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This blog post is supplemental to a series of blog posts examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.

Of the ten top-grossing film franchises of all time, nine of them have had at least one movie earn a Hugo nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation.

The remaining franchise is clearly science fiction, having featured at various times a spaceship that eats other space ships, a device that can alter the user’s DNA, an invisible car, and a city at the bottom of the ocean.

The Spy Who Loved Me features sets that are
totally science fiction.
(Image via IMDB)

We are, of course, talking about Bond … James Bond.

It’s an aging and sometimes cringe-worthy cinematic espionage adventure institution that has spawned 27 “official” films as well as three James Bond movies made by other studios who claimed the right to do so based on nebulous questions about who authored one of the original novels.

Not a single James Bond movie has even appeared on the long-list of works that barely missed the cut for the Hugos.

The character James Bond is as old as the Hugo Awards themselves. He first appeared in the novel Casino Royale, published in mid-April, 1953 — just weeks before the Philcon committee announced they would hold an awards ceremony honouring works of science fiction.

There was a mostly-forgotten James Bond TV movie in 1954, but the first big-screen depiction was eight years later when Sean Connery starred in Dr. No. That was 1962, a year in which the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation was awarded to … nothing at all. Dr. No was the seventh-highest-grossing movie of the year and was instantly part of the cultural zeitgeist — it’s difficult to suggest that Hugo Award voters were unaware of the first James Bond movie, with its radioactive pool, space race sabotage, and cyborg villain with robot hands. An enormously popular science fiction movie, ignored by Hugo voters.

James Bond made his public debut in the same
month that the first Hugo Awards were announced.
(Image via Sotherby's)

One of the most popular Bond movies ever was released two years later. Goldfinger — which famously includes the first on-screen depiction of a deadly laser weapon — was the third-highest grossing movie of the year, and was a cultural landmark. The franchise had begun to introduce the high-technology gadgets that would quickly become synonymous with James Bond, and would cement its place in the science fiction canon. Given that there were only two Hugo finalists for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1965 — and that one of them was the execrably racist Seven Faces of Dr. Lao — it seems odd that Goldfinger didn’t make the cut.

Bond was a massive part of the cultural zeitgeist in the 1960s and 1970s, inspiring numerous parodies and imitators (ironically including Hugo finalist The Prisoner). Neither the success of James Bond — nor its sciencefictionality — seem to have escaped contemporaneous fandom; almost every edition of Yandro released in the 1960s has some reference to Ian Flemming’s spy; Australian Science Fiction Review has positive discussion of the space scenes in You Only Live Twice.

Over the next few decades, the exploits of James Bond became increasingly connected to SFF, as the super-spy would don jet packs, deploy laser wristwatches, and drive cars that transform into submarines. By 1979 — in the wake of the enormous success of Star Wars — the franchise would fully embrace its genre identity by sending James Bond into outer space in Moonraker.

A full quarter of all James Bond movies (seven of the 27 movies) involve nuclear terrorism. Two of the movies involve fictional space vehicles (the Vostok 16 in You Only Live Twice, the Drax Industry Shuttle in Moonraker). There have been genetically-engineered bioweapons (No Time To Die), and underwater bases (The Spy Who Loved Me). This is not to mention the plethora of fantastical gadgets proffered by Bond ally Major Boothroyd — AKA “Q.” A close reading of James Bond offers insights into the evolving relationship between power and technology, between authority and gender, between the human side of intelligence and that wielded by machines.

Bond production designer Ken Adams brought
The Drax Space Station to life in Moonraker.
(Image via Reddit) 

So why is it then that James Bond has never been on a Hugo Award ballot? We have some theories.

James Bond may have all the trappings of science fiction, but it has always been marketed to mainstream and non-nerd audiences. Long before science fiction gained acceptance with the masses, Bond movies were taking genre ideas and marketing them to the very people who were scorning science fiction. In the early days of the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Worldcon members seemed to be drawn to movies that wore their science fiction roots on their sleeve. To be fair, one can understand why George McFly wouldn’t want to give an award to something marketed to Biff Tannen.

The superspy is a rich, good-looking dude who always got the girl. He represented the prom king, the star quarterback, the boss at work. He was never the underdog, he was never the outcast, he was never picked last in gym class. Nerd culture in the 1960s did not want to celebrate that.

Another possible factor is that there seems to be an inverse correlation between the quality of a James Bond movie and how science fictional it is. Moonraker, Die Another Day, and View To A Kill are among the most science fiction-forward James Bond movies, but they’re also generally considered some of the worst. Arguably the best James Bond movie — From Russia With Love — is virtually bereft of any genre elements.

The final reason that James Bond might have been ignored by Worldcon voters in recent years is that modern perceptions of the franchise are shaped by the overt sexism and racism of several early Bond movies. Some of the early Bond films are appalling. It’s for the best that You Only Live Twice — with its Sinophobia — got snubbed, and that the homophobia of Diamonds Are Forever was not rewarded. Although for the most part these movies are no more sexist or racist than some contemporary movies that did get Hugo nominations, they are more well-remembered for that racism and sexism, and consequently these skeezy and unacceptable aspects of the franchise have become a defining feature of James Bond in the public imagination. To many Hugo voters, we suspect that nominating the 2012 James Bond movie Skyfall — no matter how good a movie it might be — would seem like an implicit endorsement of the racism and sexism of the character’s 1960s origins.

Today, Bond has become a shadow of its former glory, a franchise that exists out of momentum and brand synergy rather than being a relevant part of the cultural zeitgeist. James Bond has transformed from a science fiction character into a lifestyle brand. For the past two decades, movies in the franchise are rarely about who Bond is, and more about what brand of vodka he drinks and what model of car you should drive if you want to be suave like him.

Given the weight of the character’s sordid history — and given the way the franchise has been veering away from overtly futuristic adventures — it seems unlikely that any James Bond work will be shortlisted for a Hugo Award. Whether or not any of the previous movies of the franchise deserved consideration is another matter.

1.21 Gigawatts of Pure Entertainment (Hugo Cinema 1986)

This blog post is the twenty-ninth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.

If we had a Delorean, a flux capacitor, and 1.21 gigawatts of electricity, we wouldn’t change anything about which movie won the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Back To The Future — which hit cinemas 40 years ago today — was a cultural juggernaut. It was the top-grossing movie of the year, completely blowing away the competition. It made stars out of Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox. It spawned sequels, tie-ins, spin-offs, a Broadway musical and eventually a Lego set.

Singer Huey Lewis (left) and star Michael J. Fox
on the set of Back To The Future. How the heck
did The Power Of Love lose an Academy Award
to a Lionel Ritchie song from White Nights?
(Image via Entertainment Weekly)

Moreover, it’s one heck of a movie.

But a science fiction movie achieving mainstream success does not guarantee a Hugo trophy — only a couple of years previously E.T. The Extra Terrestrial had earned a bazillion inflation-adjusted dollars, but failed to take home a Hugo award.

The Back to the Future script — which was also nominated for an Academy Award — works with clockwork precision that speaks to careful editing. Almost every plot point is expertly foreshadowed, all characters are believably developed, and every joke feels timed to the nanosecond. The viewers in our movie club felt that their time and attention was well spent, and that every frame was relevant to the story.

Some have suggested that modern science fiction cinema started with Star Wars, but we’d like to suggest that due to its tight pacing, quippy dialogue, and breezy writing, Back To The Future might be the first truly modern science fiction movie.

Our one disappointment isn’t about the actual film. Despite scriptwriter Bob Gale being a University of California classmate and acquaintance of Worldcon stalwart Mike Glyer, there was nobody from the Back To The Future team on-hand to accept the Hugo Award at the 44th World Science Fiction Convention in Atlanta.

Although the post-Star Wars boom was starting to fade, it had still been a good but eccentric year for science fiction and fantasy at the cineplexes. The Quiet Earth, hauntingly filmed in New Zealand, provided a tale of a world after people. Martha Coolidge’s Real Genius kept audiences rapt with Cold-War superweapon antics. George Miller made his third — and weirdest — Mad Max movie. George A. Romero cranked up the zombie mayhem in Day of the Dead. And Larry Cohen’s The Stuff remains possibly the greatest film ever made about cursed, evil frozen yogurt.

Certainly the most eccentric and polarizing of all was Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. In the run-off balloting, it had received almost as many first-place votes as Back To The Future, but earned few second-, third-, or fourth-place votes. According to one con report, it had placed below “no award” on the most ballots that year. According to a contemporaneous account from Evelyn C. Leeper, “Almost everyone who didn’t vote for it ranked it last.”

I suspect that every human character in Cocoon
 would have voted for Trump, even Steve Guttenberg.
(Image via IMDB)

As Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times said: “Watching Brazil, the exploding cigar in the face of the future, is like watching the contents of Terry Gilliam's head erupt in public.”

Although it is often compared to a satirical version of George Orwell’s 1984, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil presents a far more politically conservative view of dystopia. This is a world oppressed by regulation and by bureaucracy, rather than a dictator. The rebellious freedom fighters are those who flout labour union contract terms and fix things without paperwork. The movie is visually incredible, and meticulously crafted from every technical perspective, but is laden with a script that careens from one half-baked idea to the next. While some of those in our viewing group still harbour nostalgic fondness for Brazil, it was hard to argue with the decision to recognize Back To The Future ahead of it.

The rest of the shortlist is even more flawed.

Cocoon was popular with the mainstream media. Beloved by the New York Times, praised in the New Yorker, lauded by the Winnipeg Free Press. Somehow, it won the Oscar for best Special Effects ahead of Back To The Future … a decision that makes us suspect that Hugo voters have more discerning tastes than members of the Academy.

Vacillating between saccharine and crass, Cocoon is a cringeworthy wish-fulfillment fantasy about septuagenarians who receive a miraculous dose of alien Viagra. Most of the acting is either listless (Brian Dennehy) or campy (Steve Guttenberg). Don Ameche — who earned an Academy Award for his performance — is just about the only actor giving the movie any gravitas.

While much has been made of the fact that Wilford Brimley was only 49 years old when filming Cocoon, we found it more unbelievable that Ron Howard was only 31 when writing and directing it.

The Chicago Tribune described Louis Gossett Jr.’s
performance as “dressing up like a
toad and giving birth.”
(Image via Rottentomatoes)

Many of our viewing club had a lot of residual fondness for Ladyhawke, Richard Donner’s fantasy about a cursed knight set in 1300s France. Starring science fiction all-stars Matthew Broderick and Rutger Hauer, as well as a very young Michelle Pfeiffer, it’s the story of a woman who is cursed to turn into a hawk every time the sun is up, while her soulmate turns into a wolf whenever the sun has set. It’s an interesting concept, and one that provides some very good moments, and Rutger Hauer provides a first-rate performance. Unfortunately, the pacing is odd, the plot meanders all over the place, and the villain seems sort of generic. The movie was a lot … less than we had remembered.

The worst film on the shortlist — the only one that certainly didn’t warrant a Hugo nod — was Enemy Mine. Based on a very fine Hugo-winning novella by Barry B. Longyear, the movie follows human fighter pilot Willis (Dennis Quaid) stranded on a wild planet alongside one of humanity’s enemies, a Drac soldier named Jariba (Louis Gossett Jr.). Naturally, the two end up having to cooperate to survive. It’s a bad sign when Battlestar Galactica 1980 not only produced an episode with the exact same plot (“The Return of Starbuck”) five years earlier, but somehow did so with more verve and emotional depth.

Despite being made on a lavish budget by Oscar-nominated director Wolfgang Peterson, Enemy Mine looks incredibly shabby. Janet Maslin of the New York Times described it as costly, awful-looking, and derivative. “Perhaps such things are more fun to read about than they are to watch,” she quipped, noting that the original story had won awards.

Overall, the 1986 Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation is an exemplar for the continued relevance of the awards. This was one of the years in which Worldcon attendees' choices not only reflected the state of science fiction and fantasy cinema at the time, but they honoured what was almost unquestionably the best movie of the year.