The new movie Swan Song from Apple TV+ is a haunting and moving testament to the power of science fiction to ask the big questions that always haunt the human experience. Given that it focuses on a terminally ill man who is given the chance to substitute himself with a clone, it addresses issues ranging from grief and personal responsibility to the very nature of human identity itself.
For those who enjoy science fiction for its ability to constantly press against the nature of the possible, there are quite a few other movies that also ask the big questions, even if they don’t always answer them.
Steven Spielberg is a director who has shown time and again that he is a master of many genres, and many of his most important movies have been in the realm of science fiction.
That includes A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which focuses on a robot-like child named David, who is originally given to a family mourning their ill child but is ultimately cast out and forced to wander the world alone. The movie is about many things, but it is above all about what it is that comprises human consciousness itself.
The works of the noted science fiction author Philip K. Dick have been the basis for many of the most compelling and thought-provoking science fiction movies, including Minority Report.
This is an especially good choice for those who enjoy the way that Swan Song asks deeply ethical questions, because this movie also asks whether society’s ongoing reliance on technology to solve crimes might be, itself, a deeply unethical and morally flawed way of engaging with criminality. It also features Tom Cruise in one of his best roles.
There were few actors as iconic in classic Hollywood as Rock Hudson, who made his fame by acting in a number of genres, including romantic comedies, melodramas, and westerns. In Seconds, he plays a man who, faced with a life that he no longer wants, allows himself to be “reborn” with a new identity.
It’s a haunting and at times brutal movie and, like Swan Song, it interrogates the limits of personal responsibility when someone is faced with the limits of a particular life.
Jordan Peele has shown time and again that he is one of the most formidable directing talents in Hollywood, and he followed up the success of Get Out with Us.
The latter movie focuses on a family who is terrorized by a mysterious group of doppelgängers whose true purpose remains enigmatic and unclear right until the end of the movie. Both Swan Song and Us tap into the seemingly universal fear of the other, especially when that other is, in essence, a part of the self.
Planet of the Apes is one of the most enduring science fiction franchises, and it experienced a rebirth of its original popularity with Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011. Like Swan Song, Rise of the Planet of the Apes uses the conventions of science fiction to probe and explore deep ethical and moral questions.
In this case, it centers around the use of apes as scientific subjects, as well as the thorny questions of what, exactly, constitutes personhood and the rights and privileges that such a status entails.
The clone is a thorny presence in science fiction precisely because it presents both the characters and the viewers with the idea that what makes a person specific and individual can in fact be replicated. Very often in science fiction that takes on a more sinister edge when the clones become the focus of the story.
Never Let Me Go is an especially devastating movie in that regard, focusing as it does on two genetic clones whose bodies are going to be harvested for the use of other people, who, despite their impending doom, nevertheless fall in love with one another.
As Swan Song demonstrates, there is something both deeply unsettling and also exciting about the idea of the human-animal hybrid, the concept explored by the movie Splice. Like all good science fiction movies, it’s a story very much about the moral and ethical decisions that are always tied up with science and humanity’s ongoing efforts to understand itself.
What’s more, as this film demonstrates, there are some boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed, at least not without significant cost to human life.
Annihilation has rightly come to be regarded as one of the most noteworthy science fiction movies of the 2010s.
Focusing as it does on a group of scientists who go into an area known as the Shimmer, in which DNA is distorted and recombined in new and frightening ways, the movie asks audiences to think about what it is that constitutes the human and how someone’s identity is, or isn’t, intrinsically tied to genetic makeup. And, given that it also features terrifying doppelgängers, it also should appeal to those who enjoyed the clone aspect of Swan Song.
David Cronenberg is one of the most well-respected directors working in Hollywood, and all of Cronenberg's movies show his unique approach to the horror genre.
Many of his tales explore the darker side of human nature, and that includes Dead Ringers, which focuses on a pair of twins (both of whom are played by Jeremy Irons) whose deeply dysfunctional and codependent relationship with one another ultimately leads to tragedy. It’s a movie that is designed to stay with the viewer long after the credits roll.
There are few science fiction movies as well-respected as 2001: A Space Odyssey and, like Swan Song, it’s one that genuinely wants to ask deep philosophical questions.
More than anything else, the movie is about what it means to be human and about the types of sacrifices that humanity has made on its onward march toward technological perfection. And, in addition, it also remains a hallmark of what the medium of cinema can accomplish when in the hands of a talented director like Stanley Kubrick.
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