“I don’t know if I’m a fan”: the only two sci-fi movies Cillian Murphy considers masterpieces
Sci-fi isn’t for everyone, and just because an actor isn’t a fan of the genre, it doesn’t mean that it can’t serve as the backdrop for some of their best and most memorable movies, with Cillian Murphy being a notable case in point.
His breakthrough role came in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, which is both a zombie horror and a sci-fi flick, since the virus that turns the population into hordes of sprinting undead was created in a lab by scientists, and he may even be back if The Bone Temple‘s box office performance hasn’t killed any hopes of the recent trilogy being finished.
The Academy Award winner reunited with Boyle for Sunshine, which was two-thirds of a great sci-fi film before it turned on its head and became a run-of-the-mill slasher in its final act, while Christopher Nolan’s Inception was a ‘Best Picture’ nominee and a blockbuster smash hit that enraptured audiences.
Admittedly, when he made the Nolan-adjacent Transcendence with the director’s long-time cinematographer, Wally Pfister, the results weren’t great, mostly because the movie was shit. Generally, he’s got a decent track record in sci-fi, and despite his personal preferences, he knows greatness when he sees it.
Like almost every impressionable youngster of his generation, Murphy was infatuated with Star Wars as a kid. He was born in the late 1970s, so it was inevitable that he’d be swept away by George Lucas’ galaxy far, far away, but it didn’t overwhelm his existence to the point that he became obsessed with the medium.
“I don’t know what qualifies you as a sci-fi fan, really,” he mused to Rotten Tomatoes. “I was a huge Star Wars fan growing up, but there seems to be the fantasy side and the more serious science side. And then, as I got older, I watched those masterpieces: Solaris and 2001.”
There’s no concrete answer on which pictures can inarguably be called the definitive sci-fi masterpieces, but if anyone tries to come up with a handful of answers and doesn’t include Andrei Tarkovsky’s mind-melting epic and Stanley Kubrick’s pioneering classic, then don’t even bother listening to them.
Murphy is right that the genre has often tended to be separated into two distinct camps, and the three movies he mentioned perfectly encapsulate it. If Star Wars is commerce, then Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey are art, but they were all equally influential and innovative in their own distinct ways.
The Oppenheimer headliner was at pains to point out that “I don’t know if I’m a fan per se” of the art form, but even a novice should be able to recognise the majesty of Tarkovsky and Kubrick’s seminal contributions.
