Darwin at the movies: A festival of apes, aliens and troglodytes

Would we have had Alien, Planet of the Apes and The Time Machine if it weren't for a certain bearded Victorian?
Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston
Planet of the Apes, starring Charlton Heston, offers an uncomfortable glimpse of the far-distant future of primate evolution. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

Darwin, Evolution and the Movies is a one-off festival of film and live comedy to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species on 24 November 1859.

Over this weekend the festival is running at three separate venues across London. Classic films you rarely get a chance to see on the big screen, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and brand new shorts commissioned as part of Darwin200 make up this small but perfectly formed festival.

If Darwin had chickened out in 1859 and decided to put his dusty manuscript back in the drawer, allowing Alfred Russel Wallace to take the fame, and the flack, the genre of science fiction that we take for granted probably would not have evolved to become the seductive, cultural force that it is.

Wallace was younger than Darwin and as a self-made scientist he was an intellectual outsider. It is possible that opponents of the theory of evolution may have been able to silence and suppress his lone voice. If this had happened the narratives of evolutionary themes that today's lovers of science fiction readily embrace, such as the threat of future evolutionary changes, metamorphosis and man's descent into savagery, would not have the cultural prominence they do.

Charles Kingsley was an ardent supporter of Darwin and in 1862 wrote The Water Babies, in part to praise Darwin.

HG Wells – who had been taught at school by TH Huxley, Darwin's "bulldog" – was directly influenced by the notion of evolutionary change over geological timescales and in 1895 published The Time Machine.

In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs explored atavisms and evolutionary regression in Tarzan of the Apes, and Arthur Conan Doyle speculated about a world in which dinosaurs have survived in The Lost World. These novelists directly inspired later generations of science-fiction writers such as Arthur C Clarke and Michael Crichton.

By the 1930s science fiction filmmaking had become big business. Darwin, Evolution and the Movies is London's only film festival celebrating Darwin's contribution to fiction.

What would civilisation on Earth be like if evolution transformed nonhuman apes into the superior species? The festival will screen the original Planet of the Apes movie. This film was so popular (1968 Academy award winner for make-up) that sequels and several TV series followed. But the original was never surpassed.

It explores the compelling themes of the threat of future evolution and man's descent into savagery by offering a neat reversal of primate dominance. Orang-utans are cast as conspiratorial elders, gorillas as aggressive law enforcers, chimpanzees as sinister intellectuals and humans as the dumb animals.

Sigourney Weaver in Alien: Resurrection
Sigourney Weaver in Alien: Resurrection (1997). Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext Collection Allstar/Cinetext Collection/Sportsphoto/Allstar/Cinetext Collection

If we believe Darwin's theory that natural selection is an inevitable, self-propelling phenomenon that gives rise to divergent species, we must also believe the process isn't limited to Earth. It is estimated planets number millions of billions in the universe and as the iconic poster and trailer for Alien states, "In space no one can hear you scream ... "

For the movie HR Giger designed a parasitic killing machine with a segmented exoskeleton of great beauty. In its adult form the alien is reminiscent of a terrestrial vertebrate, but its highly acidic blood suggests internal organs distinct from life on Earth. The lifecycle of the alien is integral to the narrative, as the creature develops from egg, to face-hugger, to chest-buster, to devastating adult alien.

Director Ridley Scott had wanted to conclude Alien with the creature biting off Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver's) head and then making the final log entry in her voice. But the producers refused, (spoiler alert!) believing the alien had to die at the end of the film.

Since 1979 many aliens have perished and Ripley has died and been cloned back to life. The three sequels have taken these beings on a symbiotic journey of selection, culminating with Ripley and the alien genetically becoming one.

Darwin's theory of sexual selection is frequently overlooked in discussions of evolution. I've tried to redress the balance in my own comedy show Carole Jahme is Sexually Selected, which will also feature in the festival, at The Shortwave Cinema.

Darwin, Evolution and the Movies runs from 20 to 22 November 2009 (and late night at The Rio on the 28 November).

Check individual programme details at:

The Lexi Cinema
The Rio
The Shortwave Cinema