There were a lot of sci-fi movies that came out in 1998, and while some of them were major blockbusters, like Deep Impact and Armageddon, there were also cult classics that genre fans watched so much they memorized every moment of the films. When it comes to sci-fi movies, there are often the mainstream films that attract huge audiences, many of whom aren’t necessarily sci-fi fans in general. Watching a movie with major movie stars playing characters trying to save the Earth from impending doom is a big selling point. However, for hardcore sci-fi fans, the better movies are always those that are more cerebral or those that take chances that often cause mainstream audiences to turn away.
The year 1998 had four incredible sci-fi cult classics that true genre fans had on repeat throughout that year. These include a cerebral story based around math, an action-packed alien invasion movie, a dark dystopian thriller, and a high-octane action thriller with a huge cult following.
Darren Aronofsky has always been a complicated movie director, someone who has big ideas and often takes them into areas that are hard for mainstream audiences to traverse. This has helped several of his movies move into cult classic status, with Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain being movies that fans either love or hate. This all started with his debut breakout sci-fi film, Pi. The movie is high-concept from the start, as the protagonist is a mathematician.
The plot sees unemployed number theorist Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) trying to use math to find the underlying complete order in the real world by contrasting two irreconcilable entities: the irrational state of humans and the rigor of mathematics. This seems like a hard sell, and it was. It was a box office success because Aronofsky’s budget was only $134,815 and the movie made $3.2 million. Critics praised the film, and sci-fi genre fans fell in love with its high-concept themes and a storyline that forced them to question the world.
For anyone who hasn’t seen Soldier, it would be understandable because this was an early entry for director Paul W.S. Anderson. Most people today know Anderson as the big-budget filmmaker who makes almost nothing but video game movies with low critical scores and a lack of faithfulness to the source material. However, before he started his long run on Resident Evil, he had a trio of great cult classic movies that stand on their own. They were Mortal Kombat (1995), Event Horizon (1997), and Soldier (1998).
While Mortal Kombat was his most famous and horror fans trumpet the greatness of Event Horizon, not enough people talk about Soldier now. The movie was a box office flop when released, but it was a film that sci-fi action movie fans embraced wholeheartedly in 1998. Kurt Russell stars as a highly skilled and emotionally distant soldier who is left for dead. When he befriends some refugees, his former superiors set out to kill them all, and he has to fight back. The movie became a cult favorite, and it was even considered a spiritual successor to Blade Runner, making it even more exciting for sci-fi genre fans.
The Faculty is the first film Robert Rodriguez made as a director-for-hire for a studio before he went back and took control of his career again at his own Troublemaker Studios. That trivia makes it so interesting that he made such a great sci-fi horror movie, despite not seeming to like the experience of working in the system. This movie is a massive cult classic, with a huge following, thanks to its incredible cast and fun horror alien invasion storyline. This movie is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Scream, and it worked on every level.
The cast was amazing, with the teens played by Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Usher, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, and the possessed-by-aliens high school faculty played by Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, and Jon Stewart. The movie was a box office success, and it received mixed-to-positive reviews, but it is a true cult classic. This is a movie that fans from 1998 can watch today and still quote lines and remember every moment like the first time they watched it.
Dark City is the true definition of a movie made to be a cult classic. Directed by Alex Proyas (The Crow), the movie opens with a man named John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) waking up in a bathtub with amnesia and then learning that people are chasing him. He goes on the run and tries to figure out the truth, which ends up being more bizarre than anyone could have expected. With a cast that also includes William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, and Jennifer Connelly, this is a movie with great actors telling a high-concept, trippy sci-fi story.
As expected, the movie wasn’t a box office success, as it was too weird for mainstream audiences. That said, for cult sci-fi genre fans, this was a godsend, especially when it hit home video, and viewers could watch it over and over again to pick out new details they might have missed the first time. The LaserDisc and DVD were both successes, as they contained a pair of commentary tracks that added to the rewatch value. It also had a director’s cut in 2008, which director Alex Proyas said added to the experience by not only adding more footage, but also removing things he said explained too much ahead of the plot.
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