Gallery: 9 Imaginary Twilight Zone Films That Could Make You Forget Real Steel
01real-steel-2
Director Shawn Levy's new robo-boxing movie Real Steel will have to punch hard to achieve the cultural relevance of "Steel," the 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone upon which it is based. Although it arrived late in The Twilight Zone's meteoric arc, "[Steel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_%28The_Twilight_Zone%29)" proved a poignant, masterful tale of human resilience and artificial obsolescence. Starring the timeless [Lee Marvin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_marvin) (right) as a boxing manager determined to keep the dream of his decrepit robot boxer alive, [Richard Matheson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Matheson)'s televisual adaptation of his 1956 short story confirmed The Twilight Zone as one of the greatest, if not *the* greatest, sci-fi programs ever aired. Sadly, the PG-13 [Real Steel](http://steelgetsreal.com/), which opens Friday, doesn't totally honor the episode's memory. Judging by the trailers, the new movie's father-son narrative, which pairs [Hugh Jackman](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0413168/) with [Dakota Goyo](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2023672/) and is grafted from dual versions of the [The Champ](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Champ_%281979_film%29), looks like it will cloyingly inject sentimentality into a film that wants to have its [Transformers](http://io9.com/5301898/michael-bay-finally-made-an-art-movie) cake and eat it, too. A more lasting adaptation for the new century would adhere to the original's merge of humans and machines, which is what made the "Steel" story stand out. Mashing our current infatuation with mixed martial-arts bloodsport and fetishism for the latest gadgetry would have been clever as well, and could have delivered a stimulating commentary on what intellectuals [used to call cyberculture](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/cyber-hype) before that term became uncool. Still, *The Twilight Zone* remains an undeniably fertile source for filmmakers looking to mine fascinating sci-fi story lines. Here are nine more episodes of [Rod Serling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Serling)'s seminal series that could be turned into stellar movies.
02twilight-zone-its-a-good-life
'It's a Good Life' (1961) ------------------------- __In the Zone:__ Probably the best-known Twilight Zone episode of all time, "[It's a Good Life](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_a_Good_Life_%28The_Twilight_Zone%29)" puts a petulant brat with special powers in charge of a post-apocalyptic dystopia. From [Billy Mumy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Mumy)'s creepy stare (above) to emasculated parents put out to nightmarish pasture, Serling's adaptation of [Jerome Bixby](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_Bixby)'s shorty scared the crap out of television audiences for decades. __The signpost up ahead:__ What's changed? From Facebook to Glee to governance, post-millennial culture is empowered by petulant brats plugged into distracting hyper-realities, as reality disappears behind the pixels. The remake of "It's a Good Life" should reflect this troublesome trend, as hordes of magically gifted maniac youth hold entire towns or countries hostage in panoptic terrordomes. No happy ending, please. The twist could be that the parents might actually deserve their punishment.
03twilight-zone-to-serve-man
'To Serve Man' (1962) --------------------- __In the Zone:__ In the [paranoid '50s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy) and '60s, aliens often visited only to annihilate you and yours. So when the towering skulls of "[To Serve Man](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man_%28The_Twilight_Zone%29)" benevolently arrived bearing gifts of blinding technocultural progress, viewers pretty much knew that the soft sell wasn't going to end well. What they probably didn't see coming was that they would literally end up on the menu. __The signpost up ahead:__ When it comes to our increasingly unambitious replications of the alien-invasion genre, from bankrupt wargasms like [Battle: Los Angeles](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/tag/battle-los-angeles) to occupation projections like [Falling Skies](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2011/06/falling-skies), we could use fewer death-from-above wish fantasies and more insinuatingly terrifying experiments. Adapted by Serling from [Damon Knight](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Knight)'s short story, "To Serve Man" should serve as a signpost for where to go: Develop an alien invasion less obvious, one built upon establishing mutual trust and, most importantly, access. Once aliens infiltrate our society and pathologically use us as their playthings, as in The Twilight Zone's equally subversive episode "[The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street)," then you'll have not only a really scary alien-invasion epic but also a solid thesis on post-millennial paranoia.
04twilight-zone-the-mighty-casey
'The Mighty Casey' (1960) ------------------------- __In the Zone:__ Rod Serling's mirthful but moving parable of a phenomenal android pitcher should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Like Matheson's "Steel," "[The Mighty Casey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mighty_Casey)" is one of The Twilight Zone's shining sci-fi sports stories. Especially when Casey abandons the sport he so thoroughly dominated because he's determined to experience the full range of human possibility instead of throwing heaters all day. __The signpost up ahead:__ These days, we could really use a sports film that isn't formulaic dreck designed to make men cry. (As if they don't do that all the time on ESPN, or after talking to their bookies.) Instead of a single android wrecking the record books, how about an entire team of cyborg Frankensteins fielded by a megalomaniac team owner intent on phasing humans out of the game? Wait, did I just describe [George Steinbrenner](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Steinbrenner) and the Yankees? Well, you know what I mean.
05twilight-zone-mirror-image
'Mirror Image' (1960) --------------------- __In the Zone:__ [Vera Miles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Miles) delivered a stellar performance in "[Mirror Image](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Image_%28The_Twilight_Zone%29)," written — like so many of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes — by Serling himself. As an unassuming woman awakening to a war with an evil [doppelganger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger) from an alternate dimension, Miles played both sides of an unfurling madness with nightmarish precision. Like [Invasion of the Body Snatchers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Body_Snatchers), which appeared four years earlier, "Mirror Image" literalized our schizophrenic thirsts for innocence and predation. __The signpost up ahead:__ An earnest, intelligent remake of this Twilight Zone episode is a must for existing-property culture vultures. Rather than casting the alternate-dimension lookalikes as mindless zombies, gelatins or fungi, make them sentient psychonauts invested in eradicating humankind and replacing it with their own slipstreaming reality. For a really sick twist, make their reality more wondrous and vital.
06twilight-zone-eye-of-the-beholder
'Eye of the Beholder' (1960) ---------------------------- __In the Zone:__ This sobering beauty allegory is another one of The Twilight Zone instantly recognizable episodes. "[Eye of the Beholder](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_the_Beholder)," written by Serling with music from [Alfred Hitchcock](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock)'s frequent collaborator [Bernard Hermann](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Herrmann), takes a cosmetic-surgery addict through the looking glass to a world where the rules governing perfection and deformity are rewritten. Its twisted ending is one of television's greatest triumphs, so see it if you haven't. __The signpost up ahead:__ We're light-years away from 1960, when "Eye of the Beholder" first aired. Today, cosmetic-surgery addiction is a serious mental and physical illness, from hacked hags like [Heidi Montag](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidi_Montag) to Ryan Murphy's lame Nip/Tuck to the weird beyond, where the late, great Michael Jackson holds court. A shocking sci-fi dystopia about a world populated by self-absorbed psychopaths who have achieved their beauty ideals could make for sobering viewing, especially if it were sharply contrasted with a world outside that privileged mirror, where the disenfranchised deal with far more insane problems than achieving a perfect ass. Films like Brave New World, Logan's Run, Gattaca and The Island attempted this, but mostly failed in the body-horror department. Paging [David Cronenberg](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2007/12/body-language-a)!
07twilight-zone-will-the-real-martian-please-stand-up
'Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?' (1961) ----------------------------------------------- __In the Zone:__ In the '50s and '60s, Martians stood in for everything from communists and capitalists to immigrants and idealists. No wonder Serling's delightfully subversive "[Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_the_Real_Martian_Please_Stand_Up%3F)" was looking for some clarity. A character study of suspicious people restricted to the same space, Serling's meditation on alienation played bait-and-switch with audience expectations, often hilariously. __The signpost up ahead:__ A remake of this clever but accessible episode would work wonders in our age of outsider paranoia and televised propaganda. Instead of Martians, everyone could waste their time trying to ferret out terrorists, Muslims, postmodern primitives, fascists, autistics or whatever — only to find that aliens have replaced all of them. Or better yet, those instigating the witch hunts could actually be aliens from an alternate dimension attempting to eradicate the planet's diversity in a quest for dominance. (See: "[Mirror Image](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2011/10/twilight-zone-real-steel/?pid=4968).")
08twilight-zone-shadow-play
'Shadow Play' (1961) -------------------- __In the Zone:__ Written by the prolific [Charles Beaumont](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Beaumont), "[Shadow Play](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Play_%281961_The_Twilight_Zone_episode%29)" doesn't get as much love as its more-famous counterparts listed in this gallery. It's a heinous tale of a death row convict, played with passion by Duel's Dennis Weaver, whose execution is a recurring nightmare that actually kills everyone else but him. It's like the bizarro lovechild of [Groundhog Day](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_day) and [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Sunshine_of_the_Spotless_Mind), which is to say it's harrowing and awesome. __The signpost up ahead:__ Although [The Matrix](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2009/03/dayintech_0331) gave it a serious go and [Inception](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2010/07/inception-oscar) got damn close, there hasn't been a serious [cerebral sci-fi](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2010/07/gallery-cerebral-sci-fi-films) standout to properly plumb the depths of the mind's ability to create and shape selfish realities that supersede our shared existence. Imagine a film that created multitudinous realities continually locked in interdependent conflict with each other, whose dreamers compete for a consensual dominance. Imagine The Matrix's post-apocalypse with human copper-tops who can actually run their own programs rather than submitting to a corporatist fantasy. The system errors alone would be worth watching.
09twilight-zone-the-midnight-sun
'The Midnight Sun' (1961) ------------------------- __In the Zone:__ Forget aliens; picture the sun itself swallowing the Earth. That's terror of mind-wiping proportions, as well as the central plot of "[The Midnight Sun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Midnight_Sun)," one of The Twilight Zone's most suffocating psychological studies. Its twisted ending may read more like Danny Boyle's underrated [Sunshine](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2011/09/astro-horror-movies/?pid=4739), but existential celestial crises are few and far between in sci-fi cinema. __The signpost up ahead:__ We're all luckily bound to a single planet spinning through space. Being scared of zombies, vampires and terrorists is nothing compared to losing something as essential as, say, gravity or the stratosphere. A film about what happens when the sun eventually turns into a [red giant that incinerates the Earth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Life_cycle) could end up being the scariest sci-fi blockbuster ever made. Let's go there.
10twilight-zone-the-bard
'The Bard' (1963) ----------------- __In the Zone:__ Finally, a time-travel comedy to lighten up the proceedings. "[The Bard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bard_%28The_Twilight_Zone%29)" was the last and perhaps the best of The Twilight Zone's short-lived run of hour-long episodes from 1963. It's a goofy tale of a screenwriting hack short on ideas who conjures the spirit of [William Shakespeare](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare). "The Bard" was written by Serling as a defiant middle-finger to all the advertising executives that made his professional life hell. In its best scene, a thoroughly pissed-off Shakespeare literally smacks down Burt Reynolds. Good thing he didn't unseam him from the nave to the chaps, [Macbeth](http://shakespeare.mit.edu/macbeth/macbeth.1.2.html)-style. __The signpost up ahead:__ A truly bottomless resource, [Shakespeare's legendary plays](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/underwire/2010/12/shakespeare-reboots) get rebooted repeatedly across time, culture and genre. But it is rare that The Bard himself gets to travel through the eons, save for the odd [Doctor Who](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shakespeare_Code) episode or [strange Jean-Luc Godard dystopia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lear_%281987_film%29). Even H.G. Wells got to step into a time machine in [Time After Time](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_After_Time_%281979_film%29), so let's turn The Bard loose on the iGeneration and see how the mythic mind who created the timeless aphorism "[Brevity is the soul of wit](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonius)" deals with the hordes on Twitter.
