Best SF Movie Directors

Until my teenage years, I did not pay much attention to movie directors. I did not really know what they actually do nor, for that matter, how movies come into being. I just enjoyed the show.

But under the influence of my friend, a few years my senior and already an SF movie buff, my perspective started to change.

Often her first question, after my exuberant description of a science fiction movie, was: "Who directed it?" and of course, I did not know the answer. At the time I had eyes just for actors.

Her question made me curious, though. It prompted me to find out more. Eventually I discovered a colorful world behind the curtains, which, needless to say, mesmerized me all over again.

End credits, suddenly, became much more than a long list of names. While I listened to the closing music, they didn't blur into a big mass of letters anymore. In the cinema, I started to sit through them reading as much as I could, and I marveled at the amount of work every person on that list put into the movie - often risking being the last one to leave the theater and sometimes getting impatient looks from the cleaning crew. :)

I watched 'making of' documentaries on TV whenever I stumbled upon them and enjoyed watching them as much I enjoyed watching the finished piece.

Nowadays it is a special treat for me when DVDs come out with all kind of extras including werkfilm of the movie and director's comments.

Watching how movie directors and their crews create scenes I loved in an SF movie gives me a whole new sense of adventure. When I learn how they made them, how much work and sweat went into them, or how much good ideas and solutions they had to come up with to solve a particular problem, I come to appreciate the movie even more and see it from an angle I did not consider before.

So here they are: list of science fiction movie directors whose work enriched the genre we adore to explore.

Lights, camera, action!

• James Cameron
• John Carpenter
• David Cronenberg
• Stanley Kubrick
• Fritz Lang
• David Lynch
• Georges Melies
• Andrey Tarkovskiy
• Ridley Scott
• Steven Spielberg

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