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      Did ‘Demolition Man’ Predict the Millennial?

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      A cult classic saw the future — kind of.Now that we live in the future, we no longer seem to make as many films about the future — at least not the way we once did, when we tried our hardest to imagine a future as different from the present as we were from ancient history. Today, with all of human knowledge in our pockets, we prefer to think in terms of alternate timelines, paths not taken, the multiverse of infinite possibilities. We’re looking sideways, not forward. But for most of the existence of cinema, a glorious near-centennial from “Metropolis” (1927) to, let’s say, “WALL-E” (2008), people used celluloid to dream of what lay ahead.Growing up with those movies, I liked to keep a mental scorecard concerning which of their futures seemed most likely. I would have hoped that by now we’d be experiencing the vibrant urban chaos of “The Fifth Element” (1997). But no. What about HAL and the blind faith in technological advancement that connotes progress in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)? Kind of. The computers controlled by constant hand-waving in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report” (2002)? Not quite. All of these are classics, but the one that I think got it most right is a 1993 action-comedy whose hallmark is a tremendous recurring poop joke.In “Demolition Man,” a cop named John Spartan (played by Sylvester Stallone) is frozen in 1996, for spurious reasons, and thawed out in the year 2032, when Southern California has been merged into an enormous metroplex called San Angeles. He’s tasked with hunting down a homicidal maniac, played by a blond, mugging Wesley Snipes. The joke is that in this future, everyone is kind and gentle to one another. Lenina Huxley, Spartan’s ’90s-loving partner, explains that alcohol, caffeine, contact sports, meat, bad language and gasoline, among other things, are banned. “It has been deemed that anything not good for you is bad,” goes the tao of “Demolition Man.” “Hence, illegal.” ‘Demolition Man’ imagined a future generation who might view our civilization, at the peak of its powers, as utterly barbaric.The movie’s pleasure doesn’t lie in its plentiful violence (well, some of it does). It’s in the humor that arises from these future San Angeleans’ disgust over Spartan’s primitive ways, like his desire to use guns and to smoke and to have sex “the old-fashioned way,” rather than through a virtual-reality headset. They mock him over the fact that he asks for toilet paper. (Everyone now uses something called the Three Seashells, which is never explained.) Spartan is baffled by new technology like the omnipresent Alexa-like morality boxes that issue instant fines for offensive language, and kiosks that offer words of affirmation on the streets (“You are an incredibly sensitive man who inspires joy-joy feelings in all those around you”). Stallone’s cop has been subliminally rehabilitated while frozen and wakes up knowing how to knit. “I’m a seamstress?” he laments.What separates “Demolition Man” from other sci-fi films of much higher aspiration is that it imagined a future generation who might view our civilization, at the peak of its powers, as utterly barbaric. We’re not quite there, but it feels as if the world that the younger generations loathe is the one I was raised in. And in the process, this has turned the film, at least for me, into an explosive, sometimes vituperative allegory for aging. As Spartan finds out, it hurts to wake up one day and find that the world has moved on without you.Some days I feel like I’ve woken up from cryosleep, and am looking around to discover that I’m the only one who misses our previous era of casual cynicism and dubious morality and brilliant jerks. Back in the ’90s, I sat in the cinema and watched this film like thousands of other people, never imagining that I might one day feel like Spartan. I am living in the future, and I don’t belong. Everyone else has moved on. I’m still wiping myself with toilet paper instead of the Three Seashells.It’s a shame that “Demolition Man” doesn’t have more of a place in popular culture. If it has any presence at all, it’s through unhinged libertarians online. There’s a person on X, for example, who takes inspiration from the film and rants about what he describes as the “deranged parallel universe” we’re in. These types might be more similar to the only people who reject society in the movie. Led by a cholesterol-loving Denis Leary, who longs to “smoke a cigar the size of Cincinnati in the nonsmoking section,” they live underground eating rat burgers.I’m more ambivalent. Newly unthawed, how would I live? I turn to “Demolition Man” for guidance on how to navigate the future. Most everyone else accepts this timid new world. I can see why — it’s very appealing. Everyone is extremely nice. There’s no crime. There’s the choice of only one restaurant. (It’s Taco Bell.) No conflict is necessary because they’ve banned everything worth fighting over. If this is where we’re heading, it might be better than the past, if not as much fun, infused with a whiff of the dystopian. Everyone else seems to have made their accommodation with this future. Why can’t I?Perhaps I find this film resonant not so much because it turned out to be prophetic, but because it reminds me that I once was certain of what the future would look like and my place in it. I think I’m like Spartan, but I’m actually more like a wistful Lenina Huxley, surrounded by 1990s contraband, unable to let go. “You’re still addicted to the 20th century,” another cop admonishes her. “High from its harshness.” I know how she feels.Kabir Chibber is a writer and filmmaker. Born in Hong Kong, he lives in New York. More

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      Mark Goddard, a Star of the ’60s Series ‘Lost in Space,’ Dies at 87

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      For three seasons, he and a family of five, a wily (and annoying) saboteur and a talking robot were marooned on a distant planet in the far-off future: 1997.Mark Goddard, the actor best known for playing Maj. Don West on the fanciful and popular 1960s science-fiction series “Lost in Space,” died on Tuesday at a hospice center in Hingham, Mass. He was 87.His son John said the cause was pulmonary fibrosis. Major West was the pilot of a spaceship carrying a family of five, a stowaway and a robot in the far distant future — the year 1997. On their way to help colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, their ship went seriously off course, leaving the cast marooned on a different, inhospitable one (though luckily the atmosphere was suitable for human life).That set the stage for encounters with giant spiders, rock monsters, frog people, cyborg armies, space hippies, alien prisons, intergalactic beauty pageants and titanium shortages.The show — created by Irwin Allen, a producer later known for popular disaster films like “The Towering Inferno” — ran for three seasons (1965-68) on CBS. Major West was theoretically the romantic lead, a handsome single man in a uniform, and the first season hinted at a budding romantic relationship between him and the family’s oldest child, Judy (Marta Kristen). But that subplot soon faded into the background.For various reasons, including being scheduled opposite the new comic-book-like “Batman,” “Lost in Space” changed in the second and third seasons from a science-fiction project to a campy series that was more comedy than adventure.Mr. Goddard’s character no longer found himself setting up force fields, aiming his ray gun at rock-throwing giants, navigating rugged new planetary terrain or fending off kidnappers from another dimension. He was more likely to be left behind analyzing soil samples while Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris), the saboteur stowaway, little Will (Billy Mumy) and the robot (Bob May, with the voice of Dick Tufeld) were off getting into trouble with a new creature or machine.Mr. Goddard’s co-stars on “Lost in Space” included, from left, Marta Kristen, Billy Mumy and Angela Cartwright.20th Century Fox Film Corp./Everett CollectionThe other regulars in the cast were Guy Williams and June Lockhart as the space-traveling parents and Angela Cartwright as their other daughter.Don was always the character most annoyed by Dr. Smith, and least sympathetic to him. He could be both hot-tempered and coldhearted, but he dutifully took a spacewalk, against his better judgment, to rescue Smith from the clutches of a seductive alien creature. If it had been up to him alone, he admitted, he would have let Dr. Smith drift through space for eternity.Major West was a role Mr. Goddard had taken reluctantly, not being a fan of science fiction. In his 2008 memoir, “To Space and Back,” he referred to his space uniform, his wardrobe for the show, as “silver lamé pajamas and my pretty silver ski boots.”Charles Harvey Goddard was born in Lowell, Mass., on July 24, 1936. He was the youngest of five children of Clarence and Ruth (Delaronde) Goddard. He grew up in nearby Scituate, Mass., where his father owned and managed the local five-and-ten-cent store.Chuck, as he was known at the time, attended Holy Cross College in Worcester, about 70 miles away, with no particular career ambition. He became interested in acting after appearing in one college play, George M. Cohan’s “Seven Keys to Baldpate.” In 1957, in the middle of his junior year, he transferred to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Two years later, he moved to Los Angeles.He made his screen debut in a 1959 television movie that was meant to be a pilot for “The Joan Crawford Show.” (The series never happened.) He changed his first name to Mark at the suggestion of Chuck Connors, the star of “The Rifleman,” a western series on which Mr. Goddard made a guest appearance — no need to have two Chucks in the show’s credits.After only three weeks in town, Mr. Goddard was cast in a network series. He played Cully, the young deputy sheriff in the short-lived western “Johnny Ringo” (1959-60). A former sharpshooter at a carnival, Cully was brave enough to stand up to armed robbers and bloodthirsty bounty hunters but sensitive enough to be traumatized after killing a man for the first time.“All this time I’ve been handling guns and not knowing what they do,” Cully said after shooting a man dead in a saloon, in self-defense.From left, Mr. Goddard, Robert Taylor and Tige Andrews in a publicity photo for the crime series “The Detectives.” The New York Times described Mr. Goddard’s character as “a brash but efficient young police lieutenant.”Everett CollectionWhen “Johnny Ringo” ended after a year, Mr. Goddard joined the second season of “The Detectives,” a crime drama starring Robert Taylor. Mr. Goddard’s character, Sgt. Chris Ballard, was described by The New York Times as “a brash but efficient young police lieutenant.” “The Detectives” ended its run in 1962. Mr. Goddard’s next series, “Many Happy Returns” (1964-65), a comedy with Elinor Donahue, was also canceled after just a year. Then “Lost in Space” came along.When the show ended in 1968, he had difficulty finding acting jobs. He worked as an actors’ agent for a while, then had the opportunity to make his Broadway debut — in “The Act,” with Liza Minnelli, in 1977. Richard Eder of The Times said the production was “a first-rate cabaret show” but not really theater. It ran for eight months on star power alone.After that, Mr. Goddard appeared in a horror movie, “Blue Sunshine” (1978), and made guest appearances on several series. He entered the world of soap operas in the 1980s, appearing briefly on “One Life to Live” in 1981 and “General Hospital” in 1985 and 1986.Mr. Goddard was married three times. His marriage to Marcia Rogers (1960-68), a press agent at the time, ended in divorce, as did his marriage to the actress Susan Anspach (1970-78). In 1994 he married Evelyn Pezzulich, an English professor, who survives him. In addition to his son John, from that marriage, his survivors include two children from his marriage to Ms. Rogers, Melissa and Michael Goddard; two stepchildren from his marriage to Susan Anspach, Caleb and Catherine Goddard; two sisters, June Merrill and Patricia Panet-Raymond; and several grandchildren.In his 50s, Mr. Goddard went home again. Returning to college after 30 years, he earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and a master’s degree in education from Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. In 1991, he became a special-education teacher in Middleborough, Mass.Even after he began teaching, he took a screen acting job every now and then. He made a cameo appearance in the movie version of “Lost in Space” (1998) and was seen in the more movie dramas “Overnight Sensation” (2000) and “Soupernatural” (2010). But he no longer thought of himself as an actor.“I had a wonderful life as an actor,” he told The Houston Chronicle in 1997. “But I didn’t want to be sitting around in Hollywood, kind of a halfway celebrity looking for his next job.”Bernard Mokam More

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      Do You Know These Science Fiction Novels That Became TV Shows?

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s monthly quiz about books that have been made into television shows, movies, theatrical productions and more. This month’s challenge is about science fiction novels from the past 60 years that were adapted into television shows. Tap or click your answers to the five questions below.New literary quizzes appear on the Book Review page every week and you can find previous installments in the Book Review Quiz Bowl archive online. More

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      ‘They Cloned Tyrone’ Review: There’s Only One John Boyega

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      In Juel Taylor’s imaginative sci-fi movie, Boyega teams up with Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris to find the forces undermining their community.“They Cloned Tyrone,” an ambitious, nightmarish tale about unsettled identity, opens with an image of two blue eyes, strained at the corners. The camera pulls back, revealing the owner of those peepers to be a grinning white man on a billboard with the tagline “Keep em’ smiling.” In front of the advertisement, Black people debate possible sightings of Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson, now allegedly disguising himself with new Black skin. The food mart, with the billboard prominently displayed by its door, is where these gossiping Black folk hold court, and is one of the many institutions that dot the neglected, fictional urban landscape its residents refer to as the Glen.The director, Juel Taylor, sees the Glen as a self-contained world where conspiracy theories are the news section and the neighborhood drunk (Leon Lamar) is a prophet. At the center of it is Fontaine (John Boyega), a multifaceted drug dealer. Whenever he buys a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor from the food mart, he never hesitates to pour a cup for Lamar. He’ll also mercilessly ram an unsuspecting rival dealer with his car, and then later care for that enemy’s invalid mother.Fontaine’s moral compass is survival. The same can be said of the shifty pimp, Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx), who dispenses women like Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) with the assurance they’ll always come back. While collecting a debt from Slick Charles, Fontaine is savagely gunned down by the dealer he hit earlier. Despite the shooting, Fontaine awakes the next morning unscathed. Was it a dream or something more nefarious?The first hour of “They Cloned Tyrone” is surprisingly talkative. Fontaine, Slick Charles, and Yo-Yo — shady neighborhood acquaintances — team up to investigate Fontaine’s brush with death, sharing extraneous banter that often crowds the narrative and slows the reveal. The three eventually discover a series of elevators in familiar haunts that lead to a subterranean laboratory. Taylor positions these sites as places where an outside force can easily undermine the Black community, rendering it pliant through food, religion and beauty products. You wonder, however, whether the film is portraying these spaces as necessary sites for escapist joy or scrutinizing them as crutches.Another fascinating proposition arises when a Black character utters the phrase “assimilation is better than annihilation.” The film covers issues of upward mobility, respectability politics, racial passing, and the distrust some African Americans have of institutional professionals such as the police, doctors and scientists. Taylor portrays Black self-hatred as a danger equal to these extensions of white contempt.A play on “The Truman Show” by way of “Undercover Brother,” “They Cloned Tyrone” also stands firmly on its glossy style — the evocatively smoky John Carpenter-esque cinematography and the Blaxploitation-inspired costumes — and its spirited performances. Even when the dialogue runs long and the film’s frights offer less terror than you’d want in a sci-fi-mystery flick, an inspired Foxx, a subversive Parris, and a ruthless yet melancholic Boyega, who shoulders the bulk of the dramatic weight, retrofit common stereotypes of urban Black life into the rich, dynamic humanism of its reality.They Cloned TyroneRated R for profanity and nude body doubles. Running time: 2 hours, 2 minutes. Watch on Netflix or in theaters. More

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      ‘The Wandering Earth II’ Review: It Wanders Too Far

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      The audacious sequel to Frant Gwo’s 2019 sci-fi blockbuster follows survivors working to avert planetary disaster, but it loses much of the glee of its predecessor.Upon its release, “The Wandering Earth,” Frant Gwo’s 2019 film about a dystopia in which Earth is perilously pushed through space, was minted as China’s first substantial, domestic sci-fi blockbuster, with the box office returns to prove it.The film was entertaining enough, but its ambitious scope had something of an empty gloss to it, partly because the story’s drama wasn’t grounded in anything beyond the showy cataclysm. Its audaciously messy sequel, “The Wandering Earth II,” seems to have taken note and sprinted, aimlessly, entirely in the other direction. Losing all of the glee of its predecessor, the movie instead offers nearly three hours of convoluted story lines, undercooked themes and a tangle of confused, glaringly state-approved political subtext.Boasting a bigger budget and greater expectations — the Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau has been added to the cast — “Wandering Earth II” is, narratively, a prequel. Gwo’s follow-up takes place years before the events of the first film and focuses on the United Earth Government’s initial efforts to push Earth out of our solar system, a move intended to avoid planetary disaster. It sets up flimsy ideas about dystopian geopolitics, man versus machine, and the nature of human consciousness (partly as a back story to the “2001: A Space Odyssey”/evil HAL 9000 knockoff plot of the first film).This is all just in the first hour of setup, before the film does a fast-forward to the next conflict, years later, when humankind needs to nuke the Moon. The premise might be laughable, but silly narrative ideas didn’t get in the way of a good time in the first film. It’s hard to say how much of a true cinematic achievement “The Wandering Earth” was when it gave China its very own “Armageddon,” but after this sequel trips over its armful of melodramatic plotlines and conspicuously nationalist messaging, you’re left wishing you just savored the mindless fun the first time around.The Wandering Earth IINot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 53 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Five Sci-Fi Classics, One Summer: How 1982 Shaped Our Present

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      Five Sci-Fi Classics, One Summer: How 1982 Shaped Our Present“Blade Runner,” “E.T.,” “Tron,” “The Wrath of Khan” and “The Thing” all arrived that one season 40 years ago to become indelible and influential.The future is now: The photographer Sinna Nasseri captured images of present-day New York City as it might have been predicted by science fiction films of the 1980s. Above, a replica of the DeLorean from “Back to the Future” was on display in Times Square. Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.At the end of Christian Nyby’s 1951 sci-fi chiller “The Thing from Another World” — about an Arctic expedition whose members are stealthily decimated by an accidentally defrosted alien monster — a traumatized journalist takes to the airwaves to deliver an urgent warning. “Watch the skies,” he insists breathlessly, hinting at the possibility of a full-on invasion in the final lines. “Keep looking. Keep watching the skies.”This plea for eagle-eyed vigilance suited the postwar era of Pax Americana, in which economic prosperity was leveraged against a creeping paranoia — of threats coming from above or within. The final lines of movie were prescient about the rise of the American science-fiction film, out of the B-movie trenches in the 1950s and into the firmament of the industry’s A-list several decades later.The peak of this trajectory came in the summer of 1982, in which five authentic genre classics premiered within a one-month span. After its June 4, 1982, opening, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” set an unexpected record by grossing about $14 million on its first weekend. Seven days later, Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” debuted to $11 million but proved to have stubby, little box office legs, eventually grossing more than half a billion dollars worldwide. June 25 brought the competing releases of Ridley Scott’s ambitious tech-noir thriller “Blade Runner” and John Carpenter’s R-rated remake of “The Thing,” visions several shades darker than “E.T.”; both flopped as a prelude to their future cult devotion. On July 9, Disney’s technologically groundbreaking “Tron,” set in a virtual universe of video-game software, completed the quintet.Not all of these movies were created equal artistically, but taken together, they made a compelling case for the increasing thematic flexibility of their genre. The range of tones and styles on display was remarkable, from family-friendly fantasy to gory horror. Whether giving a dated prime-time space opera new panache or recasting 1940s noir in postmodernist monochrome, the filmmakers (and special-effects technicians) of the summer of ’82 created a sublime season of sci-fi that looks, 40 years later, like the primal scene for many Hollywood blockbusters being made — or remade and remodeled — today. How could five such indelible movies arrive at the same time?Whether the summer of ’82 represented the gentrification of cinematic sci-fi or its artistic apex, the genre’s synthesis of spectacle and sociology had been underway for some time. Following the pulp fictions of the ’50s, if there was one movie that represented a great leap forward for cinematic science fiction, it was Stanley Kubrick’s epically scaled, narratively opaque 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which not only featured a massive, mysterious monolith but also came to resemble one in the eyes of critics and audiences alike.The film’s grandeur was undeniable, and so was its gravitas: It was an epic punctuated with a question mark. Almost a decade later, “Star Wars” used a similar array of special effects to cultivate more weightless sensations. In lieu of Kubrick’s anxious allegory about humans outsmarted and destroyed by their own technology, George Lucas put escapism on the table — “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” — and staged a reassuringly Manichaean battle between good and evil, with very fine aliens on both sides.The same year as “Star Wars,” Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” rekindled the paranoid alien-invasion vibes of the ’50s with an optimistic twist. The film had originally been titled “Watch the Skies” in homage to Nyby’s classic, but it was an invitation to a more benevolent form of stargazing: Its climactic light show was as patriotic as Fourth of July fireworks, with a distinctly countercultural message worthy of Woodstock: Make love, not war (of the worlds).What united “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters,” beyond their makers’ shared sense of genre history (and mechanics), were their direct appeals to both children and the inner children of grown-ups everywhere. In The New Yorker, the influential and acerbic critic Pauline Kael carped that George Lucas was “in the toy business.” Like the scientist at the end of “The Thing From Another World,” she was raising the alarm about what she saw as a powerful, pernicious influence: the infantilization of the mass audience by special-effects spectacle.Yet even Kael submitted to the shamelessly populist charms of “E.T.,” which she described as being “bathed in warmth.” She wrote that the film, about the intimate friendship between a 10-year-old boy and a benign, petlike thing from another world, “reminds you of the goofiest dreams you had as a kid.”What The Times Said About These Five Movies in 1982Card 1 of 5Blade Runner. More

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      Colin Cantwell, ‘Star Wars’ Spacecraft Designer, Dies at 90

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      He created the look of the X-wing and the Death Star; he also worked on “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “WarGames.”Colin Cantwell, an animator, conceptual artist and computer expert who played significant production roles in seminal science fiction films like “2001: A Space Odyssey, “Star Wars” and “WarGames,” died on May 21 at his home in Colorado Springs, Colo. He was 90.His partner, Sierra Dall, said the cause was dementia.Mr. Cantwell’s work on several influential movies reached its peak with “Star Wars,” George Lucas’s hugely successful space opera. To impress Mr. Lucas, Mr. Cantwell built two elaborate steampunk-like spacecraft models from parts he had culled from dozens of hobbyist’s kits. He got the job before Mr. Lucas had found a studio.Mr. Cantwell produced the original designs for spacecraft familiar to fans of “Star Wars” (later retitled “Star Wars, Episode IV — A New Hope”): the X-wing, the Rebel Alliance’s starfighter; the TIE fighter, part of the Galactic Empire’s imperial fleet; the wedge-shaped Imperial Star Destroyer; the cockpit for the Millennium Falcon; and the Death Star, the Empire’s enormous battle station, with a weapon capable of destroying a planet.“Colin’s imagination and creativity were apparent from the get-go,” Mr. Lucas said in a tribute on a Lucasfilm “Star Wars” website, adding, “His artistry helped me build out the visual foundation for so many ships that are instantly recognizable today.”Describing the design of the X-wing, Mr. Cantwell said in an interview on Reddit in 2016: “It had to be ultracool and different from all the other associations with aircraft, etc. In other words, it had to be alien and fit in with the rest of the story.” He got the original concept, he said, from “a dart being thrown at a target in a British pub.”His original design of the Death Star did not include the meridian trench. But as he created the model, he realized that it would be easier to include it. And it turned out to be critical to the design: In the film, the trench contains a thermal exhaust port that proves to be the source of the Death Star’s destruction.Gene Kozicki, a visual effects historian and archivist, said that Mr. Cantwell was most likely the first person Mr. Lucas hired to design the spaceships.“George had some rough shapes in mind for the ships that would make you know these are the good guys and these are the bad guys, but the details were left to Colin to work out,” he said in a phone interview. “All his designs evolved; it was all a group effort, but Colin was the godfather of the models.”In an interview with the Original Prop Blog in 2014, Mr. Cantwell described his interplay with Mr. Lucas.“He would say, ‘Oh, I want an Imperial battle cruiser,’ and I’d say, ‘What scenes do you want to shoot with it and how big is it?’” Mr. Cantwell said. “He said, ‘Really big,’ and I’d say, ‘Is it bigger than Burbank?’”An X-wing starfighter, one of the spacecraft Mr. Cantwell designed for “Star Wars,” on display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles.Stephen Osman/Los Angeles Times via Getty ImagesColin James Cantwell was born on April 3, 1932, in San Francisco. His father, James, was a graphic artist, and his mother, Fanny (Hanula) Cantwell, was a riveter during World War II.As a child, Colin was fascinated by outer space but could not go anywhere for two years: After he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, his treatment involved being forced to sit immobilized in a dark room with a heavy vest across his chest to prevent coughing fits.“Suffice to say, nothing could slow me down after that!” he wrote on Reddit.He studied animation at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received a bachelor’s degree in applied arts in 1957. A love of architecture led him to create building designs that he personally showed to Frank Lloyd Wright, who was impressed enough that Mr. Cantwell was invited to study at Wright’s school of architecture in Arizona. Mr. Cantwell was accepted, but when Wright died in 1959, he decided not to proceed.“Colin had no interest in working with any other architect,” Ms. Dall said in a phone interview, “so that ended his architectural career.”In the 1960s, Mr. Cantwell was a contract worker for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, developing programs to educate the public about early space missions, and for Graphic Films in Los Angeles, which made live-action and animated films for NASA, the U.S. Air Force and industry clients. Douglas Trumbull, who died this year, had worked at Graphic Films before being hired by the director Stanley Kubrick for “2001.”Mr. Trumbull became a special photographic effects supervisor on “2001,” and Mr. Cantwell joined the crew from Graphic Films in 1967, during the last six months of its production. He organized 24-hour shifts of animation to complete the film’s animation, according to “Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece” (2018), by Michael Benson. Mr. Cantwell also produced some of the movie’s space sequences, suggested different camera angles to depict the arrival of a shuttle on the film’s space station, and worked with Mr. Trumbull to depict Jupiter’s moons.And, Mr. Benson wrote, Mr. Cantwell’s conversations with Kubrick about Ingmar Bergman’s filmmaking led Mr. Cantwell to produce a tightly symmetrical animated shot that appeared in the “Dawn of Man” sequence early in the film: a low-angle view of the mysterious black monolith on Earth, with clouds beyond it, the sun rising and a crescent moon above.For “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), Mr. Cantwell contributed technical dialogue and created early computer-generated imagery of unidentified flying objects strafing the landing site at Devils Tower in Wyoming, for a sequence late in the film. His U.F.O. imagery did not make it into the film — Steven Spielberg, the director, relied instead on old-fashioned special effects technology created by Mr. Trumbull — but the subject of U.F.O.s intrigued Mr. Cantwell, who claimed to have once been part of a group that witnessed a mysterious object in the night sky.In a provenance letter for an auction of his artifacts and memorabilia in 2014, he described the experience: “A silent intense light rose in the east, climbing to our zenith where, instantly doubling in brightness, it launched straight upward.”Mr. Cantwell worked on two other movie projects after “Close Encounters” and “Star Wars”: “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century” (1979) and “WarGames” (1983). For “Buck Rogers,” he created a system that let animators simulate spacecraft movements as they designed space battles.“Colin’s imagination and creativity were apparent from the get-go,” George Lucas said of Mr. Cantwell.Sierra DallHe also worked as a computer consultant for Hewlett-Packard, where he helped develop the first color display systems for desktop computers. He and a team working on “WarGames” used the company’s computers to create the graphics — projected on giant screens at the North American Aerospace Defense Command facility — that appeared to show a massive nuclear attack by the Soviet Union against the United States.Mr. Cantwell also wrote two science fiction books, “CoreFires” (2016) and “CoreFires2” (2018), about what happens to humanity after it has colonized the galaxy.Ms. Dall is his only immediate survivor.A year after the release of “2001,” Mr. Cantwell played a role in the reality of space exploration. As a liaison between NASA and CBS News, he sat a few feet from the anchorman Walter Cronkite, feeding him information, during the moon landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969.“Halfway through the final descent, I alerted Walter to my detection of an orbit change that would consume more fuel, but allow coasting a little further than the planned target,” Mr. Cantwell told Reddit. “When the other TV stations had the ship landed according to their NASA manual, I determined that the Apollo had not yet landed. This was later confirmed that I had the accurate version of landing.” More

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      Ncuti Gatwa Is the New Doctor on ‘Doctor Who’

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      Mr. Gatwa, a star of the Netflix series “Sex Education,” will be the first Black man to play the lead character in the enduring BBC science fiction franchise.Ncuti Gatwa, a star of the Netflix series “Sex Education,” will be the 14th actor and the first Black man to play the lead role of the Doctor in “Doctor Who,” the long-running British science fiction franchise about a time-traveling adventurer, the BBC announced on Sunday.He replaces Jodie Whittaker, who announced her departure last July after three seasons as the show’s first female doctor.Mr. Gatwa, 29, a Rwandan-Scottish actor, plays Eric Effiong, a gay man navigating his sexuality and identity in a religious Nigerian family, in “Sex Education,” the hit British teen comedy-drama series on Netflix.“It feels really amazing, it’s a true honor,” Mr. Gatwa told the BBC on Sunday as he arrived for the EE British Academy Film Awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs, where he was nominated for best male performance in a comedy program for his work on “Sex Education.”“This role is an institution,” he said of the Doctor. “It’s so iconic and it means a lot to so many people, including myself, and so it makes everyone feel seen as well. It’s something that everyone can enjoy, so I feel very grateful to have had the baton handed over and I’m going to try to do my best.”“Doctor Who” fans celebrated the news on Twitter on Sunday, with many expressing their excitement to see a doctor who resembles them. Others noted the low-key nature of the announcement: a tweet followed by a news release that the BBC shared on social media. In July 2017, the BBC announced Ms. Whittaker’s selection in a commercial that aired after the Wimbledon men’s final.In a statement shared by the BBC, Mr. Gatwa noted the importance of “Doctor Who” to fans worldwide, and acknowledged feeling “a mix of deeply honored, beyond excited and of course a little bit scared.”“Unlike the Doctor,” he added, “I may only have one heart, but I am giving it all to this show.”The BBC has aired 39 seasons of “Doctor Who” over nearly 60 years. The show, about an alien known as the Doctor who travels through time and space in an old-fashioned British police telephone booth called the TARDIS, has cultivated a legion of dedicated fans who call themselves “Whovians.”The Doctor regenerates into new people, and in turn, the show replaces its lead actor every few years. Though transitions to new Doctors are expected and eagerly anticipated by fans, the show’s previous attempts to change and diversify have not been universally embraced. When Ms. Whittaker’s turn as the Doctor was announced in 2017, some fans adopted the hashtag #NotMyDoctor and questioned why the character had suddenly changed genders.Ms. Whittaker’s final episode is yet to come, Russell T. Davies, the series showrunner, said in a statement. It will air in the fall during the BBC’s centenary celebrations, according to a trailer previewing the episode.Mr. Gatwa will make his debut as the Time Lord in 2023. More