Thursday's Sci-Fi San Francisco

From Television to AI, San Francisco has been at the forefront of the latest technologies invented (or perfected) within its borders.  Because of its iconic structures like the Ferry Building and the Golden Gate Bridge, the city's icons have been the subject of Hollywood's attention.  It therefore is not much of a leap to see why so many science fiction films have been set here.

The first film to truly utilize the city for the genre was the Sci-Fi classic, It Came from Beneath the Sea, from 1955.  The story (be that as it may) centers around a giant octopus, mutated by nuclear tests in the South Pacific, which grows to 100 times its normal size.  For some reason it sets its sights on San Francisco.  That's the plot. 

In the days before CGI and ILM, there was the stop-motion innovator (genius, really), Ray Harryhausen.  His wire-framed models and camera angles made Cold War-era audiences gasp at the image of a giant mutant octopus wrapping its tenacles around the Golden Gate Bridge and knocking over the Ferry Building.  To the keen observer, the mutant octopus has only five tenacles instead of eight.  This was not a plot point, but a practical one.  It was simply cheaper and easier to create an octopus with three fewer tenacles.

As cameras became smaller in the 1960s and high-speed film gave filmmakers more latitude in what conditions they could shoot, directors left the backlots of Hollywood to shoot on location. And San Francisco was certainly no exception as it is only an hour by air from Los Angeles. Before Star Wars, and even American Graffiti, local filmmaker (OK, he's from Modesto, but that's close enough) George Lucas made his first movie here,. Yet you would never know it was San Francisco.

Based on a short student film he made at UCLA called THX1138, and yes,that is what the THX means when that image and ubiquitous sound appear before your favorite movie. This Sci-Fi thriller takes place in a futuristic subterranean society where everyone is bald, wears white, and the government punishes you if you don't take drugs.

Familiar bay area locations such as Frank Lloyd Wright's Marin Civic Center (his last building, by the way), the still-under construction BART system, and the newly expanded San Francisco International Airport helped to present a dystopian society forced underground by some past calamity, though it is never really explained why. But his most clever camera trick (spoiler alert) comes at the end of the film where we see Robert Duvall ascending what seems like a never-ending ladder which looks like it goes up and up for miles.

Lucas had Duvall crawl on his hands and knees along the bottom of the unfinished BART tracks. The director simply turned the camera on its side, like in the old Batman TV show from the 1960s, giving the impression he is climbing up, not sideways. THX1138 used little camera and sound tricks George Lucas would later use effectively on a little-known film he made called Star Wars.

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A true local filmmaker, Philip Kaufman made epic films like The Right Stuff and Hemingway & Gellhorn, films which spanned many years and locations. And yet he utilized the diverse locations around the bay area to recreate every place from New York City in the 1960s to Spain in the 1930s. Yet the film which was his first success, was the 1978 remake of the Cold War-tinged Sci-Fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I can't think of a prominent San Francisco location which was not used, From City Hall to Alamo Square, the creepy paranoia invoked in the movie gives San Francisco an otherworldly feeling of dread.

1986's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home finds the crew of the USS Enterprise hurled back in time to the 1980s to save the whales, literally. We see our favorite characters from the famous film and TV series milling about North Beach and the Marina Green, but why San Francisco? Why not New York City or Addis Ababa? If you are a true Trekker (as Star Trek fans like to be referred to as) you would know that in Star Trek lore, San Francisco was one of the few major cities to be spared destruction from the Eugenic Wars and World War III. It is also in a region with many high-tech facilities, as well as military bases.

San Francisco has a rich history of being a destination for diplomacy. The United Nation's charter was signed here in 1945 and for a short moment in time, the headquarters of the UN. Just as recently as 2023, San Francisco hosted Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference which welcomed the leaders of 40 different nations.

Then there is the Gene Roddenberry connection. The Star Trek creator himself was a navy pilot who spent time in the bay area during World War II. During the 1960s, San Francisco was also active in the Hippie, anti-war, and civil rights movements. If there were any place in the United States which seemed to welcome of different types of races and political beliefs, despite the backlash from mainstream society at the time, it was (and is) San Francisco.

Gene Rodenberry envisioned an egalitarian future for Earth,with no war, poverty, or crime. Somehow, we survive the petty differences of our times for a future-perfect society. It's that ethos that has kept the Star Trek universe so fertile in our imaginations and why it has not lost popularity in six decades. It is also why San Francisco is (and will be) firmly planted in the Star Trek universe.

The Golden Gate Bridge, a Favorite Target for Hollywood Destruction

Poor Golden Gate Bridge. It seems to be a favorite target of monsters and super villains. Here is a short list of films in which the Golden Gate Bridge is either destroyed, attacked or trampled on:

It Came from Beneath the Sea

Superman: The Movie (from 1978)

Godzilla

X-Men: The Last Stand

The Core

Pacific Rim

Monsters vs. Aliens

Terminator: Genisys

San Andreaus

A View to a kill

The Hulk (Ang Lee’s version from 2003)

Into the 21st century another universe discovered San Francisco, the MCU - the Marvel Comics Universe. The Ant-Man series not only takes place in San Francisco, and with the exception of Fisherman's Wharf, utilized some of its lesser-known locations. Whether it's using the flatbed of a truck like a skateboard down Nob Hill, living in the Tenderloin, or make you believe a 100-foot-tall man can stand in front of a Pacific Heights building. No one could miss that the Ant-Man lives in San Francisco.

The other San Francisco-based MCU character who calls our city by the bay home is Venom. The film series is completely different than the source material from which this Spider-Man villain is based on, but uses San Francisco locations in unique ways. I have a personal connection to the film series in that the main villain in the first film is named Carlton Drake. I found this San Francisco connection curious as I have worked in both the Carlton and Drake hotels.

The Matrix film series takes place in a computer-generated city, with no real definable features so it could be any place. The first film was shot in Australia so the urban image they presented could have been any city, as it is not easily identifiable to American audiences.

2021’s The Matrix Resurrections was shot entirely in San Francisco, and although landmarks are recognizable, the film is shot in such a way as to give San Francisco a dreamlike quality. It looks like San Francisco, sort of, or does it? Ironically, one scene showing Keanu Reeve’s apartment was actually filmed in a building I work in.

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