INTRODUCTION

One can position much of millennium and post-9/11 science fiction cinema as being predicated on threats to national and regional security; to the fragility of community and the human body as it is washed over by virus, contagions; is taken over by invaders or machines; or is fire bombed in spectacular scenes of devastation and destruction. In films such as Ever Since the World Ended (2001), 28 Days Later (2002, UK), Resident Evil (2002), Ultraviolet (2006), I am Legend (2007) and Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), both the individual's body, and the wider body politic, are under threat from human-made viruses and viral mutations that having been set free, render flesh and democracy as diseased, infected, pathological or as a barren incubator for the Armageddon that is soon to be born.

In Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001), I, Robot (2004), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004), Transformers (2007) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), cyborg machines and machine monsters threaten the supremacy of the military-science-business nexus, and of what constitutes or counts for a human being in what is signposted as a post-human age of egotistic nihilism and frightful globalisation. In The 6th Day (2000), The One (2001), Natural City (2003, South Korea), The Island (2005), Moon (2009) and Oblivion (2013), the practices and processes of cloning and genetic engineering have resulted in new hierarchies of power and perfection; the blurring of the human/machine dichotomy; and the trade and traffic in human bodies to seed these present-future avatars and clones.

In Matrubhoomi: A Nation Without Women (2003, India), Aeon Flux (2005) and Children of Men (2006), human bodies are infertile or barren and civilisation is therefore on the verge of extinction. In films such as Signs (2002) and War of the Worlds (2005), despicable alien invaders attack and destroy the institutional, political and cultural organs of society, while the threat is perceived as coming from within. In The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and Sunshine (2007, UK), ecological disaster threatens to wipe out the human race. And in films such as Minority Report (2002), Equilibrium (2002), Banlieue 13 (2004, France), V for Vendetta (2005) and The Hunger Games (2012), dystopic totalitarian regimes will the body into docile submission and compliance. In response, heroic narrative agents emerge, or resistance movements rise up, to reclaim the streets.