Independence Day:
70 Years of Sci Fi Through the Eyes of TIME

H.G. Wells meets TIME-Warner

• Metropolis to Independence Day
• time-webmaster@pathfinder.com
• Shockwave version available
• Supports text only

etropolis to Independence Day is a timeline of reviews, photographs and quotes from science fiction films spanning the decades 1920 through 1990. Visitors enter through a virtual door into the time machine metaphor (which has a Shockwave option) and then must choose a decade to visit. Users can travel through the site by whole decades at a clip, and they can also navigate within the individual decade pages to see other movies from the same era (if available).

On average, visitors will count three films per decade, but earlier decades tend to have less and later decades more. Each film boasts one or two illustrations, mostly screen shots, but for some there are production stills and movie posters. Visitors to the site should be advised that the graphic files are a bit large and may strain some browsers.

The rest of the page is fleshed out with text -- about two excerpted paragraphs of an in-depth review and a quote from the film (e.g., "Flash, I love you but we have 14 hours to save the Earth."). The reviews are contemporary to the films: TIME uses its own magazine archives to present a historical perspective -- 1926's Metropolis is accompanied by TIME's own 1926 review.

The look of this site is excellently clean and slick, updating art deco with cyber deco. Navigational aids invite touch and attention through clever, yet understated, graphic gimmicks -- these are really done quite well using simple GIF89 animations. Visitors who don't have Shockwave shouldn't fret -- the Shockwave version doesn't add much, just a razzy tune as they enter and an animation of the TIMEmachine doors actually opening. By far the best innovation is TIME's neat touch of using its own contemporary reviews. This gives a then-and-now look at not only the films themselves, but writing styles (Metropolis' review seems both quaint and high-handed).

Definite drawbacks are the limited number of films showcased, and the untidy, almost neglectful attention to follow-through. For example, the decade-by-decade image map spans the years 1910 through 1990, but visitors can only travel back to 1920; 1910 is dimmed and unreachable. This is unfortunate and replicates the dull pattern of glorifying science fiction's most recent mega-action blowouts while neglecting homage to its film roots.

Conceptually and design-wise, this site is so good that its limited pool of featured films doesn't seem a disappointment, it seems an injustice. The hooks are sharp and reel the visitor in quickly. If TIME-Warner expanded it, this site could become a real powerhouse archive and one of the all-time must-see sites of the Web. However, it is unclear if the site is a non-permanent sidebar to TIME's coverage of the current Independence Day, so visit post haste.

Cool stuff -- At the top of each page is a time machine status bar that declares the year of visitation. As each page loads, the numbers in this bar appear to spin, finally settling on the year of a particular film's release (e.g., 1968 for Planet of the Apes). Neato.-- Tamara

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