Groundbreaking science fiction films that you know and love have something else in common- many of them are the first film their directors made. Many of these first-time directors were previously authors, screenwriters, editors, special effects artists, or film school students who brought a fresh point of view and made the movie truly innovative. We all know about George Lucas' first film THX 1138, so let's explore some other first-time directors who left a mark on science fiction filmmaking. For example, Silent Running was Douglas Trumbull's directorial debut.
Douglas Trumbull was born into the visual effects biz—his father, Donald Trumbull, worked on 1939's The Wizard of Oz, one of Hollywood’s splashiest early showcases for what was then a new art form. Douglas followed a similar path in his career, bringing his own special effects talents to films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Blade Runner. He’s only directed a few feature films to date, but his first effort, 1972's Silent Running, stars Bruce Dern as a botanist (solo, save for his robot helpers) tasked with tending a forested outer space bio-dome, intended for future use to restore Earth’s dying plant population. When the isolated world he’s protecting is threatened, he rebels as best he can. Silent Running’s story is simple, but Dern is quietly great—and the special effects, it probably goes without saying, are ahead of their time.
Read the stories behind 20 such films, and you'll surely find at least one -probably more- that you'll want to seek out and watch again.