10 Greatest Directorial Debut Sci-Fi Movies
4. Silent Running
Douglas Trumbull started out in the film industry as a visual effects artist, following in the footsteps of his father Donald Trumbull who created effects for the groundbreaking The Wizard of Oz back in 1939. It was quite surprising then, when Douglas tried his hand at directing with 1972's Silent Running, and ended up creating a sci-fi classic for the ages.
Led by a brilliant performance from a young Bruce Dern, Silent Running centres around an Earth where all plant life is becoming extinct, leading humanity to preserve what remains in greenhouse-like domes orbiting Saturn. Dern plays botanist Freeman Lowell, who's tasked with maintaining one of these domes. But after his superiors order the domes destroyed, Lowell rebels and instead opts to save the plants and animals on his ship.
What follows is a beautifully simple story of conservation, protection and isolation, with some unsurprisingly excellent special effects that still hold up to this day. In fact the main reason why Trumbull chose Saturn as the place of orbit for the bio-domes is because he'd already started mocking up special effects of the planet for 2001: A Space Odyssey, before Kubrick decided to go with Jupiter for the stargate sequence.