A closely-related sci-fi subgenre is cyberpunk. Cyberpunk films are also set in dystopian future worlds, but in these movies black comedy and an art-house style are often added to the mix. The film that set the pattern for cyberpunk was Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange in which a clever but rebellious and violent young man undergoes an experimentaltreatment to control his violent thoughts. In the 1982 cyberpunk classic Blade Runner, genetically-engineered slaves escape and search for the people who made them, and in Robocop a cyborg policeman discovers the truth about the security company that built him and runs the police department he works for.

Not all high-tech sci-fi movies are set in dystopian futures, however. In Steven Spielberg's 1986 sci-fi blockbuster Jurassic Park dinosaurs from the distant past are recreated from their DNA, and in his 2001 movie AI Artificial Intelligence a high-tech company markets a new line of androids that look and act like children. In 2015's Ex Machina an AI company develops an advanced android that uses its high level of artificialintelligence to escape to freedom, while in the 1999 high-tech rom-com Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind customers pay to have unwanted memories erased from their minds by a brain-scanning machine.

Films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind can make us think about the nature of the mind and reality, and films like this are sometimes called mind-bending movies. Popular examples include The Matrix in which most of the characters are trapped inside an artificial or "virtual" reality, and the sci-fi espionage drama Inception in which a corporate spy enters the minds of other people to steal valuable information. But of all the mind-bending ideas that science fiction has explored, the most popular has been the idea of time travel.

One of the first movies to explore this idea was the classic 1960 film The Time Machine, and one of the most popular was the 1985 sci-fi comedy Back to the Future. But many of the most successful time travel movies have been in a series that began with The Terminator in 1984. The most highly-rated of the Terminator movies is Terminator 2: Judgment Day in which a powerful cyborg is sent from the future to kill a teenage boy before he grows up to become the leader of a future uprising.

Many sci-fi movies have also been made about space travel, and some of the most critically-acclaimed are Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Academy Award-winning film Gravity, and Christopher Nolan's 2014 film Interstellar about a group of manned spaceships sent to find other planets for humans to live on after they can no longer survive on Earth. But the most popular movies about space travel have been historical space epics, or "space operas", like the Star Trek series and the Star Wars movies.

Soon after making his dystopian 1971 sci-fi film THX 1138, George Lucas began planning a series of blockbuster space epics about a war between a group of planetary nations called the Rebel Alliance and its evil enemy the Galactic Empire. The first of many films in this series was 1977's Star Warsfeaturing the young rebel warrior Luke Skywalker and one of cinema's greatest villains, the Galactic Empire's Darth Vader. With its epic plot, spectacular action scenes, and its many and various characters, robots and alien creatures, the Star Wars series has helped to make science fiction one of modern cinema's most popular and successful genres.

violent [´vaiələnt]   a.强暴的；猛烈的   (初中英语单词)

treatment [´tri:tmənt]   n.待遇；对待；治疗   (初中英语单词)

security [si´kjuəriti]   n.安全；证券；抵押品   (初中英语单词)

artificial [,ɑ:ti´fiʃəl]   a.人工的；模拟的   (初中英语单词)

advanced [əd´vɑ:nst]   a.先进的；高级的   (初中英语单词)

intelligence [in´telidʒəns]   n.智力；消息   (初中英语单词)

sunshine [´sʌnʃain]   n.日光，阳光   (初中英语单词)

reality [ri´æliti]   n.现实(性)；真实；逼真   (初中英语单词)

valuable [´væljuəbəl, -jubəl]   a.有价值的，贵重的   (初中英语单词)

series [´siəri:z]   n.连续；系列；丛书   (初中英语单词)

academy [ə´kædəmi]   n.专科学校；学会；协会   (初中英语单词)

survive [sə´vaiv]   vt.幸存；残存   (初中英语单词)

alliance [ə´laiəns]   n.联盟；同盟   (初中英语单词)

warrior [´wɔriə]   n.勇士，战士   (初中英语单词)

comedy [´kɔmidi]   n.喜剧；喜剧场面   (高中英语单词)

runner [´rʌnə]   n.奔跑者；走私人(船)   (高中英语单词)

fiction [´fikʃən]   n.小说；虚构；谎言   (高中英语单词)

explore [ik´splɔ:]   v.勘探；探索；探查   (高中英语单词)

classic [´klæsik]   a.第一流的 n.杰作   (高中英语单词)

historical [his´tɔrikəl]   a.历史(上)的   (高中英语单词)

experimental [ik,speri´mentl]   a.实验的   (英语四级单词)

spectacular [spek´tækjulə]   a.壮观的；惊人的   (英语四级单词)

rebellious [ri´beljəs]   a.造反的；反叛的   (英语六级单词)