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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?"
Zathura was actually quite a good movie, i was somewhat imprssed with it. i think, that given time itll make this list.
I think Serenity hasn't been around long enough to sink in to the culture properly, but god, such a good movie. Firefly was a good series too.
First Contact before Empire Strikes Back? I liked them both, but c'mon now. Overall I think the top ten are solid choices, but the order leaves a little to be desired.
That's the shit that feds me up
They don't really define what constitures a "space movie," though. Does it take place in outer space? What if it's set entirely on another planet? Blade Runner is one of their candidates, but it hardly involved outer space at all. Are they using the term just to avoid the annoying flamewars about what defines "science fiction?"
Then I nominate "The Right Stuff". Also I think this list is a little too Star Trek heavy (but I'm probably in the minority on that).
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
2001 is one of the best scifi movies.
Also don't forget StarTrek the motion picture. The original was long in spots but none of the others were as deep. The ending was great.
They missed Airplane II. Easily the best space movie EVER!
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but what about Dark Star? Come on people, it was co-written by Dan O'Bannon, who later reused the "alien mascot" section of the film as the basis of his script for Alien FFS!!
Directed by (the) John Carpenter as well.
And then there's Silent Running, although wabbits being nuked is probably not a big vote winner among the majority of popcorn-crunchers.
Spaceballs forever!
When you consider that this film was made in 1968 it wasn't until 1977 when Star Wars appeared that you could get something to actually compare with in quality. And even though that film is almost forty years old it is still a film that you can watch. The only thing that it actually missed was the political situation in the world of today, but wh coul tell that at a time when the Soviet Union was at it's height and al-Qaeda wasn't known. The worst terrorists at the time was PLO and Lebanon was a holiday paradise.
Personally I don't give much for the Alien films, but it's a matter of taste.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
- Star Wars 4
- Star wars 5
- Alien
- Aliens (the sequel to Aliens)
- 2001: A Space Oddysey
- Blade Runner (well if Contact is on the list, why not this?)
- Star Wars 6
- Star Wars 3
- Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
Yes, i've gone against convention and used digits not roman numerals for the Star Wars films. I'd be interested to see are larger list - Star Wars/Trek domaination makes it seem more like a top 5.I find it very sad, that the list contains little less than a bunch of star wars/star treck movies. Who was the voting audience? Space Odyssey only #5? No Aliens? (OK, at least Alien is on the list). Where is "Blade Runner"? "Total Recall"? "Dark Star"? Hell, even "Stargate" or "Starship Troopers" deserved to get on that list more than some other entries ("Contact", for example, is a very good book, but a mediocre movie - to say the least).
My opening three exactly. Only 2001 makes space look BIG. Jupiter is a long long long way away.
The Star Wars movies and their space opera ilk make hopping across the galaxy like a flight in a commuter airliner. The amenities are no different! Where do you sleep in the millenium falcon???
Dune should also be in there as it also makes the distances involved to be a major hurdle to the extent that people are sacrificed as "navigators' in order to make real time travel possible. Prior to spice it was all slow boats.
It was a wonderful movie - and it was about /going/ on a space mission. Not too much of science fiction in there.
It should have been there on the list. 'Contact' sucks, really, except for '22 hours of static on the tape'. It's more about Jodie Foster as this astronomer(!), and her fixations. The part where she uses the 'man can fly' analogy is the worst, and very obvious.
But hey, don't flame me, I'm clueless.
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I thought Serenenity was a very good movie, which leaves me more annoyed that like effectively all hollywood SF movies, it had no real concept of astronomy, how really far it is between planets in a solar system. (Or how vastly far it is in a galaxy, which Firefly sometimes declared to be its setting.)
A solar system is not like a western frontier where you meet other ships along the trail. And a solar system with hundreds of moons around many planets will have, depending on the place in the orbit, immense vast distances between planets on opposite sides of the star, and relatively short ones between moons, but still a vast void on all trips. You are not going to happen to run into Reaver ships.
Now as I said, most shows get this really wrong. To some extent the shows with FTL get it "better" even though FTL is itself fantasy, at least you get a reason to not treat the differences as so vast. Hyperspace jumps, another fantasy, are even better.
2001 got space right. Apollo 13 did (duh.) Few other films and very few TV shows ever did.
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Someone said that a good war movie isn't about what people do in war. It's about what war does to people.
I agree with that sentiment and I think one could perhaps adopt that here: A good space movie isn't about people doing things in space. It's about what space does to people.
And in that category, there really isn't any movie like "2001". I don't know any movie which has tackled the issues of space travel like that. Man and machine. Man and space. The mysteries of the universe. Alien intelligence. It's all in there, almost like a guide to the philosophical issues of the space age.
Not that it has any answers. You've got to find those on your own. But it poses questions nobody had dared do before in Sci-Fi films. And it manages to do it without being noisy about it, unlike, say, The Matrix, which is quite overt with its philosophical pretentions. (Or worse, the contemporary 1968 "Planet of the Apes")
Add to that the stunning special effects for its age which were truely groundbreaking, the great directing by Kubrick, including some now-legendary segues like the bone-to-spaceship cut. And his usual incredible attention to detail. (missing though, that Pan-Am and the Soviet Union would be gone by 2001)
A lot of people are talking about Star Wars. Really, I'm a huge Star Wars fan, but you just can't compare them. Star Wars was just a revival of the old Flash Gordon matine. It's a great movie in it's own right, but it doesn't really aim higher than to be entertaining, and it's not really a space movie. I mean, the fact it's in space isn't terribly relevant to the plot, is it?
Well, that's what I think anyway.
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Fox has a long history of screwing with the schedule of a potentially great show and then cancelling it because the ratings drop. Firefly, Arrested Development, Futurama, The Critic, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr, and they keep trying to drop Family Guy. On the other end, they keep showing tripe like MadTV (never saw anything funny on there, just horrible acting, mugging for the camera, and flat out insulting situations) and Malcolm in the Middle. Somewhere in the middle they let series that were once good run way longer than they should after all the creativity is gone and the shark has been jumped over and over: Married With Children, Simpsons, That 70's show, 21 Jump Street, Beverly Hills 90210, arguably the X-files, arguably King of the Hill.
On the other hand, they are the only network to give a lot of programming a chance that other networks wouldn't have touched... everything I mentioned above plus Boston Public, Dark Angel, Get a Life, Herman's Head, Normal Ohio, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, etc etc etc (not claiming the quality of these, but that other broadcasters probably wouldn't have touched them.) Also, I'll give Fox credit for not starting the whole reality TV thing (That's MTV's fault, or CBS bringing Survivor in) but when they do bite on it, it's horrid, soulless stuff like Trading Spouses, Renovate my Family, The Simple Life and The Swan (the Swan being possibly one of the most evil shows on. Take a bunch of ugly to average looking women with low self esteem. Give them makeovers, plastic surgery, wardrobe changes, etc. Finally, tell all but one of them that they're still not good enough. Vile and disgusting. Not to mention that usually once you get plastic surgery, after a couple years you grow out of it and need to get it again otherwise you look worse than you otherwise would have.)
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You must read Polish or French, because the English translation of Solaris (which is a translation of the French translation, not of the Polish original!) is unreadable. What they really need to do is to get it re-translated by Heine or Kandel (the translators of Imaginary Magnitude and Fiasco).
You sound like a fan, so I'm surprised you're overlooking the fact that Universal did a terrible job at marketing the film. Instead of really spending money and publicising it they decided to market it to the existing fans in the hope that they would take people along to see it and it would be marketed by word of mouth. Conversely, films that everyone and their dog will go and see anyway (Harry Potter, Star Wars etc) have huge marketing campaigns. I know this is because those films will make their marketing budget back many many times over from sales, but I honestly think that if Serenity had been given better marketing it would have done better in cinemas. Of course, here in the UK it opened at #1 so it just goes to show that we appreciate good movies :P
Prior to that revelation, however, she, the scientist, finds herself in a situation not unlike that of her religious friend - she's just had a life-changing experience, she knows she's had it - yet all she has left to go by at that point is, it seems, faith. No evidence, no anything. Had everything been explained, had there been certainty, or had it been yet another little space adventure, the movie would have missed its own point. I'm not sure I agree with that point, nor is it a particularly brilliant point, but I did enjoy that movie more than any of the others in that list.
(I also find Khaaan painfully dull, for reasons I could not adequately explain, so shoot me already.)
That wasn't her dead father, btw., it was an alien lifeform masquerading as her father to "make it easier for her" (whether that makes sense or not) and, perhaps, to make it more mysterious for us. Frankly, I liked how there were but a few scant hints at an interstellar transport network, no more than a short glimpse or two of an illuminated alien city... in a way this was more impressive and felt a lot larger than the over-crowded scenery of several Star Wars films combined.