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Chess in Cinema
Sometimes science-fiction chess shows how human games have evolved. The Star Trek TV and movie franchise is one of the best examples. Leonard Nimoy's character of Mr. Spock is often shown playing three-dimensional chess. Another movie variant is holographic chess, as seen in Star Wars IV: A New Hope. Warned by Han Solo that Chewbacca rips arms out of sockets if he loses, C-3PO advises R2-D2, "Let the Wookiee win." Rivals, masterminds, and fate Chess is also used in the movies as a microcosm for larger puzzles and rivalries, or to visualize the discipline and calculation of an introspective character. In The Talented Mr. Ripley, for example, the devious Matt Damon is seen playing chess against Jude Law's character, whose identity Damon/Ripley will cunningly assume. And in the final scene of the movie X-Men, rivals Magneto and Charles Xavier are shown playing chess in Magneto's plastic jail cell. In the movie Superman II, Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor escapes from prison by creating a 3-D holographic image of himself playing chess. Luthor was played by Gene Hackman, who appeared in another film where chess served as an important symbol. In Night Moves, Hackman plays detective Harry Moseby, who is obsessed by a chess match in which a chess champion lost because of his inability to spot a trap. The match comes to represent Moseby's own wasted life. Moseby would have agreed with science fiction author HG Wells, who once wrote "There is no remorse like the remorse of chess." In the Jack the Ripper time travel movie Time After Time, the character of Wells, played by Malcolm McDowell, chases Jack, his former chess opponent, into the 20th century. Not all chess masterminds are bad guys. Case in point: analytical genius Sherlock Holmes. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes, played by Peter Cushing, is shown puzzling over a chess move. Ironically, Cushing's nemesis in the movie Dracula, Christopher Lee, would later take on the iconic detective role in Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady, in which Holmes plays chess against his assistant Dr. Watson. Chess has also been used in movies to symbolize the conflict between good and evil or life and death. In Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, a medieval knight challenges Death to a chess match in order to prolong his life. On a campier note, chess represents fate in Jason and the Argonauts, in which humans are depicted as chess pieces being played by the gods. Movies about chess
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