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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?"
Cheers
, Ian
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...
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Excellent! At last someone recognises that Terminator is superior to Terminator 2. I have to wonder, though, how could anyone rate Jurassic Park higher than Star Wars?
What a shame the write-ups are so cursory. A few sentences more and maybe a few images wouldn't have hurt.
IMDB have a much better weighted ranking system based on user votes. Their top Sci-Fi movies are:
1 Star Wars (1977) 8.7/10 (77559 votes)
2 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) 8.7/10 (31705 votes)
3 Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 8.6/10 (58919 votes)
4 Matrix, The (1999) 8.3/10 (69300 votes)
5 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 8.3/10 (36486 votes)
6 Metropolis (1927) 8.2/10 (5187 votes)
7 Donnie Darko (2001) 8.2/10 (3590 votes)
8 Alien (1979) 8.2/10 (32155 votes)
9 Clockwork Orange, A (1971) 8.2/10 (32662 votes)
10 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) 8.2/10 (11199 votes)
11 Blade Runner (1982) 8.1/10 (42768 votes)
12 Spider-Man (2002) 8.1/10 (10504 votes)
13 Aliens (1986) 8.1/10 (35399 votes)
14 Iron Giant, The (1999) 8.0/10 (6877 votes)
15 Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) 8.0/10 (44823 votes)
16 Abre los ojos (1997) 7.9/10 (2873 votes)
17 Brazil (1985) 7.9/10 (17398 votes)
18 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) 7.9/10 (39419 votes)
19 Day the Earth Stood Still, The (1951) 7.9/10 (5131 votes)
20 Back to the Future (1985) 7.8/10 (34951 votes)
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.
Ed: Fuck! Readership is down, we're becoming irrelevent!!!
Guru: Write another list of top SciFi - wind em up and watch em go!
Ed: But thats so old hat!
Guru: NOT if we have a seemingly scientific rating system!
Ed: I think I've just come!
To paraphrase: "If I've never heard of it then it can't be any good."
Your logic is impeccable; judging the world this way must make your life very easy. I also salute you for declaring once and for all that a movie widely hailed as one of the best ever made isn't any good because "it's boring as hell." I suggest that you avoid the "classics" section of the bookstore - some of those books take HOURS to get through, and they don't even have any sex scenes!
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.
1. Solaris
2. Metropolis
3. Until The End of Time
4. Demon Seed
5. The Lawnmower Man
6. Slaughterhouse 5
7. Fahrenheit 451
8. 1984
9. Final Fantasy
10. They Live
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".
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
...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"
The biggest problem with a list of the "best movies of all time", in whatever category is that things change. The quality/realism of effects has obviously changed over time, but also taste (people like different sorts of movies now than they did twenty years ago), plausability (things that seemed highly probable twenty years ago look very dated now), and what's allowed to be shown (the censors have gotten more lenient over time), so that at the end of the day the best movies of all time - especially in the Sci-fi category - are going to be a highly subjective, and likely to change over time as well as from person to person.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Obviously, the absence of Forbidden Planet destines the Wired list for the dustbin of history.
An ominous sense of Kafkaesque suspense actually can evoke more adrenaline than ten speeder chases. Vision and sociopolitical relevence should be weighted much more heavily than "adrenaline", anyways. The movie version of Orwell's "1984 " is a case in point, on the strength of the story and its continuing social relevence, it deserves a place on the list. Also, on my list, the 1973 cult classic Zardoz blows Robocop away.
Of course these lists are only done as a piece of trollery, which is fine, but what annoys me is when they claim some psudo-scientific system behind it all - such as this ratings "system". Adrenaline, fine, that's excitement, but the other two? "Vision" - how well it presents a scenario for the future, and "Precision", whether the science behind the fiction holds up. Well, most of the movies on this list fail those two.
I mean, take The Matrix: great film (IMHO). But vision - yeah, I can just see a near-future where man and machines fight a war, the machines win and enslave us all as power generators while building a convincing virtual world. Oh yeah, and the science holds up on that as well. Pfffft.
Yeah, Alien as a precise and visionary view of the future: we are going to be chased around space ships by huge monsters. That works on so many levels (Homer Simpson). Terminator - yes, I can see the day (soon perhaps) when metal killing machines are sent back through time. In fact it's probably happening now, and the cyborgs are all working at Wired writing crappy ersatz movie ratings. Based on these ratings, Soylent Green shouldn't be on this list at all because none of the things it predicted for right now have come true: it's Malthusian "vision" made in the 70s turned out to be way off beam for the 21st century - unless you count playing Asteroids.
On the other hand, under vision and precision, Robocop should probably come tops.
Don't get me wrong, I like all the movies on the list, but all this "precision" and "vision" crap is mere justification for someone's sci-fi movie tastes.
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.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
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 ;)
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Not if you're looking for action and explosions, no. But 2001 is clearly a brilliant SF movie, and it's got no action at all. If action is what you want, then choose the best action movie of all time -- but for pure SF, Gattaca is definitely up there.
:-)
And the fact that Ethan Hawke and Jude Law are total hotties is neither here nor there, obviously
Given today's headlines, Brazil seems to be the truest version of the future. From terrorism to coporate abuse of the population to environmental damage , Terry Gilliam has hit the nail on the head. Even the smaller details like abuse of the phone system , rouge technicians bucking the establishment , and lousy technical support ring true.
(Leans back in chair and softly hums Brazil theme song.)
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
I appreciate that they made Gattaca, Blade Runner and Brazil rate highly for the simple reason these movies do some justice to one of the real strongpoints of science fiction - The ability to use an abstracted situation to point out conflicting situations of the present. Whether they do it well or not is another question but they do ask to you to think.
This is not a put down of technical effects films such as the Matrix, which also has that element of abstraction (where are we going with our preoccupation with things digital?) or terminator or the star wars series. There is a need for pure entertainment as well and everybody loves a simple action filled story full of effects and fairy tales. But disliking films because they ask you to think says more about you than it does about the movie.
Some films that didn't make it
A film that was never popular but also had a good mix of action and the think factor (if higly simplified) was Enemy Mine.
And my own favourite fantasy film with brilliant acting and huge laughs was Time Bandits, also by Terry Gillam who made Brazil.
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).
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
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 also like the music Holst made for "Star Wars" too.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Barbarella is in the list, but Forbidden Planet is not? Blasphemy!
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.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
One of the problems I have with judging SF in general, but SF cinema in particular is the extent to which the cinematic realisation is based on a preexisting work, in particular literature. Can one really judge the merits of the cinematic realisation of the future apart from the original author's vision? (and more based on than say, Blade Runner).
:-).
I think that by any standard, there will be an inherent bias against older SF cinema, particularly if the original (as in innovative) idea presented in the film has become passe (Planet of the Apes for example) or SF is merely the setting for an old story (The Forbidden Planet as The Tempest for example) or the vehicle for allegory (The Day the Earth Stood Still for example).
The prevalence of Dystopic future visions, suggest SF as vehicle for allegory and pure SF story telling is actually pretty rare.
Some glaring omissions (IMHO). 1984, 'nuff said. Have there really been no good implementations of a work by HG Wells? What of Verne? A cinematic execution of an illusory world, what about Dark City, if not as good then certainly better than The Matrix. What about Cube? Anyway the list of omissions is, as ever always extensive. But most of all, why isn't Star Wars number 1. Surely by any criteria (except maybe acting
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Here are some movies in the list I think don't belong and why:
5. Brazil
Brazil uses some sci-fi imagery but doesn't really pose any "What If?" type of questions necessary for true sci-fi. It is mainly an exercise in psychology.
8. The Boys From Brazil
This movie uses the concept of cloning as a what if, but is mainly a suspense thriller. Where are the killer androids? (just kidding)
9. Jurassic Park
Action film, again uses cloning as a plot device. Totally forgettable.
10. Star Wars
Certainly not worthy of the top 20. A great bit of entertainment, but it doesn't advance sci-fi at all. Mainly an exercise of Lucas's ego.
11. The Road Warrior
Entertaining, to be sure, but is this really sci-fi or an action film?
12. Tron
This is sci-fi but the acting is weak, the story is weaker. If you are going to have this one on the list you might as well knock off 2001 and replace it with "The Black Hole". Otherwise an entertaining film.
16. RoboCop
Duh. If this is here why not Predator? This is simply an action film with sci-fi as a backdrop.
18. The Day The Earth Stood Still
18. Eighteen? Are they nuts? This belongs in the top 10. One of the only two movies from the entire 1950's to belong on the list at all.
20. Barbarella
This makes the list? Jeez, why not put Zardoz here or the pr0n version of "Blackula"? This movie sucks worse than "Flash Gordon" (70's version with Queen music).
Where is Highlander? Where is The Beach? Where is War of the Worlds? Where is "The Lathe of Heaven"???? Where is "The Man Who Fell to Earth"??? Barbarella makes it and these classics don't? Are they out of their collective minds? Bah! I am so glad I cancled my subscription years ago. I would have written a nasty letter to the editor and gotten all worked up had I paid for this insipid opinion!
Anyway, rant over. Back to work...
I think a LOT more time needs to pass before we can judge films like The Matrix and Gattaca. Part of the greatness of a film is how well it stands up to the test of time. They need to do this again in another 20 years.
Never confuse feeling with thinking.
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
Most science fiction work says more about the times that create it than about the times they claim to be writing about - and in turn, can actually create the future as much as report it. Check out The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of by SF writer Thomas Disch for a funny and insightful take on the relationship between SF and society.