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00:01Space, the final frontier.
00:05Science fiction is basically saying there are no limits.
00:11Space is anything we want it to be.
00:13Yes!
00:14The scale of the universe is unbelievably stunning.
00:17We are asking those big questions like,
00:20where are we going?
00:22And what does it say about us as humans?
00:25I think it answers something elemental in human beings,
00:28which is we love danger.
00:31Space travel sounds rather perilous.
00:33They will never get me onto one of those dreadful starships.
00:37Science fiction inspired the rocketeers who brought us to the moon.
00:41And that's just the beginning.
00:44Science fiction holds out hope for even more incredible discoveries.
00:49I think we're curious in our bones about going into the galaxy.
00:54What has the galaxy ever done for you?
00:56Why would you want to save it?
00:58Because I'm one of the idiots who lives in it.
01:00Humanity is hardwired to explore and to exploit.
01:05We are citizens of the universe.
01:08We belong there too.
01:10I hate space.
01:15I hate space.
01:16I hate space.
01:17I hate space.
01:18I hate space.
01:20I hate space.
01:36I hate space.
01:41I've been thinking about this idea that space is anything we want it to be.
01:55It's the great unknown, and we can project our fantasies and our ideas, our sociology,
02:00and, you know, we can use it just as an excuse to get to a completely different culture,
02:04or we can take it at face value as a problem we need to solve.
02:08Yeah, and I sort of think about space science fiction as, you know, on the one hand,
02:13you've got the hard tech stuff like 2001, and then at the other end of the spectrum,
02:18it's more space as a kind of complete unfettering of the imagination.
02:24You've got two things. No matter how you do it, whether it's 2001 or Star Wars, they're adventures.
02:32The big boogeyman is the unknown.
02:36Right. Because the thing about humans, it's always been with us, is we have an imagination.
02:41The night sky has always been the great mystery.
02:44One, it's terrifying, because you walk out in it and you get eaten.
02:48And the other part is that there's things up there.
02:52I mean, the stars, the planets, and the things have to mean something.
02:56So this is a primal attraction, is what you're saying.
02:58And man has curiosity. Curiosity and imagination bring you things like stories.
03:04So you're saying it's a mystical connection.
03:06There's a mystical connection with the sky and with stars and all things, so they relate directly to us.
03:12Isn't that what we try to do with our movies, to capture a little bit of that awe and bring it into a movie theater
03:17and feel what it might be like to go out there?
03:25Houston, I have a bad feeling about this mission.
03:29What Alfonso Cuaron does with the camera at the very beginning of Gravity
03:32is you have this extended single-camera shot
03:35where you watch both George Clooney and Sandra Bullock float around space
03:41and you have these images of how small a human can be in front of the entire planet.
03:48And then the camera will spin around and you'll see how small a human is in front of the vastness of the universe.
03:54Can't beat the view.
03:57That movie really brought people to space.
04:00It showed them not only what the view looked like, but also what it felt like to have the view.
04:09And that was so important to me, to be able to share.
04:13Because the view is unimaginable.
04:16It was so clean and pristine.
04:19It almost hurt your eyes because the edges are so sharp and it's giant.
04:25So what do you like about being up here?
04:28The silence.
04:30When I was living up on the space station, my little brother met Sandra Bullock's brother-in-law.
04:39He said, well, you know, my sister-in-law is making this movie.
04:41Maybe your sister would talk to her.
04:43And my little brother said, she's been up there for a couple months with five guys.
04:48And I think she'd love to talk to Sandra Bullock.
04:52How you feeling?
04:54Like a chihuahua that's being tumbled right.
04:56Some of the things that she wanted to know were, what's it like for me when I wake up in the morning?
05:01What's a hard thing?
05:02What's an easy thing?
05:03So that she understands how she can make space look real.
05:12Sandra, I thought, looked purposeful and not like a newbie.
05:16Space travel has been a science fiction theme for a long, long, long time.
05:22It is really fantastic the lengths that the early science fiction writers went to to get a spacecraft from the earth even to the moon.
05:30George Melies was originally a stage magician who got enamored with the brand new art form of cinematography.
05:39And not only did he invent the science fiction movie, he essentially invented movie special effects.
05:44And it was really based on the two giants of science fiction at the time, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.
05:52Jules Verne provided the plot and story for the first half of the movie with his From the Earth to the Moon.
05:58The second half was based on H.G. Wells' first Men in the Moon.
06:05Early depictions of space travel show characters just moving about freely, opening up the door and walking out into space with no trouble.
06:17But within a couple decades, things change pretty quickly in cinematic depictions of outer space and space travel.
06:24So as early as the 1920s, you have films like Woman in the Moon by Fritz Lang, where characters are strapped into their seats.
06:33And as the ship is taking off, they can feel the pressure of the G-force on their chest, struggling to breathe as they lift off.
06:39And then you've got writers that worked for John W. Campbell Jr. when he began editing astounding science fiction, who were held to a standard of scientific verisimilitude.
06:49And that's when you start getting realistic, believable space adventures.
06:54No time for count-offs. Stand by.
06:56Fire!
06:56Fire!
07:00Tell us about this trip to the Moon. Do you think this is possible?
07:04Oh, yes, yes, it's quite possible.
07:06We're here, aren't we?
07:07Not only are we here, but it can be done. It can be done as soon as anyone is willing to put the bill to do it.
07:15Robert Heinlein was the guru of hard science fiction,
07:18but I think before that and beyond that,
07:20he was the guru of logical science fiction.
07:23Heinlein asked the question,
07:24which is the classic hard science fiction question,
07:27how do you do it? How do you solve that problem?
07:29Even today, that's a key theme in science fiction.
07:32The debris chain reaction is out of control.
07:34We're rapidly exploding.
07:36Multiple satellites are down, and they're going forward.
07:39The Cuarons wanted to recreate the good, the bad, and the ugly of space travel.
07:44Look, we need to get the hell out of here.
07:45Need some help there, man?
07:46No, don't wait for us.
07:47One of the things I discussed with the Cuarons was the Kessler syndrome
07:51and the notion that a destroyed satellite can lead to debris,
07:54which destroys more satellites and more debris.
07:57Space debris is a real concern for any spacecraft
08:00that has to travel through low-Earth orbit today.
08:05At the speeds debris can travel, a small object like a bolt
08:08can hit you with the kinetic energy of a howitzer round.
08:14The film Gravity is visually compelling
08:17because it really sets up the unforgiving dynamic.
08:22How just the smallest step in the wrong direction
08:25is going to send the entire series of events tumbling.
08:30And it only takes that much.
08:33No!
08:33The only really big mistake they made in the movie
08:36is that if you were up on a space station,
08:39the last thing you'd do is let George Clooney go.
08:42There's a lot of secrets in the universe.
08:48We don't know anything.
08:49That's the one thing I do know for sure.
08:50But we've got to get out of our solar system.
08:54We've got to get to another solar system.
08:56Yeah, but Einstein says you can't travel fast
08:58in the speed of light.
08:59Science fiction is basically saying there are no limits.
09:04That's right.
09:05Think outside the box.
09:06No matter what somebody tells you,
09:07no matter what you've learned,
09:08throw it all out of the way and say,
09:10I can do anything I want to do.
09:11You're in a completely different universe.
09:13Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dust and crops, boy.
09:16We sometimes forget that space is cosmologically big.
09:20Traveling to the rest of the universe
09:22would take tens, thousands of years with current technology.
09:25The reason we measure them in light years
09:27is because it takes that long
09:28for the speed of light to travel that distance.
09:33Faster than light travel is the holy grail of space travel.
09:36And right now, it's the bolognium.
09:39Bolognium is that stuff you make up
09:42to make the story work.
09:43And it's different from hand wavium,
09:45which is how you distract the reader or the viewer.
09:49And it's not unobtainium.
09:51But bolognium is that stuff.
09:54If we had the right bolognium,
09:56we could make faster than light travel work.
09:58So here is a perfect limitation for an artist.
10:02You can't go faster than light speed.
10:03How are we going to get around it to explore the universe?
10:07Science fiction writers said,
10:08OK, well, we have to create a speed faster than light speed.
10:12Everybody ready to say goodbye to our solar system?
10:15Execute, Joe.
10:17I'm not sure what's wrong here.
10:20Is the parking brake on?
10:22Compress it.
10:23What a rush.
10:37And with that rush,
10:38science fiction launches an age of exploration.
10:41We're down to 0.3896 of light speed.
10:44Forbidden Planet is one of those rare,
10:46big-budget science fiction movies
10:48from a time when most science fiction movies look pretty cheesy.
10:50It's very easy to see many of the things
10:54that later science fiction,
10:56specifically Star Trek,
10:57if not directly took from,
10:58was certainly inspired by.
11:00The ship on Forbidden Planet,
11:02it almost looks like the saucer section of the Enterprise
11:05without the rest of it.
11:06These discs they stand on,
11:08it looks just like the transporter.
11:10It definitely looks like
11:11the designers of Star Trek looked at this and said,
11:14boy, this is a beautiful-looking movie.
11:17Forbidden Planet is definitely less diverse,
11:19which makes Star Trek special.
11:22Space, the final frontier.
11:25The importance of Star Trek is that
11:27it brought space into the living rooms of Americans
11:30and people really across the globe.
11:32It made space accessible.
11:33Star Trek was a classic humanistic vision
11:39of the kind of utopian future
11:41that you live and let live.
11:43These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
11:46Gene Roddenberry said he wanted to do
11:49an all-inclusive series in space
11:51with all the ideas that could more easily be done
11:55in science fiction in the 60s
11:57than in realistic fiction.
11:58To boldly go where no man has gone before.
12:01So you could deal with controversial issues,
12:04but they weren't controversial
12:05because they're distanced.
12:07They're not us.
12:07It's not our own society.
12:09We did want to get into racial issues,
12:12sexist issues that were going on at the time.
12:14And I think it opened a door into an alien world
12:18that people could say, oh, yeah, I get that.
12:21It offered lots of story opportunities
12:22to tell stories about things going on right here on Earth.
12:27This is no game, Captain.
12:29Half a million people have just been killed.
12:32There's an episode called A Taste of Armageddon
12:35about these two planets that have,
12:38that are conducting a virtual war.
12:40Computers, Captain.
12:41They fight their war with computers, totally.
12:44Computers don't kill a half a million people.
12:47Deaths have been registered.
12:49Of course, they have 24 hours to report.
12:51To report?
12:52To our disintegration machines.
12:54At the very end of it, Kirk says,
12:55We're human beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands.
13:02But we can stop it.
13:04We can admit that we're killers, but we're not going to kill today.
13:08So all of these different stories, they all had a social message buried in them.
13:13Gene knew what he was doing.
13:14The writers knew what they were doing.
13:16It's up to you.
13:17Star Trek was a way of saying, look, we can do better.
13:21Things the way they are, it's not necessarily the way they have to be.
13:24What about the cast of the show?
13:26I'm told that NBC only wanted white males on the bridge.
13:29No women, no blacks.
13:31When I brought in a mixed racial crew,
13:33both the network and Desilu Studios, which had it at that time,
13:37came in saying, what are you doing?
13:39You're going to ruin us.
13:41I can tell you what happened to me the first time I saw Star Trek.
13:45Really, before Star Trek, there were no people of color in the future.
13:50We didn't really exist at all anywhere.
13:52And Gene Roddenberry created this group where this beautiful black woman,
13:59not a mammy, was head of communications.
14:02Captain, I'm picking up a subspace distress call.
14:05Priority channel.
14:06It's from space station K7.
14:08So to see her in that position, for me, was like extraordinary.
14:12And it's why I went to Gene to do Star Trek Next Generation.
14:18It was because of what Michelle Nichols showed me.
14:22Which was that I had a future in the world.
14:26What about you?
14:26You speak Romulan, cadet?
14:28Uhura.
14:29All three dialects, sir.
14:31The day that I met Michelle Nichols, I was very nervous
14:34because that was the first time for me to step in someone else's shoes.
14:39And she suspended any kind of judgment.
14:41If anything, she handed me that torch and she said, run with it.
14:45The jamming signal's gone.
14:46Transportability are re-established.
14:48The main attribute that Star Trek gives people is hope.
14:56May we together become greater than the sum of both of us.
14:59What I took from the original series was the love humanity is able to have.
15:05Even if it's set in a time that they may never recognize, they may never meet.
15:09To strive for that is tangible.
15:13Live long and prosper, Spock.
15:15Live long and prosper.
15:16The cultural importance of the Star Trek franchise can't be underestimated.
15:22We've had to date seven different series, 13 films,
15:25and hundreds of novelizations, comic books, board games, video games, costumes.
15:33Fans love Star Trek because it does suggest that there would be opportunities
15:37for us to meet each other in space and to learn from each other.
15:40The most powerful message to me of Star Trek was just the idea
15:44that by stepping out into the universe, we put our old problems behind us
15:49and we become better people through cooperation and, you know,
15:52believing in a certain set of values.
15:55It's a very romantic notion.
15:57It's a very idealistic notion.
15:58But that's a universe I want to go live in.
16:00I want to go get on a starship.
16:01I want to be part of the Federation.
16:032001, as far as I'm concerned, is the best science fiction film ever made.
16:11It is the quintessential what space travel is.
16:15Yeah.
16:15And it looks great.
16:16You know, it's just, it's impeccable the way they put it together.
16:20The discovery coming overhead endlessly is basically the precursor of the opening shot of Star Wars.
16:28It stunned everybody, myself included.
16:30Probably 2001 had more of an influence on me than I realized.
16:35But at the same time, I was completely stoked by that movie.
16:38It's brilliant.
16:41I think 2001 opened up films to be a much broader and interesting canvas
16:49in terms of what space travel might be like than anything had been shown before.
16:54Everything was believable, even though it would have our jaws on our laps, amazement.
17:01But everything always had a reality to it.
17:06That's absolutely the most meticulously accurate science fiction movie.
17:11Between Arthur C. Clarke, the hard science fiction writer,
17:14and Stanley Kubrick, the visionary filmmaker, who thought, this image is all you need.
17:19Let the audience figure it out.
17:21In that sense, everything was a surprise and a visual entree of unbelievable significance.
17:30But it's really not the filmmaking part of it.
17:34It's the let's go into outer space part of it.
17:36That too.
17:36And we have the reality now to deal with it, which is why Mars is becoming more of a thing.
17:41But we have to get people to say, this is a fun adventure.
17:44I guess I was probably 11 years old when I first saw Star Wars.
17:56It was the most magnificent experience I had ever had in my life.
18:03My mind was, you know, you're searching for those answers and the world and you're hungry.
18:09And I looked at Star Wars and I knew I wanted to live in that world.
18:15I've been chasing Star Wars for my entire career.
18:21Star Wars is a landmark film in the history of science fiction stories about space
18:26because it opened up the excitement and the adventure of traveling from planet to planet
18:30and made us all want to go there with the heroes.
18:33Take five, five, nine, take two.
18:36Action.
18:36We built the cameras, we built the optical printers, we built the miniatures all under one roof,
18:42which was kind of unusual.
18:45We could fabricate metal, we could do machining, did chemistry for the explosions.
18:52There was a whole litany of things that were new.
18:56The first shot in the movie was sort of the touchstone for whether it was going to work or not.
19:02It had a miniature of the Star Destroyer, which was three feet long.
19:10When we saw it, everybody went, wow, it's great.
19:14That is a shot of pure awe, where suddenly, as a viewer, you were just knocked out by the potential of space and where this movie could go.
19:24This was revolutionary, really felt like you were standing there, and the ship was coming overhead.
19:31It was so transformative.
19:35Talk about what your influences were that fed into the creation of Star Wars.
19:41As much as Star Wars seemed to just leap from your forehead, fully formed, it had roots that anybody in the science fiction world knows.
19:49Nothing in this world pops into your head fully formed.
19:52It's an accumulation of all the things you've seen, and then when you go to regurgitate it into your own thing, you take all the best parts.
20:01The roll-up, that was taken from Flash Gordon.
20:04The angle that it rolls up the screen, the way the text was arranged, even the number of ellipses.
20:11And he was very much influenced by the movies of Akira Kurosawa.
20:14So in terms of cowboy films, Lucas was very influenced by John Ford's The Searchers, which contains a scene that very much mirrors the scene where Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru are murdered.
20:44That definitely helped fuel this notion that Star Wars is a space western.
21:01One of the things that was really critical in Star Wars was, again, this sense of adrenaline and the idea of trajectory into space.
21:10Almost there.
21:11And that brought some of that visceral quality back to it, sort of the idea of having that rush.
21:18I can't shake it!
21:21And, you know, it's interesting.
21:23The closer you get to something at speed, the faster it feels.
21:26It's just like Beggar's Canyon back home.
21:29So that was really the idea behind the trench for the Death Star.
21:33Let's get people down into a space that's traveling at an extreme speed and give you the excitement that you get when you go for real.
21:43I mean, there's so many great shots in Star Wars, but I think if there's one that makes my heart ache a bit, it's Luke seeing the two suns set.
21:54It just has this very somewhere over the rainbow kind of wistful vibe to it.
21:58That is a shot that I can relate to as a teenager in Texas.
22:03That is a shot that I think any kid can relate to.
22:05This idea of what is next for me and how do I go.
22:10There's this yearning that makes this space story feel like something that's happening to us.
22:15One of the reasons why I made Star Wars is it's made for 12-year-olds.
22:22It appeals to everybody, but it was still made for 12-year-olds.
22:24We were all 12 once.
22:25And I tell people, don't underestimate 12-year-olds.
22:28They're smarter than the rest of us.
22:29Right.
22:29They get stuff much faster than you do.
22:31Yeah.
22:32And the whole point was to get them to allow them to think outside the box.
22:36The whole thing is subjective and dreamlike.
22:38Who said Wookiees can't fly?
22:40Well, I said they can fly.
22:41Yeah.
22:41I said, I'm not going to obey the rules.
22:45If you can imagine it, you can do it.
22:48But if you can't imagine it, you can't do it.
22:50Yeah.
22:50Because it's the prison of your own mind.
22:52It's that prison of your own mind that allows you to do it.
22:55And you can enjoy that and come up with really crazy stuff.
22:58Yeah.
22:59Just look at Chewbacca.
23:00Well, I can guarantee there's no Wookiees in space.
23:02How do you know?
23:06You single-handedly revolutionized science fiction and pop culture
23:10with Star Wars in 1977.
23:13Because it had been three decades of downer stuff.
23:17Dystopian stuff, apocalyptic stuff.
23:20And science fiction was making less and less and less money every year.
23:23And then all of a sudden you came along with another vision.
23:26One of it.
23:27Wonder and hope and empowerment.
23:30And boom.
23:31Star Wars is a space opera.
23:33It's not science fiction.
23:35And it's because it's really just, you know, one of those soap operas holding in space.
23:41Yeah, but it's more than that.
23:43And you know it is.
23:44It's a neo-myth.
23:46It fulfills the role that myth played in society.
23:50It's mythology.
23:51But you took it to a new level.
23:53No film that I can think of had the used future idea.
23:57The future was always shiny.
23:59It was always perfect.
24:00It always had just been unwrapped on Christmas morning because it was this kind of optimistic ideal.
24:05And you said, no, the future has to have been lived in for thousands of years.
24:09So the sand crawler's all rusted and things are kind of broken and it looked like it had been lived in.
24:16So where did that idea come from?
24:17Because there was no precursor to that.
24:19I just felt that it's got to look like it's the real place.
24:23The transition from the science fiction space travel of the 60s to the 70s,
24:28it probably reflects a wider shift in culture at the time.
24:32The sort of general cynicism of the 70s has kind of infected this vision of the future.
24:38And it's like, okay, if we get into outer space,
24:40probably giant corporations are still going to be running everything.
24:43And that's when you get to movies like Alien.
24:48Where you have a spacecraft that looks like it's been through the mill.
24:53Things are leaking.
24:55Steam's sprouting out of broken pipes.
24:57It's grimy.
24:59And the place is a mess.
25:00Look, I'm not going to do any more work if we get this straightened out.
25:05Brett, you're guaranteed by law to get a share.
25:10And it's, I think, no accident that in a lot of these films,
25:14it's the military-industrial complex that are the real monster in space.
25:19This could cause trouble for us on all the other mining operations.
25:22That could put my people out of business.
25:24Don't worry.
25:26He's a dead man.
25:27From the moment that humans set off to lands that they've never been to before,
25:33immediately what follows that is you see all of the normal human problems that we have in societies transposed to other worlds.
25:40Which means you're going to have labor problems.
25:43You're going to have hazardous environments for workers.
25:47You're going to have all kinds of things that reflect what might be the reality of outer space exploration.
25:52At some point, corporations are going to have to get involved.
25:56At some point, maybe the government will have to take over and lead to something like a militarized society, like starship troopers.
26:03We break net now and take you live to Klendathil, where the invasion has begun.
26:08It's an ugly planet!
26:10A boat planet!
26:15When Paul Verhoeven and I were talking one day, what movies would we like to make?
26:19He said, well, I've always wanted to do a movie about, like, what it was like to be, you know, 15 years old in Nazi Germany in 1935,
26:26when nobody knew it was bad yet.
26:29It's just a pretty interesting idea.
26:30It came to me, the idea, based on being a young boy, when I was occupied by the Germans, of course, in Holland,
26:38which was fascist, clearly, or Nazis, whatever you want to call it.
26:42I said, I remember saying to him, well, they won't let us do that.
26:44But then I thought, oh, starship troopers, we can do that.
26:49Based on the book by Robert Heinlein, really is a kind of a political tract,
26:56a fairly conservative political tract, where he said if people who had been in the military ran the world, it would be fair and right.
27:04He really felt that the kind of mentality that was encouraged in the U.S. Army was extremely important for making boys into men.
27:16Starship Troopers is an important science fiction movie because it's one of the few movies that warns us
27:23that humans may bring the worst of themselves into space rather than the best of themselves.
27:28We really tried to bring in a level of criticism about what these people are doing,
27:39especially in the newsreels, continuously telling to the audience,
27:45you like these people, these are your heroes and heroines.
27:49By the way, they're probably fascists.
27:52And what's fascinating about these patriotic newsreels,
27:56they are very shot for shot similar to Triumph of the Will.
27:59The movie I wanted to do was a movie about war and propaganda
28:16and why we go to war and what happens to us when we do.
28:22But I wanted to tell it, you know, almost like a 1950s B-movie.
28:26Starship Troopers is Troy Donoghue and Sandra Dee go to outer space,
28:32fight giant bugs and become Nazis, was my kind of log line.
28:36Kill them! Kill them all!
28:39The story of humankind is exploration is followed by colonialization and exploitation.
28:46So we've always done this.
28:48He figured that he could get an alien back through quarantine
28:51if one of us was impregnated.
28:55I don't know which species is worse.
28:58You don't see them f***ing each other over for a damn percentage.
29:01And I think what you see in science fiction is
29:03as we reach out into the universe,
29:05we take all of our baggage with us.
29:08My parents thought that television, and this is back in the early 50s,
29:16was the worst influence.
29:18So they prevented me from watching television.
29:20I could only watch, like, Jackie Gleason, The Honeymooners.
29:23Yeah, right.
29:24And so I started to imagine my own shows.
29:27If I couldn't watch television,
29:28I would just dream up something for myself to enjoy.
29:30And that's what kids do when they're exercising their natural ability
29:35to create worlds that don't exist.
29:37I mean, I remember when I saw Mysterious Island in the third grade,
29:41I raced home and started doing my own version of Mysterious Island.
29:44Yeah.
29:45So I think that's the creative impulse.
29:47You take it in.
29:47I don't want to copy it in a slavish fan way.
29:50I want to create my own version.
29:51It always had to do with a pencil and a piece of paper
29:54and, of course, later the 8mm movie camera.
29:57But you were processing the world back out
29:59in the form of something visual.
30:02Exactly.
30:03That's a blast because, you know, you do the same thing.
30:05When I sit down to storyboard,
30:07I come up with my best ideas in the process of making my sketches.
30:10I mean, ideas that weren't even in the script
30:12and weren't even in my imagination
30:13will come out as I'm actually drawing.
30:21The science fiction artists are often overlooked
30:26in the history of science fiction.
30:32But artists have influenced authors in their own right
30:35because, you know, they're bringing their ideas
30:38and characters to life visually.
30:43But if you think back to everything you probably visualize
30:46about science fiction,
30:48you're probably going back to what a science fiction artist has done.
30:51It's a beautiful story.
30:53Chesley Bonestell was considered the father of space art
30:56or astronomic art.
30:58He started producing in the 1940s
31:00these paintings that were extraordinarily realistic.
31:05You'll find even today, astronomers, astronauts,
31:10astrophysicists, engineers,
31:11who will say that, you know,
31:12they got into doing what they're doing
31:14because as kids, they were inspired by Chesley Bonestell.
31:17The greater advantage of science fiction
31:22is that you can draw anything on this vast canvas of space.
31:27It's all open, you know,
31:28for you to throw your imagination in.
31:31With world building,
31:32you are creating a society from scratch,
31:35a planet from scratch,
31:36a people from scratch.
31:38They may not look like people like you and me,
31:40but they are people.
31:41Every plant that you see
31:47in that remarkable forest on Pandora,
31:49even if you see it for half a second,
31:52has an English name,
31:55a Latin name,
31:56a Navi name,
31:57and probably a two-page description
31:59on its ecology,
32:01on how it reproduces,
32:02on how it's used by the Navi.
32:04So if you're going to go into that much detail,
32:06then you're not going to skimp on the language.
32:08You've got to make sure
32:12that everything really holds together.
32:18The language I wrote it,
32:19it's like 400 words,
32:22and I make a little dictionary,
32:23and that was interesting
32:24because the only two person
32:26who can speak the language at the time
32:27was Mila and me.
32:29We were kind of fluent
32:30after a couple of weeks.
32:33What is your name?
32:38That's her name.
32:42I think there's like
32:43a first, middle, and last
32:45somewhere in there.
32:46Don't ask me which.
32:49Working with Luc Besson,
32:50who wrote and directed
32:51Fifth Element,
32:53it changed my life.
32:54It just seemed so realistic to me,
32:57which I was really impressed by.
32:58It's the white page
33:00that you can write everything.
33:01You can make everything beautiful again
33:04in space.
33:05I like the fantasy of it,
33:07and I just take a subject
33:09like the law,
33:11the police,
33:13the food.
33:13Good fortune for you!
33:15And then I start writing,
33:17you know,
33:1810, 15 pages on each,
33:20and then you give that
33:21to the actors,
33:22and it gives some life
33:23and polish on the story,
33:25even if you never talk about it.
33:28Science fiction is probably
33:29the best way to open your mind
33:31about everything,
33:32and sci-fi is just an oil,
33:37so the doors open easier.
33:39It doesn't like,
33:40so hard to push.
33:43Space is the biggest canvas
33:45to write whatever you want
33:47and to push all the limits,
33:48because by definition,
33:50future doesn't have a limit.
33:52Or if there is one,
33:54we don't know it.
33:55When I was eight or nine years old,
34:01I was obsessed
34:02with creating different planets,
34:05creating these worlds
34:06and these universes
34:07and building them up
34:09from the ground
34:09even at that young age.
34:11And I wrote up the visuals
34:12of Guardians of the Galaxy,
34:15hundreds of pages
34:16of documents
34:16with the different cultures
34:18and what they do
34:19and how do they think.
34:20where you're creating
34:24a world in outer space
34:26based on real rules
34:27that is still filled
34:29with imagination and fantasy.
34:32Oh, yeah.
34:36Yes!
34:38When you're dealing
34:39with a raccoon in a tree,
34:40you are in some ways
34:41dealing with space fantasy,
34:42but within that,
34:44let's say there is
34:46a talking raccoon.
34:47What would it be
34:49and how would it be?
34:50And I came up with
34:51Racket Raccoon
34:52as a result of experiments
34:54on his body
34:55to turn him
34:56into something
34:57that's designed to kill.
34:59Ain't no thing like me
35:00except me.
35:02I'm Groot.
35:04Yeah, you said that.
35:05Groot's the most popular character
35:07from Guardians of the Galaxy.
35:09He's probably
35:09the soul of the movie.
35:11I mean, I remember
35:12like it was yesterday,
35:13we were getting ready
35:14to shoot this scene
35:15where Groot grows
35:16into sort of like this nest
35:18and protects us
35:19from this impact
35:20that was just going
35:22to completely kill us.
35:24That day when we're shooting
35:26that scene
35:27that we couldn't stop crying.
35:30This character
35:31that doesn't even exist,
35:33but risking his life
35:35for mine
35:36was very moving.
35:38Why are you doing this?
35:40It's very much
35:40of a Christ story
35:42of this character
35:43who gives his life
35:45and is born again.
35:46We are Groot.
35:51We are Groot
35:52is the line of dialogue
35:54that every single other thing
35:56in the movie
35:56is hanging on.
35:58It's about seeing
35:59a raccoon
36:00and a human being
36:01and a green assassin
36:02and a big oaf,
36:04and they find a family
36:05with each other
36:06for the first time.
36:07An outer space family.
36:08That's what makes it
36:09science fiction,
36:10is that it's an
36:10outer space family.
36:14Today it is you
36:15who will learn
36:16the power of Mars.
36:17Tomorrow it will be
36:18the whole world.
36:20We're dreaming.
36:22Is it about Mars?
36:23The angry red planets.
36:25We're heading
36:25straight for Mars.
36:27Woo!
36:27Mars is burning up.
36:29Good God.
36:30I'm on Mars.
36:3150 years ago,
36:35space is an extraordinarily
36:37hostile environment.
36:38And then we go through
36:39the trajectory of science fiction,
36:40which includes exploring
36:41the rest of the universe.
36:43But the solar system
36:44is now very much
36:45within our reach.
36:46The closest Mars ever gets
36:47to us is 36 million miles,
36:49which doesn't seem so huge
36:51when you think about light years.
36:53It's a tiny distance
36:54by comparison.
36:56Stories like The Martian
36:58make us believe
37:00that we can and will
37:01do this in our own lifetime.
37:03I've got to figure out
37:04a way to grow
37:06three years' worth
37:07of food here
37:08on a planet
37:10where nothing grows.
37:12In The Martian,
37:12what you see is
37:13a smart person
37:14actually acting smart,
37:17using his brain
37:18to solve problems
37:19instead of a lightsaber
37:20or a ray gun.
37:21They say that once
37:22you grow crops somewhere,
37:24you've officially
37:25colonized it.
37:26So,
37:28technically,
37:28I colonized Mars.
37:32One of the other
37:33great things
37:33that Andy Weir's
37:34The Martian does
37:35is make the experience
37:37seem like
37:38an everyday experience,
37:40almost.
37:40You can see yourself
37:42as Mark Watney.
37:44He doesn't power
37:45through problems
37:46without hitting a hitch.
37:47He hits every single
37:48hitch there is.
37:49Woo!
37:52And you get to see him
37:53work through them.
37:55And you find yourself
37:56thinking,
37:56I could do that.
37:57So it's inspirational,
37:59but it's also
38:00just very practical.
38:01I forgot to
38:03account for the excess oxygen
38:06that I've been exhaling
38:09when I did my calculations
38:10because I'm stupid.
38:13The whole story
38:15is just one
38:16prolonged cascade failure.
38:18Basically,
38:19his solution
38:19to this immediate problem
38:21leads to the next problem
38:22and the next
38:23and the next
38:23and so on.
38:25I would say
38:26that the problem-solving
38:27style of Arthur Clarke
38:29and also Robert Heinlein
38:31influenced how I wrote
38:32The Martian.
38:33Although,
38:34I would say
38:34one of the biggest influences
38:35on The Martian
38:36was Apollo 13,
38:37both the real events
38:38and the movie.
38:39Uh, this is Houston.
38:41Uh, say again, please.
38:43Houston, we have a problem.
38:45My father is a particle physicist
38:47and my mother
38:48is an electrical engineer.
38:49So I was pretty much
38:51doomed to be a nerd.
38:53There is one joke
38:54where they tell him
38:55everything he's typing
38:56is being broadcast live
38:58to the entire world.
38:59Yeah?
39:00In the novel,
39:01he says,
39:02look, a pair of boobs
39:03and draws like these
39:04ASCII art boobs.
39:05It's open parenthesis,
39:06period, Y,
39:06period,
39:07close parenthesis.
39:08They didn't put that
39:09in the movie.
39:10They just had everybody
39:11look up and go,
39:12oh.
39:13Oh, my God.
39:14As if he'd written
39:15something really profane.
39:18In the face of overwhelming odds,
39:20I'm left with only one option.
39:23I'm gonna have to science
39:24the s*** out of this.
39:26I'm gonna have to science
39:27the s*** out of this.
39:29What does that mean to you?
39:30Well, it equates
39:31with this thrill of terror
39:33to say,
39:35I'm either gonna die here
39:37or I can survive.
39:38Yeah.
39:39And so he leans heavily
39:41on what I call
39:42gallows humor.
39:43I'm not gonna think
39:44too much about this.
39:45I'm gonna take it
39:45day by day,
39:46hour by hour,
39:47and I'm gonna have to
39:48science the s***
39:49out of this
39:49to get my survival going.
39:51That kind of humor
39:52probably keeps in check
39:54terror and fear,
39:57which will stop him functioning.
39:58You know what I got out of it?
39:59We're all that guy.
40:01That our state right now
40:04of affairs on Earth
40:05is such that
40:07we have no choice
40:08but to science
40:09the s*** out of it
40:10in order to survive.
40:11The threats in front of us
40:13are threats that will be solved.
40:15They're caused by technology
40:16for the most part,
40:17and they need to be solved
40:18by science.
40:19Yes.
40:20Yeah, that's a good point.
40:21I think the drive
40:22for the realism of the Martian
40:24is the fact that
40:25we will get to Mars
40:26quite soon.
40:27So suddenly it's come
40:28right back to our doorstep
40:30that we now have
40:31the technology
40:32and are building
40:33the sophisticated means
40:34for getting to Mars
40:35and colonizing Mars.
40:37That's why the Martian
40:38is important
40:39and why it has
40:41that realism to it.
40:42This is space.
40:44It does not cooperate.
40:46At some point,
40:47everything's gonna go south
40:48and you're gonna say
40:49this is it.
40:50Now you can either
40:51accept that
40:52or you can get to work.
40:54If we don't figure out
40:56how to get to Mars
40:57and live there
40:58and then build
40:59another spaceship
41:00that can go
41:01to another solar system,
41:03we're toast.
41:05Yeah, we're toast.
41:05In the long term.
41:06And to say, yeah,
41:07we've only got a million years
41:08to figure this out.
41:09We're way behind schedule here.
41:11So you have to get people
41:13to sort of buy into the idea
41:15and we didn't have
41:16these movies
41:17to say,
41:18this is an adventure.
41:19This is really gonna be fun.
41:20Yeah.
41:21Do you think we'd be dumb enough
41:22to go in a spaceship
41:23off to Mars
41:24where there's nothing there
41:25but a bunch of red dirt?
41:26Yeah.
41:27No, it's like the adventure,
41:28the whole idea of it.
41:30We have to do this.
41:32The human race depends on it.
41:34Well, thank you for doing this.
41:36My pleasure.
41:37This has been
41:37an amazing brain jam.
41:39Yeah, well,
41:40this is all I have to do now.
41:42And I don't get to do it very much.
41:56I don't think it's all I have to do it.
42:09It works.
42:12It's all I have to do about it.
42:14I'm going to be doing this.
42:14You