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Space.com's Top 10 Space Movies of All Time
Comatose51 writes "Space.com has posted a Top 10 Space Movies of All Time list based on reader ratings on each movie. Apollo 13 is currently the #1 movie, followed by Star Trek: First Contact at #2, and Wrath of Khan at #3. I was surprised by Apollo 13 at #1, since I initially equated space movies with sci-fi. However, I don't disagree with it. What do other Slashdotters think, or suggest as good space movies?"
. . . and Heavy Metal . . .
and I'm sorry but Episode IV practically invented the "summer blockbuster" for better or worse. It should be listed first.
I'm laughing at clouds.
The original Solaris could well be the best movie of all time.
Bar none. Period. Certainly no other space movie stands close.
Uhm, IMHO, of course.
What About 2001: A Space Odyssey....geez it's a classic :-D
Bad Religion Rocks.
Dude, it's SPACE movies, not SCI FI movies. How the heck is Back to the Future, albeit a very good movie, considered a SPACE movie?
I never watched the series, and just happened to catch the movie two days before it disappeared from my local theatre. It was the matinee, and there were three other people in there with me. I have to say, I've been avoiding going out to see movies in recent years, because there always seems to be some asshat sitting behind me who feels that it's perfectly ok to discuss plot points in a normal voice, or be in a constant state of candy rustling, or other noise that just ruins the whole thing.
... empty ... walking out of those movies. All special effect, no humanity, no heart. Is anyone else yawning these days at the latest, greatest special effects? I mean, it's been a while since I was really wowed by this stuff - I think Terminator II was the last movie that really made me go "hey, neat!". The Matrix was ok (the first one only, please, not the travesty that the other two became), but it was mostly the style (and bullet time) that make that movie.
Anyway, back to the real point: Serenity has restored my faith in movies. Star Wars (the recent run of prequals) almost killed off my hope totally. I just felt so
Serenity was a return to something that George Lucas almost had in his grasp with his very first Star Wars movie: A sense of real people, experiencing real life, only in a very, very different environment to ours. This is true escapism - not Grand Councils and "sheratons in space" (thanks Joss), but real, gritty, imperfect, cowardly, funny, wisecracking people. The sort of characters you would probably like if you met them in real life. Who can imagine interacting with any of the recent Star Wars characters in real life? Sheesh.
Joss Whedon is one of those people who has a talent for mixing the real with the fantastic in a funny, witty way. I think Serenity is right up there at the top of my list of all-time favorite movies. It rocks because it has heart, which so many movies these days lack. The big mistake action movies make is that if you don't care about the characters, then who cares what happens to them? In Serenity, I cared. I took my wife to see it for a second time (had to travel a bit, since it was gone from most places by then). She is not a Sci-Fi fan, but I had a hunch, and I was right - she loved it. That says something.
I also went right out and bought the Firefly DVD set, and we both watched it all the way through over the next few nights. I have to say I am totally amazed that this show was canceled. They canned this in favor of what? More reality sludge? Yikes.
Any Top 10 Space Movie list that includes ST The Undiscovered Country yet leaves out Heavy Metal obviously cannot be taken seriously. And as much as I like Trek, I really don't think ST First Contact belongs on this list either. I do, however, agree with ST Wrath of Kahn. I also take offense at the absence of Silent Running.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Absolutely. One of my favorite movies of all time. The Right Stuff is actually about outer space and the trials and tribulations of reaching it. Most of the list are just soap operas with spaceships.
But I think the top ten is a little biased in favor of movies that are part of a series. I guess that's because the characters are better known ( having spent more time with them ) and because it's easy to carry over karma from other films in a series. ( For better or worse. )
My top five would be, in order:
1) 2001: A Space Oddessy
2) The Right Stuff
3) Apollo 13
4) Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
5) Star Wars: Episode IV
Too bad the list is just space related movies, rather than space related stories in any medium. I'd love to throw Babylon 5 in the mix.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
I thought the list was too heavy on the "air/sea battles transplanted into space" genre (nee space opera), and light on movies with deep emotional content. It looked like one generation's list. To go back a little bit, I'd nominate Silent Running as one of the better movies (especially for the sense of isolation in space, the challenges of living in such an environment, etc.) Besides, with a gorgeous soundtrack by Peter Schickeley (of PDQ Bach fame, amusingly enough), could it be all bad?
"...and even though one of the main characters is Bruce Willis"
WTF? If that movie starred anybody else, you'd be sitting around going "the only thing that could make that better is if Dallas was played by John McCl... ah, Bruce Willis"
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I've got to wonder what standard they used? Apollo 13, 2001 and Contact were solid and obvious choices but a lot of the rest were largely fantasy films. If hard science was a factor most of the rest of the films barely gave science a nod. If it was a science fiction list, several were definately fantasy and Apollo 13 was factual. Seemed to more reflect box office than anything. Another pointless ten best list.
The ONE time those GNAA asshole could post this link and be on-topic, they are conspicuously absent from the discussion.
I don't quite know what to say.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Am i the only one who's tired of hearing about star wars? It was like what, 3 decades ago? All the new Star wars were horrible.. when is this trilogy franchise going to die?
MABASPLOOM!
Apollo 13 is a great first choice, along with 2001, Contact and the Wrath of Khan, while First Contact and The Undiscovered Country being the two most overrated of the Star Trek films. Star Wars is more mythology than "space movie" so I don't think they belong on the list. I'm a bit disappointed that plenty of good (and not so good) 50's and 60's space movies were ignored for this list. It's like the guys making the list were all born after 1975.
Some obvious missing classics:
Forbidden Planet
Silent Running
Powers of Ten (ok, it's a short feature, but still a classic)
And some good ones that are better than ones that made the list:
Aliens
Galaxy Quest
(And if the new Battlestar Galactica series counted it would be near the top of my list.)
No, we're ate least two. And, as far as I'm concerned, it's also time to start easing up on Star Treck, too.
I know I'm the minority on this but I hated First Contact. They ruined the Borg in the movie. What made the Borg unique was their total alien like qualities. Total logic, no emotion, total devotion to a single goal, etc. It made them a different kind of enemy, something special.
In first contact the introduce the Queen Borg who asks just like you average generic power hungry villian. No longer are the borg this unstopable, uncarring machine, now the Borg are just a the standard typical enemy you can try to seduce, reason with, etc.
How sad to take such an interesting race and completely ruin it's interesting qualities.
I find it hard to believe that Space.Com, of all people, left out the first movie really worthy of the term "Space Movie"! Sure, it's old and dated, but Destination Moon was the first movie to even TRY to take the idea of space travel seriously. It stands with Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still as the only even half-way decent science fiction movies of its day, but those other two really aren't space movies. They may have space ships, but they're not about space travel, per se.
I cant believe i neglected it!
I did read the book. When it first came out. In 1985. And I like the movie.
I learned a long time ago that translating a book to a movie inevitably involves a lot of compromises -- at least with any book over a hundred pages. In the case of Contact, I think they made them admirably.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I understand that this list is most likely biased to the teen to early 50's crowd, as most kids under 12 would fall asleep watching a movie like Contact and most senior citizens would not be interested in a movie like star trek 2. Many of my favorite movies are those that I saw before I was a teenager; Star Wars 4-6, Star Treks 1-3, Alien(s), and even Flash Gordon.
Having said that, I have a little kid and when his little friends come over to play, we sometimes try to get them to settle down and watch a movie when it starts getting late. We have tried so many movies, mostly kids movies, but nothing ever works. They keep running around playing.
When the Star Wars 4-6 dvd set came out, I tried getting them to watch the original Star Wars for the first time. It only held their attention for about 15 minutes. I tried episode I and II at different times but both had the same effect. When the episode III dvd came out, one of the other kids parents told me she and her kid, age 5, hadn't seen it yet. My kid also hadn't seen it yet so I decided to give it a try. Then the unspeakable happened, the kids sat quietly and watched in amazement. I had never seen anything like it. I will admit that I fast forwarded through any parts of the movie where both anikan and padme where on the screen at the same time.
The thing that I realized was that my kid was experiencing the same thing I experienced when I was about his age and I saw Episode IV. Sure most of us in our generation would never place a movie like Episode III in our top ten space movie list but it's quite possible that 20 years from now this movie could be in the top 5. How many of our parents, who are now seniors, have nostalgic memories of shows like the Lone Ranger the same way we have nostalgic memories of sitting in a theater watching Star Trek 2 for the very first time?
I second that list... I thought Bladerunner and Aliens *should* have been on that list.
I think IMDB's ratings are very much representative of real opinion... more so than other sites. (Larger voting community... and more globalised)
Well... The list is biased and severely americanized. There is not a single movie on it shot outside the US. Hello yanks? Ever heard of Solaris? Stalker? It is also missing what is for me possibly the best sci-fi movie of the 90-es. Gattaca.
We can continue, but frankly, this poll is best ignored.
Typical "the world according to America" http://www.msxnet.org/humour/america
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Don't forget the large number of films that are made that go straight to DVD. I suspect that with the increase in home cinema quality (and the corresponding decrease in price) there will be a shift over the next decade or so away from seeing the cinema as the place to make money on films. This can't happen fast enough for me - I object to paying the same price for two people to go and sit in uncomfortable chairs and watch a film once as I would for the DVD, and it irritates me that there is such a long delay between cinema release (which I probably won't go and see - I'd have made an exception for Serenity if I'd had the option), and DVD release.
Ideally, worldwide iTMS (or whatever competitor provides a better service) and cinema releases should be simultaneous. This seems to me to be a good way of eliminating piracy too.
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This is possibly because it got very, very little cinema exposure.
Not so. It opened in over 2000 theatres, but had a very weak first weekend (only a little over $4000 per theatre, when a solid movie with lots of media exposure and buzz should be earned >> $10000 per theatre). The reason it was pulled fast was because it did so bad, not the other way around. Similarly, I think we have to accept the show didn't do badly because it was moved around and given strange timespots. It was moved around and given bad spots because it did badly.
I loved the show, and I am sure I will like the movie when I get to see it (it was pulled from cinema release in this country after it flopped stateside), but we all know there is a pretty big gap between what is good and what is popular. Despite all the geek attention, Firefly/Serenity simply doesn't sell to any larger audience. Sorry guys.
How can you believe that, given that it was screwed with starting from before it even aired? Fox didn't even show the pilot, the thing which introduced everybody and set up the entire story, until after they had cancelled the show. I don't know about the movie, but the series never got a chance.
I agree about Gattaca, but do note this list is about space movies rather than sci-fi ones, and includes a number of non sci-fi films, including both docudramas (like Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff) and documentaries. Gattaca does have space-related elements, but the sci-fi focus is on earthbound genetics. Whether it's sufficiently space-related to be on the list I couldn't say; I didn't see it there, but the way the list is set up it's hard to know for sure if a movie is on it unless one sees it there.
What are you talking about, it opened with 40% of the gross for that weekend. At #38, Wallace and Grommit didn't do $10000/theater either. I don't see that being in the top 100 means it was a "flop". It shows it as being #42 for September openings (going back at least to '91). It did better than the other two widely released films that week (Into the Blue and The Greatest Game Ever Played). For a film that everyone said was going to be a total failure because only "the faithful" would bother watching it, it did spectacularly well, and will undoubtedly also do well on DVD.
I know the reason we didn't watch Firefly on TV was because it was on Fox. Fox has a history of screwing up good shows, so we tend not to even bother watching them, if its any good they'll just cancel it. They showed the truth of this by airing them out of order from the beginning, confusing the audience, then screwing up the scheduling and "counter-programming", then canceling it.
That is the most frustrating thing. If they would say the movie is one million years in the future then many of the things they portray would gain believility since it would be impossible to relate to such a different time in history.
We know that almost for certain we will recognize many things of human society in 500 years althought certainly many will look like magic to us, but certainly one would be able to digest how things progressed if given a chance.
The point is that in 500 years we know we will not be in the technological situation portrayed in the movie, and this, amongst many other things, makes it completely absurd.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You're right except for one aspect, it did NOT get "a lot of attention" and was not "high profile".
Almost nobody I know even knew this movie existed until I told them about it. Nobody saw a poster or ad that they remembered.
I blame it entirely on the marketing effort. Advertising was almost non-existant, and what little did seemed to consist of posters with Mal and Inara staring wistfully into space. Combine that with a name like "Serenity" and on casual inspection it looks like some instantly forgettable romantic schlock.
They should've had posters that emphasized the action, the spaceships, River kicking ass with an axe and combat boots.
And MAN... where was the marketing blitz after the opening weekend? Critics and audiences everywhere LOVED it, why weren't they trumpeting this fact all over the place? I was expecting to be assaulted for a week with choice quotes from respected sources, and shots of people exiting the theatres absolutely gushing about the movie, interwoven with some good one-liners and action shots from the movie. But we got NOTHING.
Fuck, this movie got 87% from RottenTomatoes' "Cream of the Crop". The New York Times wrote "Joss Whedon's unassuming science-fiction adventure is superior in almost every respect to George Lucas's aggressively more ambitious screen entertainments." Orson Scott Card called it the greatest sci-fi movie ever made. Why they didn't exploit this kind of praise for all it was worth is completely beyond me.
Maybe they thought grassroots word-of-mouth would be enough, but it obviously wasn't.
Nonetheless, many terrific movies did poorly in box office, and went on to become cult classics. I still have faith that Serenity's quality and accessibilty will be major assests in the long run.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson