicles when considering the rest of the still horizontal city, where the viewer is clearly shown that the old road network still exists. Fig. 21: Minority Report’s (2002) Washington D.C. in the year 2054: multi-storey residential towers interconnected by an intricate network of horizontal, inclined and vertical ‘roads’. Fig. 22: Historic row houses. (Minority Report, 2002) Fig. 23: The ultimate integration of buildings and infrastructure: roads climb up the façade of a residential block. (Minority Report, 2002) 10 L ibria, 2035: The Architecture of Equilibrium (2002) EQUILIBRIUM presents a vision of a world at peace, with a tremendous human cost. This is a world where war is a distant memory, yet where there is no music, no art, no poetry, where anyone who partakes in such banned activities is guilty of a "Sense Offense," a crime that carries a death sentence. It is a world where the age-old question "How do you feel?" can never be answered because all feelings have been shut out. Libria is a stark, black-and-white (color, after all, evokes feelings) metropolis [Fig. 24], which is run by a mysterious dictator named the Father who wields power through a group of Ninja-like "clerics" who enforce his vision of peace through the chemical control of all emotion. The city of Libria [Fig. 24] in Equilibrium (2002) presents a controlled state taken to its extremes. The emotion suppressing state’s agenda is clearly expressed through the city’s architecture. Buildings, like the people that inhabit them are faceless and devoid of any feeling. The fascist’s states media manipulative machine is inbuilt into the infrastructure of the city: giant billboards overtake whole build facades, and loud speakers that air a constant stream of propaganda are located at every corner. Visual effects supervisor Tim McGovern worked alongside Kurt Wimmer and Wolf Kroeger to formulate the look of the walled Librian metropolis. McGovern, who won an Oscar for "Total Recall," started with a theme of grandiosity. He explains: "The whole idea of fascist architecture is to make the individual feel small and insignificant so the government seems more powerful and I continued that design ethic in the visual effects. For example, Libria is surrounded by a seventy-five feet high wall [Fig. 25], the walls just keep going on and on and use vertical and horizontal lines in a Mondrian-type way. " Fig. 24: Libria: a fascist state where all citizens are rendered emotionless by the state. (Equilibrium, 2002) Fig. 25: Libria: Walls of the city. (Equilibrium, 2002) 11 Conclusion A n Alarm for Change While popular thought tends to conclude that the future holds a better place for man because man has always learnt from his past mistakes; science fiction film shows that this may not always be the case. The imagined future of science fiction film is a realm that is shaped by capitalism. A dystopic, rather than a utopian future is the prevailing theme. The imperfect future cities of the analyzed films are worlds which have been shaped at all scales by globalization; worlds which are dominated by large multinationals; worlds of chaotic and fragmented cities; worlds where the middleclass has been eliminated and the population neatly divided into haves and have-nots; worlds where the wealthy live in private and defensible spaces while the poor are left to fend for themselves in the ungoverned, anarchic, lawless streets. Comparing today’s world to the dystopic visions of these science fiction films reveals that our society is closer to these images than we might be comfortable with. The classes are now more divided than ever in terms of wealth, while the separation remains justified by the elite’s claim that they have rightfully earned their status and that the workers could achieve it too some day. While these films and their worlds are fictional, they seem to point to an extreme that mankind is slowly but surely working towards. Whether we like it or not, and more importantly, whether we realise it or not, our everyday lives are strongly dictated by work and consumption. It is indeed a depressive thought that we are still working at least eight hours a day, despite the remarkable technological advances of the last three decades within the fields of robotics and computers. The daily toil of the workers seen in Metropolis (1927) is even more of a reality for the many millions of people living in Asia, Africa and South America. Through their varied plots and architectural depictions of the city, the films tell us that if mankind does not clean up and straighten out its act, then humanity as we know it is doomed forever. 12 Therefore, it seems that the world is facing two opposing futures: the positive future of our publicly shared hopes and dreams, and the darker future of decay and ultimate extinction which occasionally decorates our private subconsciousness. The question however remains: in order to avoid the dark futures of Metropolis (1927) and Blade Runner (1982), using these films as a guide, what kind of changes would really need to be put in place? That, I believe, is a question best asked and answered in another paper. 13 Film Synopses Directed by: Fritz Lang Writing credits: Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou Art Direction by: Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut & Karl Vollbrecht Hailed as the first epic science fiction film, Metropolis is essentially a story about class conflict. It is this future humans are divided into two groups: the thinkers, who make plans (but don't know how anything works), and the workers, who achieve goals (but don't have the vision). Completely separate, neither group is complete, but together they make a whole. One day Freder, one of the “thinkers” and the son of the city’s ruler, dares to visit the underground where the workers toil, and is astonished by what he sees. He soon falls in love with Maria, a woman from the lower world. Not only is Maria a member of the working class, but she is also its most vocal agitator. To silence her, Freder’s father, Frederson, kidnaps Maria. He then commissions a mad scientist to construct a robot in her likeness, which he can use as a tool to control the working class. This false Maria incites the workers to riot, and chaos threatens their underground world until the real Maria escapes and manages to save the day. The film ends with a truce, as Frederson promises to be nicer to his workers in the future. At its core, Metropolis is a romance and a modern myth (with biblical associations) Metropolis (1927) Directed by: Ridley Scott Writing credits: Hampton Fancher & David Webb Peoples, Philip K. Dick (novel) Production Design by: Lawrence G. Paull & Peter J. Hampton Los Angeles, 2019: a special unit of the LAPD, the Blade Runners prowl the steel and micro-chip jungle of the 21st century for assumed humanoids known as 'replicants'. These human clones, which were originally designed to be used in the ‘off-world’ colonies outside Earth, have been declared illegal on Earth after a bloody mutiny on one of the colonies, and are to be terminated (‘retired’) upon Blade Runner (1982) 14 detection. Man's obsession with creating a being equal to himself has back-fired. Rick Deckard is a retired Blade Runner who is forced to re-enter the force when five replicants escape from an off-world colony and come to Earth in the hope of extending their pre-programmed four year life spans. Deckard falls in love with one of the Replicants he is supposed to kill, and eventually is forced to question not only the morality of his mission, but also his own humanity. Blade Runner is primarily a retelling of a classic detective story and Ridley Scott’s conception of Deckard is that of the private eye. Directed by: Luc Besson Writing credits: Luc Besson Production Design by: Dan Weil Every 5000 years life on Earth is threatened with total destruction. Two hundred and fifty years in the future, Evil returns once more in the form of a dark planet that is slowly approaching Earth. Four primordial elements (earth, fire, water and air) in combination with a fifth one represent the only weapon against Evil. The Fifth Element is a perfect being, who, Korben Dallas, an ex-special-agent, turned New York taxi-driver has to find and protect. Evil is being assisted by Mr. Zorg, a capitalist leader who seeks to profit from the chaos that Evil and its alien mercenaries will bring. This product of the European Pop culture undermines the narrative formula of typical science fiction Hollywood blockbusters with a subtle satire that borders on parody. The Fifth Element (1997) Directed by: Kurt Wimmer Writing credits: Kurt Wimmer Production Design by: Wolf Kroeger In a futuristic world a strict fascist regime, in an attempt to end wars and maintain peace by suppressing emotions, has outlawed all things that trigger any emotional responses Books, art and music are strictly forbidden and feeling is a crime punishable by death. The guardians of the order, a special breed of police assigned to eliminate all transgressors, are an elite fighting force of ‘Grammaton Clerics’ who specialize in the martial arts system and code of the ‘Gun Kata’. Cleric John Preston is one of the top ranking Clerics. When he misses a dose of ‘Prozium’, a mind-altering drug that Equilibrium (2002) 15 hinders emotion, and suddenly starts ‘feeling’, Preston, who has been trained to enforce the strict laws of the new regime, suddenly becomes the only person capable of overthrowing it. Directed by: Steven Spielberg Writing credits: Scott Frank, Philip K. Dick (short story) Production Design by: Alex McDowell In the future, criminals can be caught before they actually commit their crimes. Technological know-how has found a way of tapping into the nightmares of three 'precogs', savants born with the terrifying ability to dream future murders, and to project them for the analysis of a special Crime Prevention Squad. It is the responsibility of officers, such as John Anderton, to identify the perpetrators and find them before the crime is committed. A firm believer in the questionable system, Anderson is suddenly accused of one such crime when the precogs predict that he will kill a man he never knew in less than 36 hours. As Anderson sets out to prove his innocence, his trust in the system diminishing rapidly. With his own colleagues after him, he follows a very small trace that might hold the key to his innocence: a strange unsolved yet predicted murder and a socalled "minority report", a documentation of one of the rare events in which a precog sees something different than the other two. This is a story which dramatizes issues of privacy and the state, free will and determinism. Minority Report (2002) 16 References BARBER, S., 2002. Book Review – Projected Cities: Cinema and Urban Space. Los Angeles, Film International. Available at: http://www.filmint.nu/netonly/eng/bookreviewprojectedcities.htm BOAKE, T.M., 2003. Blade Runner (1982) – Discussion Questions [online]. Waterloo: School of Architecture University of Waterloo. Available at: http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/architecture/faculty_projects/terri/b aderunner_question s.html BOAKE, T.M., 2003. Metropolis (1926) – Discussion Questions [online]. Waterloo: School of Architecture University of Waterloo. Available at: http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/architecture/faculty_projects/terri/m etropolis_questions.html BOYKO, E., 2003. Metropolis(1927) – A Review [online]. Waterloo: School of Architecture University of Waterloo. Available at: ttp://www.geocities.com/metropolis_film CARLIN, P., 1997. Cinema and architecture: Melies, Malletstevens, multimedia [online]. London: British Film Institute. Available at: www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/shorts/reviews/rev1298/brp cdec.html CAVAGNA, C., 2000. Blade Runner: Analysis [online]. (s.l.): AboutFilm. Available at: http://www.aboutfilm.com/movies/b/bladerunner.htm GROST, M.E., 1996. The Films of Fritz Lang [online]. Michigan, AOL. Available at: http://members.aol.com/MG4273/lang.htm KISSELL, G., 1999. Exclusive Interview Syd Mead [online]. California: BladeZone. Available at: http://www.bladezone.com/contents/film/interviews/sydmead/ interview.html LEE, B., 2002. Fifth Element [online]. Waterloo: School of Architecture University of Waterloo. 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