Revisiting Charlton Heston and His Three Liberal, Progressive Sci-Fi Flicks

The actor who was vilified for his stance on the 2nd Amendment made three of the most liberal and thoughtful sci-fi films of the 1960s and 70s.

Photo credit: Wikimedia

By Daniel Gauss

To me, Charlton Heston became a kind of tragic figure. He had amazing strengths, did an immense amount of good for many people, but, ultimately, like some of the Shakespearean characters he loved to play, he had hubris. The strong ethical orientation that allowed him to help so many people and to completely avoid any type of scandal in Hollywood, also seemed to lead him to pompously and excessively defend a principle that failed to catch ethical nuances and demands.

His hubris, perhaps, caused him to become too unyielding ethically, too wedded to one aspect of a moral issue to the point of losing proper perspective and, perhaps, even some of his humanity.

There can be no doubt that Charlton Heston was a very principled man. According to Marc Eliot’s biography Charlton Heston: Hollywood’s Last Icon, it was Heston who first publicly criticized Hollywood for its racist portrayals of indigenous folks after his film The Savage, in which he played a character who was half-White and half-Native…