Science fiction cinema between arthouse and blockbuster

Abstract

For a long time, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) remained unique in positioning itself between highly idiosyncratic and wildly demotic filmmaking, succeeding both at the arthouse and multiplex. In 2014, critical voices would hail Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar as the first film to succeed in reproducing Kubrick’s feat, ringing in the age, as some would have it, of the “smart blockbuster.” Interstellar raises questions about the conventional critical divisions in science fiction cinema between “smart” auteurist cinema and “dumb” blockbuster films, especially in regard to Kubrick’s 2001 and its lasting influence as the artistic and critical model for understanding such divisions. Looking at the connection between cinematic style and social prestige, this critical assessment of Interstellar, in a comparative reading with Kubrick’s 2001, sheds light on the political and ideological dimension of Nolan’s film and its negotiation between a more radical cultural fringe and the commercial mainstream.