60 Fun Facts About Sci-Fi Movie

Who directed Metropolis (1927), the first sci-fi film on UNESCO's Memory of the World register?

The film's budget ballooned to 5.3 million Reichsmarks, more than three and a half times what was planned, and nearly bankrupted the UFA studio.

A near-complete 16 mm print of Metropolis, restoring lost footage, was found in 2008 in which country?

The reduction negative had sat in the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires; its rediscovery let restorers put back roughly 25 minutes of the original cut.

What is the giant robot accompanying Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) called?

The phrase Helen must say to stop it, 'Klaatu barada nikto', has been quoted and parodied everywhere from Army of Darkness to Toy Story.

Bernard Herrmann's score for The Day the Earth Stood Still featured two of which electronic instrument?

Herrmann paired the instruments with electric violin, cello and bass, and the sound became shorthand for flying saucers for a generation.

Which 1956 film set on Altair IV was the first movie with an entirely electronic score?

Bebe and Louis Barron built the circuits themselves; the musicians' union kept them from a composing credit, so it was billed as 'electronic tonalities'.

Before it became HAL 9000, the computer in 2001 was named after which Greek goddess?

The finished HAL was voiced by Canadian actor Douglas Rain, whose calm delivery is much of why the character is so unsettling.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the spacecraft Discovery One is bound for which planet?

Kubrick had a 30-ton rotating centrifuge set built by Vickers-Armstrong for the ship's interiors, at a cost of $750,000.

Which Soviet director's 1972 film Solaris won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at Cannes?

The 166-minute film adapts Stanisław Lem's novel; Steven Soderbergh remade it in 2002 with George Clooney.

In Alien (1979), what is the name of the commercial space tug?

The name comes from a Joseph Conrad novel; the sequel's warship, the Sulaco, is another Conrad reference.

Which Swiss artist designed the creature and alien environments for Alien?

The full-grown creature was played inside the suit by Bolaji Badejo, a 6-foot-10 Nigerian design student spotted in a London pub.

How many identical cats were used to play Jones, the ship's cat, in Alien?

The tagline printed in small type on the poster, 'In space no one can hear you scream', became one of the most quoted in film history.

Blade Runner (1982) is an adaptation of which 1968 Philip K. Dick novel?

The film's synthetic humans are called replicants, a word that never appears in the book, which calls them androids.

In Blade Runner, which corporation bio-engineers the replicants?

The story is set in a rain-soaked Los Angeles of 2019, and Ridley Scott's definitive Final Cut did not arrive in cinemas until 2007.

Who rewrote the 'tears in rain' monologue in Blade Runner and presented the new words on set?

The actor playing Roy Batty trimmed the scripted speech and added the closing line himself the night before shooting.

Which candy replaced M&M's in E.T. after Mars refused to let its candy appear in the film?

Mars thought the alien would frighten children; Hershey said yes and got one of the most famous product placements ever.

In 1983, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial became the highest-grossing film of all time by passing which movie?

Its Oscars all came in the music, sound and effects categories, and Spielberg would later beat his own box-office record with Jurassic Park.

In which city was James Cameron ill when a fever dream gave him the idea for The Terminator?

He was there for the release of Piranha II: The Spawning; the finished film cost about $6.4 million and grossed $78.3 million worldwide.

Which Guns N' Roses single was tied in to Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)?

It was the debut single from Use Your Illusion II, and Schwarzenegger's T-800 appears in its music video.

Which actor was first cast as Marty McFly in Back to the Future, then fired weeks into filming?

Robert Zemeckis broke the news on January 10, 1985, and Michael J. Fox shot the film at night while making Family Ties by day.

Which director made RoboCop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers?

He rejected the RoboCop script as awful after reading its first page; his wife persuaded him to give it another look.

In RoboCop (1987), which mega-corporation is granted control of the Detroit Police Department?

Its executive Dick Jones unveils the ED-209 enforcement robot, which memorably malfunctions in a boardroom demonstration.

Which martial-arts star was originally cast as the creature in Predator (1987) before being replaced?

The 7-foot-2 Kevin Peter Hall took over, having just played the sasquatch in Harry and the Hendersons.

Although set in a Central American rainforest, most of Predator was shot near which resort city?

The score was by Alan Silvestri, fresh off Back to the Future, and Jesse Ventura played Sergeant Blain.

In Total Recall (1990), Douglas Quaid visits which company to have false memories implanted?

The film adapts Philip K. Dick's 1966 story 'We Can Remember It for You Wholesale' and won a Special Achievement Oscar for its visual effects.

Jurassic Park held the record as highest-grossing film of all time until which movie overtook it?

The dinosaurs' voices were mixed from real animal noises, and the film won three Oscars for its effects and sound.

Which 1962 French short, told almost entirely in still photographs, inspired Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys?

Brad Pitt won a Golden Globe and got an Oscar nomination for playing the twitchy Jeffrey Goines.

The title of Gattaca (1997) is spelled from the letters that stand for what?

G, A, T and C are guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine; the film was writer-director Andrew Niccol's feature debut and flopped at $12.5 million domestic.

Which fashion designer created the costumes for Luc Besson's The Fifth Element (1997)?

He designed all 900 extras' outfits for the Fhloston Paradise scenes and checked each one every morning.

Men in Black (1997) won its only Academy Award in which category?

Rick Baker and David LeRoy Anderson took the prize; the film was adapted from a Malibu Comics series by Lowell Cunningham.

In Contact (1997), the signal of prime numbers that Ellie Arroway detects comes from which star?

The film is based on Carl Sagan's 1985 novel and won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Will Smith turned down the role of Neo in The Matrix to make which film instead?

He was skeptical of the planned bullet-time effects; the film went on to win Oscars for editing, sound and visual effects.

Almost all of The Matrix was filmed at Fox Studios in which city?

The city's downtown doubled for an unnamed American metropolis, and Morpheus's hovercraft is named the Nebuchadnezzar.

Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) is based on a 1992 novel by which British author?

The film is set in 2027 after two decades of global infertility, and its long single-shot sequences earned Emmanuel Lubezki an Oscar nomination.

In WALL-E, what does the name of the robot EVE stand for?

WALL-E himself is a Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class, and sound designer Ben Burtt recorded 2,500 sounds for the film.

Thomas Newman co-wrote WALL-E's end-credits song 'Down to Earth' with which musician?

The film won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and picked up five more nominations, unusual for an animated film.

Moon (2009), starring Sam Rockwell as a lone lunar worker, was whose directorial debut?

The son of David Bowie made it for about $5 million, with Kevin Spacey voicing the base computer GERTY.

The Na'vi language in Avatar was created by Paul Frommer, a linguist at which university?

The blue-skinned Na'vi stand about 10 feet tall, and Avatar became the highest-grossing film ever on January 25, 2010.

In Snowpiercer, the tail-section passengers discover their protein bars are made from what?

Bong Joon-ho found the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige in a comic shop near Hongik University in 2005 and spent years adapting it.

Hans Zimmer's Interstellar score is built around a 1926 pipe organ housed in which London building?

The 1926 Harrison & Harrison instrument was chosen by Zimmer and Christopher Nolan as the score's primary voice.

How many acres of corn were planted for Interstellar so a real crop could be destroyed?

Physicist Kip Thorne served as executive producer and consultant, and the film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Mad Max: Fury Road's six Oscars set a record for a film from which country?

George Miller first had the idea in 1987; Charlize Theron shaved her head to play Furiosa.

Arrival (2016) is based on 'Story of Your Life', a Nebula-winning novella by which author?

Amy Adams plays a linguist hired by the Army; the film got eight Oscar nominations and won for Best Sound Editing.

Which cinematographer won his first Oscar for Blade Runner 2049 after more than a dozen nominations?

The film also won Best Visual Effects but was a box-office disappointment, grossing $276.6 million against a budget of up to $185 million.

Which service streamed Annihilation (2018) in most countries outside the US 17 days after its cinema release?

The Shimmer in the film spreads from a meteor that struck a lighthouse in Florida's St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge.

How many Academy Awards did Denis Villeneuve's Dune (2021) win?

All were in craft categories, from score to visual effects; it was also nominated for Best Picture.

Which actor plays the Harkonnen heir Feyd-Rautha in Dune: Part Two?

The film grossed about $715 million worldwide and won Oscars for Best Sound and Best Visual Effects.

Akira Ifukube created the original 1954 Godzilla roar by rubbing a leather glove along the strings of which instrument?

The film was made months after the fishing boat Lucky Dragon No. 5 was showered with fallout from a US hydrogen-bomb test.

The re-edited 1956 American release Godzilla, King of the Monsters! added new scenes with which actor?

Suit actor Haruo Nakajima lost 20 pounds playing the monster in the original, which pioneered the technique known as suitmation.

In Tron (1982), Jeff Bridges also plays which program Flynn wrote to hunt evidence?

The film was snubbed for a visual-effects Oscar nomination, reportedly because voters felt using computers was cheating.

The coordinates in Close Encounters of the Third Kind point to which real Wyoming landmark?

Roy Neary compulsively sculpts it out of mashed potatoes at the dinner table before he knows what it is.

John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) is based on a 1938 novella by John W. Campbell Jr. with what title?

Of the $15 million budget, $1.5 million went on Rob Bottin's creature effects, built from chemicals, food products, rubber and machinery.

The Wachowskis screened Ghost in the Shell (1995) for which producer, telling him 'We wanna do that for real'?

Mamoru Oshii had wanted to make Jin-Roh next but was asked by Bandai Visual to adapt Masamune Shirow's manga instead.

Which actress made her film debut as the Vulcan Saavik in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?

Director Nicholas Meyer finished the final script in twelve days without taking a writing credit, and James Horner wrote his first major score for it in under five weeks.

Which 1902 Georges Méliès short is regarded as the earliest landmark of science fiction cinema?

Its trick photography made Jules Verne the first major sci-fi author adapted for the screen; Metropolis followed a quarter century later.

Which Édith Piaf song is used throughout Inception to time the dreams?

Hans Zimmer reworked pieces of the song into his 'very electronic, dense' score.

Which video game adaptation did Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp shelve before making District 9?

With that project stalled for lack of financing, the pair instead expanded Blomkamp's 2005 short into a $30 million feature.

Christopher Nolan's original 80-page treatment for Inception envisioned it in what genre?

He eventually rewrote the 'dream stealers' idea as a heist film and worked on the script for nine to ten years before shooting.

District 9 was expanded from which 2005 Neill Blomkamp short film?

Sharlto Copley, who starred in the short, returned to lead the feature, which was shot in a wintry Johannesburg Blomkamp compared to Chernobyl.

Which Moroccan city doubled as Mombasa in Inception's foot-chase sequence?

The chase through the historic medina is where Cobb hires Eames and Yusuf; the tilting hotel bar was built in an airship hangar in Bedfordshire.

Which 1956 Japanese film is credited with sparking Stanley Kubrick's interest in science fiction?

Japanese kaiju and tokusatsu films gained worldwide popularity in the 1950s for their heavy use of special effects.