Written and directed by Yang Xiaozhong in 1938, "Sixty Years Later on the Beach" is considered to be the first science fiction film in China. It tells the funny story of two company employees, after getting drunk, in their dreams, they come to Shanghai Beach sixty years later to witness the great changes brought about by the changes of the times to society. Unfortunately, now the original film has been lost, and the specific plot is not known, leaving only some stills.
After the founding of New China, with the imagination of the country's bright prospects, a number of new science fiction works also began to emerge. In 1958, "Imagining the Ming Tombs Reservoir" told the story of the working people uniting to build the Ming Tombs Reservoir under the leadership of the party and the state. One of the most interesting passages is imagining the dramatic changes that have taken place in society 20 years after the reservoir was built.
In 1963, Wang Minsheng's science fiction educational film "Little Sun" was considered to be the first science fiction film, but it was only 31 minutes long. The film tells the story of several Young Pioneers who have a sudden whim to create a small sun so that the winter north is still warm. With the help of scientists, they developed a small antimatter sun and personally piloted the spacecraft to send it into space.
Not only spaceships appear in the movie, but also future technologies such as intelligent aircraft, air trains, and robots, and the description of antimatter and the idea of the orbit of the small sun are also quite creative.
The Shanghai Film Studio released Dead Light on Coral Island in 1980. It was China's first true science fiction film, based on the novel of the same name created by writer Tong Enzheng in 1963. The film revolves around two future human inventions, the atomic battery and the laser TBM, and although the struggle between Chinese scientists and foreign consortia in the play has certain limitations of the times, its ups and downs and the display of future technology are quite ornamental, and Liu Cixin once described it as "China's only pure science fiction film".
In 1986, Huang Jianxin's "Misplaced" tells the story of an engineer named Zhao Shuxin who built a robot to handle work and meetings in his place, but the robot gradually became self-aware and finally wanted to replace it. The movie does not have any big scenes, but the concept is clever, Liu Zifeng alone plays two roles and appears in the same frame, which is also very fresh at the time. The film's satire of bureaucracy, reflection on the role of individual society, and advance predictions about social problems caused by the emergence of future robots all have positive implications.
Wang Weiyi's "Men's World" directed by Wang Weiyi in 1987 is a brain-hole film with a strong social education in response to the idea of son preference in the context of family planning policy. The idea of using DNA technology to screen and create a baby boy through artificial conception was now possible but predictable at the time. Films like this that start a story with a new invention are a major direction for domestic science fiction movies in the 80s and 90s.
In 1988, in "Synthetic Man" directed by Yin Aiqun and Wang Yabiao, the medical scientist Professor Pang transplanted the brain of Wang Jiapei, a farmer who died in a car accident, to Wu Hao, the general manager of a trading company who died of a brain tumor, and caused a big storm because of the dislocation of identity.
Dr. Invisibility, directed by Zhang Zien in 1991, tells the story of the invention of an invisible drug, which is more than Paul Lee's "Doctor of Invisibility". Verhoeven's Transparent Man is 9 years earlier. Although there are no outstanding advantages in the special effects, the story is very interesting.
1988's "Thunderbolt Babe" tells the story of a young boy named Babe who is fully charged because he was born with "third type of contact", and when he grows up, the electricity on his body brings him endless troubles. Although aliens are involved, there are not too many science fiction elements, on the contrary, there are many loopholes in the setting of human full body electricity, and even the electricity on the little boy Babe is DC or AC Creators have not given too much consideration. However, it is also very interesting as a children's film, the film only has an investment of 470,000 yuan, but after its release, it has triggered a boom in movie watching, and it is still a classic in the minds of the post-80s.
In 1990, Feng Xiaoning's "Atmosphere Disappears" is also a children's film under the banner of science fiction. The story, while bizarre and unsuspecting, focuses on environmental protection, and the warnings to humans coming out of the mouths of talking animals are frightening.
Movies related to aliens, Xu Geng's "Magic Watch" is more relaxed and funny. Uncle Zhang Jiayi was also called Zhang Xiaotong at that time, and the boy he played, Kang Bosi, grew into an adult overnight because he wore a watch containing an alien technology chip, which led to a funny adventure story.
The most alternative film is 1992 Chen Xingzhong's "Poisonous Kiss", which tells the story of a boy sansan who is born with severe poison due to environmental pollution. Originally a film with a slight sci-fi element on the theme of environmental protection, it was made very cult, in which the little boy who grows up every thunderstorm day and the atmosphere of death that has always been permeated by the whole film are chilling.
In 1997, there was a children's film "Crazy Rabbit" that was "not suitable for children". Although it was originally intended to be a science fiction movie for children about the victory of love over aliens, it was filmed very strangely, and the plot of a group of primary school students infected by an alien virus and becoming a walking dead is still a childhood shadow of the post-90s.