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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...
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
What about Solaris? It hasn't been the same since version 2.6, I say. All of that weird skipping of versions and everything just got strange. It's unnatural, I tell you! See, first we had version one, thentwothenthreethenfourthenfive. OK, we're doing well. Then we jumped to one again, but the five was still in there. So really it was two versions. Then we had some other weirdness for a while, and 5.6 was 2.6, but... ok, I could deal with that. Then SEVEN, which was really 5.7 which was really 2.7. Huh? Where does five become 2.6 then become seven? Huh? Now eight and nine? It's unnatural! You just don't DO that. YOu may as well write parts four, five, and six, then promise seven,eight and nine, make one,two, and three and decide not to make seven, eight and nine, then decide to make ten, eleven, and twelve! It's not right! Not right, I tell you! Soylent green is JAR JAR! JAR JAR I TELL YOU!
What were we talking about again?
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
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"
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
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'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").