Speculative Fiction 101: What sci-fi movies take place in New York?

August 4, 2:16 PMNY Speculative Fiction ExaminerJeff LaSala

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As New York is one of the most popular and populous cities in the world, it’s no surprise how often it’s become the setting of so many fantastical stories. From the original 1933 film of King Kong to 2009’s Watchmen, moviemakers have always loved tearing up the streets of New York—quite often literally. And why not? It’s recognizable, it’s colorful, and it’s America’s most iconic big city. If a monster can make it here (and destroy New York), it can make it anywhere (and destroy other cities).

Sorry, Chicago, you just don’t have the same rampage appeal as the Big Apple*.

Below is a select list of more or less contemporary science fiction movies set within the City That Never Sleeps**. To be fair, I’m including only those movies which take place chiefly in New York. As we all know, Manhattan is often just one of many locales in more global stories, like The Day After Tomorrow, wherein moviegoers briefly watch a NYC landmark like the Statue of Liberty, the New York Public Library or the Chrysler Building get destroyed by:

(a) A monster.
(b) A meteor.
(c) Extreme weather.
(d) A colossal tidal wave caused by either (a), (b) or (c).
(e) Aliens.
(f) All of the above.

So I’m excluding most of those "token shot of NY" movies. If in the same film, we see the Eiffel Tower or the Taj Mahal get wrecked, then it’s not really a New York movie, is it? That’s a list for another day.

Science fiction movies that take place in New York:

• Cloverfield (2008) – An enormous creature goes on a destructive spree in Manhattan. Producer J.J. Abrams says of the idea, after visiting Japan: "We saw all these Godzilla toys, and I thought, we need our own [American] monster, and not like King Kong. I love King Kong. King Kong is adorable. And Godzilla is a charming monster. We love Godzilla. But I wanted something that was just insane, and intense.”

• Daredevil (2003) – A blind lawyer and superhero (Ben Affleck), who first appeared in a 1964 comic book, becomes a vigilante and opposes a notorious crime lord.

• The Fifth Element (1997) – A regenerated “supreme being” falls into the back of Bruce Willis’s flying cab in this severely underrated sci-fi movie (and part-time comedy). In this future time, New York City is a great deal taller, adding the third dimension to its still-congested streets. It’s also the film that has random geeks saying, “Leeloo Dallas Multipass” a lot.

• Escape from New York (1981) – Ex-soldier, fugitive and anti-hero “Snake” Plissken (Kurt Russell) is ordered by the government to retrieve the President from Manhattan Island, which in this dystopian, post-World War III era has become a maximum security prison/wasteland. It figures.

• Fantastic Four (2005) – The classic tetrad of 1961 superheroes gets modernized in this movie about radiation-induced astronauts who develop cool, crime-fighting powers. Who hasn’t wanted a healthy dose of cosmic radiation? Streets are smashed, cars are wrecked, and some buildings are damaged, but all in all the heroes and villains don’t do nearly as much damage to the city as the Tick.

• Freejack (1992) – Loosely based on the 1959 novel Immortality, Inc., this movie showcases a futuristic and war-torn New York City (2009!) in which the super-wealthy (like, say, Anthony Hopkins) can purchase immortality by hijacking the bodies of people who are stolen, via time travel, from the past. In this future time, New York (notably the Bronx) is a scavenger’s wasteland, and Mick Jagger sure looks a lot younger than in the real 2009.

• Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989) – Rogue scientists with particle throwers band together and make a business out of combating creatures of paranormal origin. In the process, not only do ghosts and spooks run rampant throughout the streets of New York, but a 100-foot-tall marshmallow climbs a building on Central Park West, a river of negatively-charged slime flows beneath the subway system and Lady Liberty herself is animated and made to cross the Hudson only to smash through the top of a museum (in actuality, the American Indian Museum). Incidentally, the Ghostbusters are making another comeback.

• Godzilla (1998) – Tokyo’s favorite monster makes its way to Manhattan, but this time the 200-foot-tall monster is suggested to be a radioactive mutant marine iguana that makes a nest out of Madison Square Garden and dives into the Hudson to escape military gunfire. I’m not saying this is the best monster-attacking-NY movie there is (even Cloverfield has a more believable plot), but marine iguanas are pretty cool, and if one ever did grow that big, it would camouflage well against the Manhattan evening landscape.

• King Kong (1933-2005) – I’m breaking my own rule listing this here, but you can’t get much more vintage than everyone’s favorite oversized primate from Skull Island climbing the Empire State Building. Depending on which version you’re looking at, Kong smashes cars and throws people around before taking to the architectural higher ground. In Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake, he also slides around a frozen lake in Central Park for a few sentimental moments.

• Men In Black (1997) – Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones introduce us to this version of that old mysterious government agency that keeps things under wraps—notably aliens. They do so in and around New York, doing only minimal harm to cars and making people forget about what they do see.

• Night at the Museum (2006) – Ben Stiller plays a down-on-his-luck security guard at the Museum of Natural History, where an Egyptian artifact animates the exhibits each night. Over the course of the movie, the museum gets trashed, but all is more or less back in order by the end.

• Soylent Green (1973) – In the year 2022, New York City alone has a population of over forty million (we’re at 8 million now). It's impoverished and destitute. Real food is both scarce and expensive, forcing the massive Soylent Corporation to produce and ration out wafers of “high-energy plankton” to half the world. When a police detective discovers the truth about this dubious food source, he coins a very famous, and often-parodied phrase. In 2022, New York is beyond overcrowded, ugly and depressing. Let’s hope science fiction stays just that, eh?

• Spider-Man (2001), Spider-Man 2 (2004), Spider-Man 3 (2007) – While Batman refuses to say just what or where Gotham City really is, Spider-Man has no qualms brazenly slinging his webs all over New York’s skyscrapers. And he did so in these three movies, running damage control against the machinations of the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and other street-shattering, subway-breaking and mortar-smashing super villains.

• Watchmen (2009) – This film adaptation of the 1986 comic books depicts an alternate past of New York City, one in which it’s 1985, the U.S. won the Vietnam War, Nixon was still President and masked superheroes exist and are sometimes even sanctioned by the government. Against this backdrop, a team of renegade second-generation superheroes opposes a morally-ambiguous plot to bring unity to a divided world. New York in this 1985 looks very much still New York of 1985, albeit with a good deal more violence and the presence of a near-omnipotent being.

If you know of a movie that's true science fiction and takes place mostly if not wholely in New York, post a comment and let me know.

* Of course, only tourists really call it that.
** My brother submitted an alternate epithet, the City That Goes To Bed At a Reasonable Hour.