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The Wired Top Twenty Sci-Fi Movies
blamanj writes "The June issue of Wired includes a list of the top 20 Sci-Fi movies, based on ranking a combination of Adrenaline, Vision, and Precision. Somehow, they came up with (yawn) Gattaca as the #2 SF movie of all time!?! Their rating system was based on one by Josh Calder, who also uses a three-point (Futurism, Entertainment, Plausibility) system, and has the same movie at #2, BTW. Clearly, I think using such a scale gives odd results, but what if it were weighted differently, e.g., Vision is worth 2x Adrenaline, would it be a better list? And, more importantly, what are the real top 20 films? And wouldn't that list have to include Forbidden Planet?"
Any list of sci-fi that does not include either Forbidden Planet or Fantastic Voyage in the top 20 cannot be correct. Likewise, as much as I do love Bladerunner, it cannot possibly be rated as the number one sci-fi movie of all time by any sane person. Altered States has to be in there somewhere too. Finally, the fact that Barbarella even appears anywhere on the list only serves to remove any shred of credibility for the author...
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So genetic reconstruction of dinosaurs ranks above blurred virtual reality and a revolt against videogames in plausibility? I think there are some serious omissions in this list :(
Yes, as a few others have said, this list leaves out some obvious classics in favor of some obvious blockbusters. eXistenZ is definitely a great movie, and Jurassic Park was a waste of time. Shiney and pretty, yes - good movie, no.
But, come on, Gattaca being a "yawn" ?? Gattaca is an excellent film, and it is science fiction. It's one of the most "real" science fiction films I've ever seen. The acting is superb, and the ending is terribly emotional. No, it doesn't have lasers and battles and monsters and millions of dollars of special effects, but as a sci-fi film I've always thought everyone should go see it. People who complain that sci-fi is just for geeky teens who never really grow up would do themselves a favor by seeing that film. It's quite brilliantly done.
Of course I think that Forbidden Planet was to be in, yet I also think that Metropolis is absolutely outstanding from most points of view (Moroder's re-edition is more suitable for our times).
In general, "classics" seem to be forgotten from this list, apart from "The Day Earth...", and there seem to be a strong bias toward recent titles.
Apart from that I'm obviously convinced that no schema could ever list a proper parade for what is inherently a matter of taste and opinions...
From the article:
But what makes a truly great sci-fi flick isn't just popcorn appeal; it's how well a world is conceived, developed, and realized. Wired's team of serious science fiction fans - led by Josh Calder, who rates films in depth at Futuristmovies.com - determined our rankings by three calibrating factors: a film's power to enthrall and excite (Adrenaline), how well it presents a scenario for the future (Vision), and whether the science behind the fiction holds up (Precision).
The reason why I think they have it nailed can be seen in the superb replay value of most of those films - and the endless debates that they still provoke. It's not that there aren't others which are more exciting, more vision or more precision, but that the combination of the three in the ones chosen is something special.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
First of all let me just say that I support Gattaga being in the #2 slot.
I think that Plausibility above everything else should matter in a SciFi movie. It helps to suspend our disbelief, and truly get inmersed in the movie. For example, it is much easier to see myself, or my future children, living in a world like Gattaga rather than a world like Star Wars or Trek.
Of course, there are many other factors involved in that, and I would say that Vision/Futurism should be a very close second, with Adrenaline being the last. That does not mean that it is not important, just that I like movies that leave me thinking after I watch them.
Accuracy does not mean that bugs in the movie make it bad. It defines the movie as SCIENCE fiction, instead of just fiction/fantasy. That is the beauty of SciFi, the possibility that one day all the things and ideas presented in the movie will come to pass.
Who in their right mind would rank Barbarella on a Top 20 list of anything? It wouldn't even rank well on a soft pr0n list. For that matter, Sleeper doesn't belong on the list either, and much as I may have enjoyed Tron in the day, it's not a great movie.
On the other hand, IMHO, the other movies on the list are great movies, and would make reasonable candidates for a Top-20 list, even if you or I wouldn't agree with their ordering. Just keep in mind that Top-X lists are just tools that you can choose to use or ignore them as necessary.
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
...if plausibility was a major factor in it's ranking. Think about it, wouldn't employers love to use DNA testing to see if you would be a good employee? Employers can interview people in person to see what they are like but the result is just an opinion saying if the person would work well at the company. DNA testing gives you cold hard numbers though. These numbers may not represent your actual abilities but that won't stop employers from using them. Why? Employers like numbers and statistics. When employers are dealing with a 1000 employees, statistical averages is the only way employers can understand what everyone is doing, they can't look at every individual employee. Employers can say "99% of our employees have the XYZ genome sequence which means they are great workers." as oppose to "Our hiring staff only hires the best people, even though they all have different opinions about what is the best and would rather hire someone because they are fans of the same sports teams instead of actually knowing how to program...".
Remember, you're not a person when you walk into a corporation, you're a "human resource".
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...based on ranking a combination of Adrenaline, Vision, and Precision
...but not Writing, Acting, Direction. Don't bother flaming this folks, the premise is flawed and misleading. The article (actually a sidebar) should have been titled "Top Twenty Sci-Fi films, quality aside"
Where are:
Ice Pirates
Spaceballs
Mars Attacks
The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai
Weird Science
? Any and all of these would make my top 20.
I agree largely with Wired's list, with the exception of Brazil and The Boys From Brazil, neither of which I have seen. (The two don't appear related.)
:)
Call Gattaca a snoozer if you must, but I would place it in the top 10 SciFi films that I have seen; definitely top three on the scale they used for futurism and plausibility.
I caught Gattaca on HBO by accident (before they jacked up the price to $13.95 a month... I don't like HBO *that* much). By the end of that month I had seen it 4 times. From the cameo of Ernest Borgnine as head janitor to the all-telling final scene; it was so completely and totally plausible that it scared me. (I won't spoil the ending if you haven't seen it, but the good doctor gives us hope that the human spirit will not be overcome by science and "genetic discrimination.")
Rent it! Or if you are a cheap bastard, er, sorry, "poor college student with 10 megabit bandwidth and several hundred gigs of storage," download it. Some put the poo-poo on the film because it does not have enough action (AKA fight scenes and explosions), but the suspense does honor to the memory of Hitchcock. And it is a good story, despite the cardboard cut-out performance of Uma Thurman in the female lead.
Ethan Hawke is excellent, and Jude Law is good as a spoiled genetic-elite with a spinal injury. I liked Jude better as "Gigolo Joe" in AI, though.
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As for bias, the list IS biased, towards newer movies. Leaving older classics like the Frankenstein pics, Metropolis, The Fly, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Forbidden Planet, and a ton of other films off the list is just short-sighted, and/or indication that they need a larger list.
Minor editorial: if the list was biased towards special effects, they could have put The Ten Commandments on the list... in some people's opinion, it qualifies as sci-fi ;)
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The question is, are you talking about Wired or about Slashdot...?
Omega Man
12 Monkeys
Ghost In The Shell
Metropolis
The Lathe of Heaven
The Fly
Things To Come
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Rollerball
If any confusion arises, the original is the one I'm talking about (The Fly, Body Snatchers, Rollerball).
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I'm with you.
Perhaps some folks think SciFi has to include battles between spaceships, alien invasions/cultures, lots of computers for folks to scrutinize ("...is that GNOME on that system? I think it may be..."), etc. Gattaca deals with actual human beings -- not spaceships, aliens, pod races, blahblahblah -- and does so in an intelligent, stylish way that is not only cool to watch but is also representative of a future that I can actually buy into (as opposed to a future where people live in deserts, fly floating cars, hire flying bug things to run stores, or whatever). What makes Gattaca so cool is that it's believable. I can't say that for the Buck Rogers, Star Trek, Star Wars, MIB, etc. genre of movies.
I don't know if Gattaca qualifies as being #2, but it definitely deserves a single digit rating (no, not "0").
I missed it in my other post, but if there ever was a science fiction film that had a brilliant story (The Anthrax scare last year) excellent acting (Madeleine Stow plays the part of a woman who is intelligent , warm and not some male macho replica, and we all love to see Bruce Willis suffer), Gillamesque wierdness (the strange society under the earth) and a refreshing sad and sweet ending (the tragic hero dies but humanity is saved), this was it.
I actually wonder why this didn't make it onto the list? I think possibly because of the ending. I think it frightens audiences to see the hero die.
Let me chime in on this one as well. Gattaca is definitely a top 5 selection. Maybe one of the most brilliantly understated films ever, an attribute which has to have heightened value in a Sci Fi film.
MY question is why is Star Wars there? Star Wars is so blatantly fantasy that it really has more resemblence to Lord of the Rings than 2001.
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In Alien, the technology is handled solidly and well. There are a few things that we don't know how to do (e.g. FTL travel and "air density" motion detectors) but those items behave consistently. They don't pull any Star Trek "dechyon fields" deus ex machina BS.
Terminator is the same. Okay, you have to suspend disbelief about the way the time machine works ("field generated by a living organism"?) but it's consistently handled, and if we could build an AI cyborg, it could plausibly have roughly those physical capabilities. Even the time loop is consistent, not paradoxical. (Self-causing events are strange, but not self-contradictory like paradoxes. You expect time travel to have no strange consequences?)
And the people in both movies behave like real people. They don't just split up for no reason, they don't walk into obvious traps, they fight and argue and panic. As has been pointed out, the corporate malfeasance in Alien is entirely plausible. Bill Joy and others argue that AI might well destroy us humans - it's not so silly as to render a movie about it unworthy.
In terms of science and behavior, though, The Matrix blew chunks, as you note.
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The IMDB shows popularity. It swings with the times, based on what fan and commercial sites (and Amazon itslef, which owns IMDB) are directing people to the movie pages. Apply some age-based weighting in your head based on that. If you've never heard of a movie and it's on the IMDB top 250 (or top 50 in a genre), it's probably brand new or a pretty damn good movie. If it's on the list and it came out in the last six months, it's probably just popular. Every now and then something current will get on the list and stay, but it's rare, as well it should be.
I thought Gattaca was fantastic, because it wasn't fantastic. It was plausable, a good warning, a compelling story, and relevant.
I believed in the complex characters and, unlike a few recent blockbusters I could mention, I cared what happened to them. That's a much better benchmark than box office receipts.
That and I'd never walked out of a scifi movie before thinking "they're robbed if they don't get the Oscar for artistic direction." Well, they didn't get the Oscar, but they did get a nomination, and that's close enough.
It's great to see this (non-yawn) movie get some much-deserved recognition.
Kevin Fox