5 Movies From 1982 That Define Sci-Fi History

As any nerd can tell you, 1982 was perhaps the greatest year in nerd media history. The consensus on this matter is so pervasive that the CW produced and aired the documentary “Greatest Geek Year Ever: 1982” in the summer of 2023. The miniseries sums up not just the movies, but also the TV and tech from that year that would come to define a generation. 

And the litany of notable or interesting genre films from 1982 is extensive. From “Blade Runner” to “Conan the Barbarian,” from “Poltergeist” to “Megaforce,” from “Rocky III” to “The Dark Crystal” to “First Blood” to “The Beastmaster” to “48 Hrs.,” the list goes on and on. The miniseries also talks about Atari, Intellivision, and the resurgence of 3-D. It’s a pretty thorough overview of what was available in the mainstream, though it doesn’t even begin to cover the wide variety of strange cult movies that were rising among midnight audiences at the time. Tastes were changing, special effects were evolving, and studios started to pay more and more attention to horror and sci-fi. For nerdy kids who were into genre films, 1982 was a great year all around. 

The five films below, however, define the year 1982 better than any of the movies listed above. Sure, films like “Conan” and “Blade Runner” were influential, but those films didn’t penetrate quite as deeply as some of their peers. In at least one case, the film wasn’t popular outside of the midnight movie circuit, but it might serve as an emblem of New Wave filmmaking at its finest. Note that the below films aren’t necessarily the best sci-fi movies of 1982 — that’s a matter of some debate — but they do define the year in sci-fi better than any other.

Spielberg helped redefine blockbusters in the 1970s with “Jaws” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” but the release of “E.T.” was proof that the world of cinema had changed for the sentimental. The 1970s were notoriously bleak for American films, with dark tragedies like “The Godfather,” “Taxi Driver,” “The Conformist,” and “Chinatown” defining the era. Americans were in no mood for light fantasy, and filmmakers pushed staid, adult dramas forward. 

But “E.T.” was not a bleak tragedy. Indeed, it’s one of the sweetest films you’ll ever see. It’s about the young Elliott (Henry Thomas), a boy being raised by a single mother, who finds a mysterious alien botanist in his backyard. The creature is craggy and wrinkled, but seems to be friendly, and Elliott learns to feed it candy as he sneaks it into his house. Over the course of the movie, Elliott forms a mysterious psychic bond with the creature — nicknamed E.T. — and the two begin to experience one another’s emotions. Elliott and his two siblings ultimately help E.T. call a ship and help him return to his home planet. 

“E.T.” was made for $10.5 million, which was relatively expensive at the time, but earned back over $797 million at the box office. That’s not just a hit — that’s the kind of movie that rewrites popular culture. Many, many stories thereafter involved kids, on their own, finding a mysterious new sci-fi animal or adventure in their backyards. “Scrappy unsupervised kids” became a popular trope that persists to this day. And movies in general — at least in the mainstream — became more optimistic. Bleak films tended to be pooh-poohed. (See “The Thing” below.) 

Nicholas Meyer’s “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” is typically considered to be the best of the 14 extant “Star Trek” movies. Personally, I prefer “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” over it, but I realize my opinion is unpopular. Also, I have no ill will toward “Khan,” and recognize its greatness. “Star Trek II” was made to be more accessible and human after the relative box office disappointment of “Motion Picture,” a heady and cerebral movie. 

This story was a revenge plot about Khan (Ricardo Montalban) seeking to kill Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) after the events of the “Star Trek” episode “Space Seed” had turned out for the worse. Khan is a deliciously enraged character, overacting and shouting and snarling with the best of them. The story is also about Kirk growing older (he has to start wearing glasses) and facing the mistakes and oversights of his own reckless past (he meets his adult son for the first time). The film climaxes with the U.S.S. Enterprise having a submarine-style space battle with the U.S.S. Reliant under the command of a crazed Khan. There is also a fun sci-fi conceit in the form of the Genesis Device, a magical widget that can completely terraform a planet in a matter of minutes. 

This film proved that “Star Trek” was going to live on. Reruns of the original series were big business on TV, and Trek conventions were being held all over the world, but “Star Trek II” proved that “Star Trek” was a living thing, a phenomenon that was going to persist. And so it has. Several more sequels were made, and a spinoff TV series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” was launched five years later. 

As mentioned above, “E.T.” was proof that audiences wanted sweet, sentimental sci-fi stories. John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (incidentally, released on the same day as Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner”) was the opposite of that. Indeed, the film was not just paranoid and pessimistic, but featured one of the gooiest, scariest aliens ever seen on the big screen. The alien is called a “thing” because it has no true form. It merely adopts the appearance — and the brain patterns — of the beings it occupies. It can look like anyone. When it breaks free, it can call upon the limbs and eyeballs it previously absorbed to flee. Biology is mere clay to the Thing. 

The main characters of “The Thing” (led by Kurt Russell and Keith David) are all annoyed, lonely guys trapped in the Antarctic tundra, bored out of their minds and easily prone to suspicion. When the Thing infiltrates their ranks, they are picked off one by one … and no one trusts anyone. “The Thing” ends on a positively apocalyptic note, with the monster having infiltrated and destroyed everything in its radius. It also has a great moment of ambiguity right at the end. Which of the surviving characters (if any) is infected by the Thing? And does it even matter? 

“The Thing,” however, was a bomb when it was first released, perhaps too horrific and gross for most people. It was made for $15 million and only earned back about $21 million. In a world of increasing optimism, audiences were in no mood for suspicion. Since its release, however, “The Thing” has been rediscovered time and time again by audiences, and it’s now widely considered one of the best films of its year. 

1982 saw a rise of great underground cult movies (see “Liquid Sky” below), so it’s interesting to keep track of what Disney was doing at the same time to warrant underground activity. Disney, as it so happens, was working on the overwrought computer thriller “Tron.”

“Tron” is about a computer programmer and video game designer named Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who is zapped into the memory core of his computer. Inside the computer, programs are envisioned as human-like beings who pray to their “users” as if they are gods. Video games for programs are like gladiatorial combat, and deletion is execution. The programs are fighting the tyranny of the Master Control Program that would take over their miniature electric dimension. “Tron” is frustrating as a sci-fi film because the physics are pure fantasy. Programs are just little humans who live inside your machine? I know that’s not the way that works. Also, first-time watchers may find it boring.

Disney also overspent on “Tron,” racking up a $17 million bill. It was a hit, but not a huge one. On paper, it looks like a misstep. In the film’s defense, the visual effects are impressive and include some early CGI, but a lot of the color-washing and compositing was (if one watches the behind-the-scenes documentaries included in home video editions) unnecessarily complicated. Disney poured so much money into “Tron” that the studio has tried to resurrect it in modern-day, late-stage sequels, which also kind of bombed. Disney wasn’t doing so hot in the 1980s, and “Tron” may be one of the main reasons why. 

In the ensuing years, the film garnered a passionate cult, but “Tron” itself was initially an expensive misfire. It somehow was good news and bad news at the same time. 

Meanwhile, in the underground, films like “Liquid Sky” were being made. “Liquid Sky,” co-written and directed by Slava Tsukerman, is one of the best examples of the New Wave aesthetic that was spreading through the pop firmament like wildfire. It takes place in New York City, but it feels like a sexed-up dystopian future. Anne Carlisle plays two roles in the forms of Margaret, a laconic coke addict, and her drug-dealing rival Jimmy. Everyone is addicted to drugs, everyone is lost in the miasma of high fashion, and everyone is bisexual. 

On the roof of Margaret’s building is a UFO, about the size of a dinner plate, that is spying on the humans within. The UFO feeds on human brains, but only when they’re being stimulated by certain chemicals. When the UFO “eats” someone, they vanish in a flash of light. If you shoot up heroin, you’ll get eaten. And when you have an orgasm, you get eaten. As soon as the characters figure this out (and it takes them all a while), they begin using sex and pleasure as instruments of violence. “Liquid Sky” is a gorgeous, odd, angsty film about the insidious way our pleasure is litigated and punished by unseen authorities. 

While most audiences were seeing kid-friendly, sentimental adventures like “E.T.,” a cult audience was enjoying themselves with a bleak, sexual film like “Liquid Sky.” If “E.T.” and “Tron” represented the dominant paradigm, “Liquid Sky” was the subversion. It’s worth seeking out right away. And it’s worth buying the makeup to match the characters. It’s a look that anyone can rock. /Film has recommended “Liquid Sky” before, and we’re going to continue to do so until morale improves.