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NASA Names Best & Worst Sci-Fi Movies of All Time
mvar writes "Working through the year-end best/worst movie lists can be a feat of Olympic proportions, but there's one list which is so damn cool you'll definitely want to give it a whirl. NASA and the Science and Entertainment Exchange have compiled a list of the 'least plausible science fiction movies ever made,' and they ranked the disastrous (in more ways than one) 2012 as the most 'absurd' sci-fi flick of all time."
'nuff said.
How is it NASA is qualified to judge the best and worst Sci-Fi movies of all time? Don't they have something more important to be working on?
I can't argue with it. It was an insanely awful movie, both for the absolutely retarded "ooh, look, Africa just rose a mile", but just as importantly because it was just a plan bad film.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Need Another Seven Astronauts
Just sayin'
If I recall correctly, 2012 was the disaster movie that caused hundreds (maybe thousands) of overly emotional retards to call NASA directly and ask whether the world was actually going to end. I think one caller even asked NASA if they should kill their child now, in order to save them the pain of having to deal with the 2012 apocalypse. I know if a particular movie turned my work phone into a spam pot for dipshits I would declare that movie the ultimate fuck up of all time as well.
I think next we'll see NASA using it's orbital lasers to melt John Cusack's for his role in that film, at least, I can dream.
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Well, now I know why we never returned to the moon
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
They don't even list "Capricorn One".
Even when I saw the name here, I was like: "wow, is that another 2001, like 2010? I should see that" Then I looked it up on IMDB. :(
I'll have to post without RTFA (what a shame). Gattaca is cool, but come on... instant sequencing of genomes?
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
"GATTACA" is considered the "most realistic." The fact that its politics is so obvious, its smarmy moralizing oozes from every frame, and it's "space mission" at the end consists of people in 3-piece suits entering what looks like an elevator in the lobby of a modern office seem not to weigh against it. I think we're seeing at work the presumption that in order for a film to be considered scientifically-accurate, it must first be considered a terrible bore.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
...a new form of life on Earth which turned out to only be a present form of life that adopted to arsenic, I don't give NASA much credit lately except in the area of grandstanding. Guess this is what we get when NASA's shuttle funding gets cutoff.
Please, if the title of the submission includes the word 'names best & worst' in it, please provide the list of the best and worst.
I got distracted and started checking out the live webcam from the ISS.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
But not all sci-fi films were mocked by NASA experts, they did agree to praise 1982s Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford. The movie which they said “convincingly portrayed a futuristic Los Angeles now only eight years away”
And the most “realistic” sci-fi film according to NASA, goes to 1997s Gattaca, starring Ethan Hawke, Jude Law and Uma Thurman. The movie was about “a genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.”
It looks like the smart guys at NASA agree with many of us 'dotters that the future is going to be a bleak, dystopian police state where the richer get richer and the poor eat noodles off the street. Ah well, at least we get Harrison Ford and glowing umbrellas right?
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They went into space in double-breasted suits.
http://www.metro.co.uk/film/851586-2012-named-most-absurd-science-fiction-film-by-nasa
How did Core fail to make the list?
I hate to break it to you, but (A) they didn't judge best or worst, but most absurd as science goes, and (B) they do have people qualified in several branches of science and technology. In fact, I'd expect that if anyone is qualified to judge woowoo doomsday scenarios based on stellar alignments and mysterious radiations from the galaxy, it would be NASA. That's, you know, the kinda thing they _are_ supposed to do: know what's happening up there.
Of course, don't tell that to the homeschooled idiots who'd rather wait for a "rapture" that kept being sold as any day now for 2000 years straight and never happened, than fix the real problems on Earth in the meantime. And who'll even take a non-existent Mayan prophecy as support for their Bible delusions. Or to the gang who just wants to believe any non-scientific idiocy, presumably because it makes them feel less bad about sleeping through Physics class high-school.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Here is a better link with the whole list.
What is the point of writing about 2012 being "absurd"? It was a special effects action movie intended to entertain people in a cinema for 2 hours. Mission accomplished, for me and millions of other people. The same team that made 2012 also made films about alien invasions and giant lizards, so they aren't exactly aiming for hard realism and non-absurdity.
Someone at NASA isn't making an interesting or valid criticism, they are demonstrating their own lack of humour.
Worst Sci-Fi Movies
1. 2012 (2009)
2. The Core (2003)
3. Armageddon (1998)
4. Volcano (1997)
5. Chain Reaction (1996)
6. The 6th Day (2000)
7. What the #$*! Do We Know? (2004)
Most Realistic Films
1. Gattaca (1997)
2. Contact (1997)
3. Metropolis (1927)
4. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
5. Woman in the Moon (1929)
6. The Thing from Another World (1951)
7. Jurassic Park (1993)
...I have to ask: doesn't NASA have anything better to do with its time (and our money)? ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
Why would a government agency be rating movies, anyway? The only possible explanation is that they know something we don't about 2012, and it actually is going to be the end of the world. The top gubmint politicians and military brass are confident that they have their secret shelters and caves to flee to, but the masses are being psychologically conditioned to quietly walk right into their doom.
The worst thing is, the few brave voices that speak out against this stuff tend to get a bullet in the head without warni
Where is Duncan Jones' Moon on the best of list for science?
The trailer turned my off for seeing it.
Way to much over the TOP.
At lest the B movies are so bad they are good!
The major western governments were still functioning democracies in calendar year 1984, so technically the film would be implausible.
It does not happen.
What about our dear GNAA's favorite, namely, Gay Niggers from Outer Space?
It's VERY bad.
but, are they reaching out to the muslims enough? This science thing sounds like a distraction from their real goal.
Article slashdotted so I can't RTFA but I find it hard to believe that NASA really think Tron, Avatar, and Mars Attacks! are all more feasible scenarios than disastrous environmental effects from global warming.
It seems NASA saying 2012 was most unrealistic was more than slightly motivated by proagandist politics.
If I were at NASA I'd have voted Capricorn One as the worst SciFi movie of all time. After all this film claims the moon landing was faked.
The 'alien lifeform debacle' as you chose to propagandize it, was a very important and interesting discovery regarding the fundamental ingredients for life that is still being reviewed by major microbial scientists worldwide. Not recognizing the significance of that announcement just because it wasn't the discovery of alien life (something that NASA never advertised, but, rather, a speculation that the media over-hyped) does little more than betray your ignorance on that particular matter.
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Just this week I have been searching for something Sci-Fi to watch that I haven't seen.
I'm looking for something like Firefly, Battlestar Galatica, Farscape, etc. Spaceships, alien planets, etc. Or something with worlds inside computers like The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, Caprica, etc.
I have seen most of the Star Trek TNG episodes and honestly didn't like it all that much. Same goes for the original Star Trek.
I have not seen much of Babylon 5 but I really didn't like what I saw. It's like watching a bad soap opera on the Spanish channel. The production values and acting are total crap. People have told me it gets better in season 2 but I watched some of that and it was barely any better. Not watchable if you ask me.
I have not watched any of the Stargate TV series but as far as I can tell it's not much of a spaceship show is it?
Anyone have any other suggestions?
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Just sayin'
and not the updated version Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)?
I keep reading the new on the net, but all i see is some journalist pretending the "NASA" named the worst SF film from science POV, but no link whatsoever to NASA.GOV and certainly a search there turn out nothing.
So is it really NASA ? Or some people from NASA in private/unrelated to work ? Or even it was made up ?
The correct answer is Forbidden Planet.
As for the worst, the list is way too lengthy even to contemplate.
Apparently you're unaware of Newton's 4th Law. "Any natural disaster travels at the speed of the transportation you happen to be in at the time." Of course later Einstein showed that relativistic effects could add or subtract 10 or 20 miles per hour, but only in faster vehicles which weren't available in newton's time.
Here is the CORAL link to this:
http://ramascreen.com.nyud.net/nasa-names-2012-the-most-absurd-sci-fi-film-gattaca-is-the-most-realistic/
And here is the link to the movies with bad science:
http://ramascreen.com.nyud.net/check-out-bad-science-in-movies/
Willie...
It's even worse than that, really. It's not just "who cares about Mayans". It's that, really, they're trusting a calendar from back when the Mayans were as primitive as to not even figure out the length of a year (the Long Count uses 360 day years; seriously) and a culture who even at its apex only managed to count the days in the cycles of Venus (you know, the most bloody visible thing up there after the Sun and Moon) to tell them about galactic events. And they turn the end of a Mayan century into some kind of prophecy, although the Mayans never made such a prophecy. It's so fucking stupid, it's depressing.
To repeat a previous post (hey, it's Slashdot, you're used to dupes), for those who happen to still not know what that mayan thing is actually about:
Let's start from the start. The Mayans didn't count in base 10, but in base 20, presumably because they could count on their toes too. (No, really, look at their digits.) Thank goodness they didn't come up with a male-only maths, eh?
So they started with a year based on 260 day years, the so called Tzolkin calendar. If now you went "wait, that can't be right, it would skip through the actual year like crazy", congrats, you'd be smarter than the Mayans.
Then came the Long Count calendar, which was 360 days long, or 18 months of 20 days each. (Told you they were big on 20.) This is actually the calendar used in the 2012 (non)prophecy.
Yes, that's right. Those poor idiots are actually trusting a civilization to tell them about galactic alignments... who isn't even advanced enough to figure out the length of the year. Nor had the smarts to reset it to some equinoxe or such each year, like the lunisolar calendars used around here by even the most primitive ancient cultures. Yeah, that's the guy to trust with galactic calculations, right? ;)
To make it more stupid, even the Mayans eventually got a better calendar than that, the Haab calendar. Which finally padded the year to 365 days long, putting them finally on par with what the Egyptians had had, oh, only a couple of millennia before them. But anyway, a doomsday calculation based on the Long Count is already based on a calendar which is obsolete and crap even by Mayan standards.
So, anyway, a Long Count year was 18 months of 20 days each.
From there it went kinda like for us with decades, centuries and milenia, except in base 20.
So for us a decade is 10 years, for them a katun is 20 years.
For us a century is 10x10 years, for them a baktun is 20x20 years.
For us a millennium is 10x10x10 years, for them a piktun is 20x20x20 years.
All that happens in 2012 or 2013 is the end of a baktun. Yes, it's not even millennialism. The piktun (base-20 millenium) won't end for another couple thousand years or so.
That scare isn't even like Y2K, it's more like being scared of the rollover from 699 AD to 700 AD. I mean, WTF, it's not even running out of digits or anything.
And again that's _all_ there is to it, because there is no actual Mayan prophecy for that date.
But I guess that won't stop the doomsday idiots from waiting for their Rapture on that day. What else is new?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The site is slashdotted, but is 2012 really worse than Tron or Tron: Legacy? At least in terms of believability.
Idiocracy
I would more like assume that they're not serfs, and don't work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There'll be enough time for them to do their job _and_ watch a movie now and then. Sometimes even together with a few co-workers and start comparing notes.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I am not sure this list is real. I couldn't find anything on NASA's website about it, and the Science and Entertainment Exchange say they were not involved: http://blog.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/2011/01/note-to-our-web-visitors-london-sunday.html
Yup. Gattaca was a good flic.
2012? More a disaster movie than sci-fi IMHO
Battlefiend earth? The most gawdawful flic ever made. HOWEVER!!!... The book was amazing. Real page turner and if you read it, you'll realize there was no way to turn it into a movie. Just couldn't be did! (Movie proved it) The flic turned a fascinating sci-fi novel into a brutally awful sci-fantasy movie.
None of those movies really stretch the science *fiction* very far at all. And they were all pretty good movies.
I thought Moon was just about the most convincing sci-fi movie since 2001 - taking one simple premise that's not particularly far-fetched at all, and exploring it to its full conclusion, is what made the classic era of British sci-fi so...er...classic.
And of course Contact had to be there - after all, it was written by the same chap who co-designed the Pioneer Plaque...
Gattaca - the most realistic sci-fi movie where a mission to Titan is a once-in-a-lifetime matter (so much so that the director of a space center murders his subordinate with a computer keyboard just to launch it). Yeah right.
That was Mystery Science Theatre 3000 material. I think they should bring back MST3K just for the purpose of skewering it.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Well how much effort do you think that took them?
World War II predates Star Trek by a couple of decades.
NASA has been used for diplomacy forever. Remember Apollo 19 or whatever when Americans shook hands with Russians in space? Or did the car accident that turned you retarded erase that memory?
You people make me fucking sick. Guess what - we tell Asians they help us in space. We tell Africans they help us in space. We tell Muslims they matter in space. We tell Euro-Trash they matter to NASA.
Because words are cheap, but can offer a significant payback. Diplomacy is very useful in international affairs. Maybe you should read a 3rd grade social studies book if you have trouble understanding that.
I'm surprised some as retarded as you is capable of using a computer, much less writing something that is stupid yet convincing to fellow retards.
People take venues of entertainment too seriously and can't just enjoy things for what they are.
God, I hate humans.
First Elijah and his family drove a car to some mountain, along with the rest of humanity, where Elijah did an about face, left his family, and somehow miraculously returned to his home. He then proceeded to steal a motor bike and commence driving to find his girlfriend somewhere in the United States.
Only after finding his girlfriend among the 10's of 1000's of vehicles on a particular highway system did the meteorite impact occur, causing a tsunami, which they at first out ran on motorbike, and then finally on foot.
What's the problem?
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Science fiction seems like it has to be in the form of a novel to really qualify as sci-fi; movies seem to always be movies regardless of the source material or subject matter. Like comic books which should never be made into movies. ("Danger: Diabolik" being the exception that proves the rule.) IMHO
Had to completely rework my Netflix queues...
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
I have to say, I am glad this wonderful film found some recognition, and from the most unexpected, but very highly admired institution.
What I keep telling and kept telling about Gattaca for a long time, is that Gattaca has already started. You have people selecting embryos and discarding ever healthier ones, sometimes just to have a donor for a previous child. Gattaca may just happen little by little and we, our imperfect generation, find ourselves right smack in the middle of it.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
This has been written up in the Toronto Star, Wired UK, The Australian and a few others.
Interesting, and saddening, that overseas media has picked this up and US media doesn't seem to be terribly interested. From one of TFAs,
But why has Nasa taken the day off from searching the galaxy to try its hand at movie criticism? Well, the agency argues that bad flicks can worry viewers. In fact, so many people wrote in to the agency, worried about potential 2012-related catastrophes, that Nasa had to publish a special website just days before the film's November 2009 release.
The myth debunking page reads "Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012."
Scientific illiteracy is becoming a big problem in the US. Kudos to NASA for tackling it.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
They missed Krakatoa, East of Java (Krakatoa is West of Java).
Though perhaps NASA left this for the USGS to villify...
Inside the station they walk at normal pace and what appears to be Earth gravity.
Outside everyone moves in slow motion.
Also, no delay in telecommunication.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Marooned should've been listed as one of the most realistic movies since it almost happened just a few years after the movie was made (Apollo 13).
The whore is becoming more and more desperate, and behaving more and more strange.
2012 fails in the science. I can believe the global conspiracy to hide the truth while trying to save "selected people", so it must fail in the science (which is crap). So how then does Contact get marked realistic?
> Science and Entertainment Exchange
S.E.X. ?
Went to see True Grit. A trailer started up - Apollo capsule approaching the moon - hey, looking pretty good - titles: For 40 Years NASA Kept The Secret (or some such) - oh, no, a fake landing movie - then Eagle is down on the actual moon, so okay - then the two astronauts pogo over a crater to see a huge alien craft crashed and half-buried in the dust - hey, this could be a cool movie - never heard of this in production - what could it be? - then the ominous signs: Michael Bay. Steven Speilberg. And the killer: Transformers 3. Audible groans of disappointment from the audience.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
It's so refreshing to see an actually good ranking of movies here, instead of the usual half-assed commercial flotsam made by some journalist who just plays a geek on the Internet.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The least plausible movie of all!
An insult to idiot level intellects!
Beyond stupid!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/plotsummary
I especially like the portrayal of the superdense 8,000 degree+ radioactive molten iron/heavy metal composite of the earths
core as a kind of transparent gas in which you could move!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
The very worst science fiction of all time is a book called "An Inconvenient Truth." I think the person accused of being the author, was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature (or something....).
No, the paper was also just bad science, and deserved no special spotlight. Nothing to do with alien life, just bad methodology.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No, it's not out of context.
Instead of trying to explain it, just give the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUNc9bWu_1I
He said engaging with the muslim world was one of his top 3 priorities for NASA.
You're the one trying put a spin on it, bunky.
I largely agree with their list. contact is, imo, the best and gattaca is second. i think, however, that they missed 2010. its way different than the original, but as a realistic sci-fi movie it stands on its own and has aged well
My kids actually like the Star Wars holiday special.
Wow, a site which doesn't load anything without javascript being enabled. It's been a while since I saw one of those.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Cusack is a fine actor. This movie is more than enough to forgive his agent's recent lapses.
I went to battle M.C. Escher, but drew a blank.
Moderator: don't you believe this "news" story is false? You should and here is why:
1. You cannot find a link to the listing on NASA website.
2. You will see The Science and Entertainment Exchange [www.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org] says this on its homepage:
"Note to our followers: The article in the London Sunday Times on January 2, 2011 “To Absurdity and Beyond: NASA damns flaws in sci-fi films” incorrectly attributed a top-ten worst sci-fi films list to the Science & Entertainment Exchange. We were not involved in creating the list."
3. You will find that The Science and Entertainment Exchange is NOT a part of NASA, but rather is part of "NAS". Where NAS is the National Academy of Science [www.nasonline.org].
Please consider removing this article because there is little evidence to support the claims of attribution to these 2 well known institutions.
IMO: I think some unknown entity created this list and attributed it to these institutions in order to spur comments and reposting of their article.
Paranoid Opinion: someone wants to shine a spotlight on these institutions to make them appear wasteful.
I could be wrong and will welcome correct links to the real articles on the actual websites mentioned (NASA or The Science and Entertainment Exchange). However, if I am right that this is "false news"... please remove this whole thing so others will not form opinions on these institutions based on false attributions.
I watched that crappy movie all the way to the end because Woody Harrelson said there would be spaceships. A couple of times they cut to the China compound and showed us vehicles that looked a lot like spaceships. They got on the damn things and started talking about "pressurization" and "life support".. then it turns out they're just regular old ships. Cunts.
How we know is more important than what we know.
More importan, why is there no record of NASA actually doing this and the other website cited says they had nothing to do with it?
We Muslims have an interesting take on yaumul qiamat (doomsday). If my memory of religious schooling is correct, doomsday won't happen until everyone stops believing in the doomsday. So, as long as there are people believing that the doomsday will come in 2012 or whenever, then it will not happen. Of course there are all sorts of signs of the end times is nigh, but no one knows what "nigh" really means, whether it is 1 year, 50 years or 50000 years etc.We will only realize that it is coming when it is too late. And in Islam, doomsday means the end of the universe, not just the Earth.
7. What the #$*! Do We Know? (2004)
It was worth reading this thread just to see this listed as one of the worst.
I come here for the love
they should wait for 2013, sequels suck even more in 99.99999%
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
The US public education system has low science scores even compared to homeschoolers--yeah, that means it turns out that somebody who believes in Creationism scores better than somebody who...believes whatever got taught in the public schools. I have no idea what it was, just that it was not the modern synthesis of evolution. (For those who do not know: the modern synthesis of evolution is the, well, modern version of the theory. Aside from a few tweaks, it's over half a century old. It's not terribly hard to understand, especially for people used to computer technology: microevolution is the biology equivalent to version changes. Macroevolution is how species fork. You are now ahead of most freshman biology majors...)
Mercans, and north mercans, are so warmed over by hollywood glitz sht that it does not seem unreasonable to them to be having reality weigh in on entertainment, and is typical of a state that hires movie stars for its political machinery. It is one of the reasons the rest of the world hate the us - spinning entertainment on budgets that would help feed and develop the rest of the world and more than likely solve most of the ills and ails - all for its self-congratulating 'glory'. Any other more equitable industry could be set up to provide economic stability and a more appropriate means of providing advantage to many, instead of the very few. The farmer, laborer, the displaced factory worker - all of who will not be movie stars, or stage hands or make up artists, are ruled in part by those that were and who really have no real abilities or business in doing so.
Scientists are full of inconsistencies from the hiding in their rooms reading Howard, Bradbury, Bova, Burroughs, secretly denying that portion of the wonder and awe that formed their outcomes who are now making pronouncements about the validity of how notions are portrayed in a particular medium, your arrogance is staggering.
While it may seem advantageous that Mr. Stewart repeatedly brought the plight of 911 1st responders to the attention of the public and the us political machinery it is EXTREMELY sad testimony that a state is both incapable and unwilling to: 1) run the government properly, 2) recognize problems, 3) be able to respond to and fix problems most especially for a state that, (never grows tired of proclaiming to the world what a great machine it is for the last 230 years) has supposedly been in business and doing things correctly for several centuries.
A war mongering nation so enfactuated with itself is why there are so many commanders that see absolutely nothing wrong with making their own entertainment. One would imagine that such a magnificent nation would at the very least have the ability to figure out which of their personnel in charge of huge potentials (ships, human psychs, etc) are killers, crackpots and fktards, instead of promoting them through good ol boy networks. much less even giving them jobs.
Fk ur prophecies youll be lucky to make it through yesterday.
I guess STVI is so bad that it is not even worth mentioning.
So NASA is saying that human interaction with Aliens is more "realistic" than natural disasters, a large comet hitting earth (which has been speculated to have happened in the past), a natural volcano going off, a new energy source being created with huge ramifications, or the potential for human cloning? I will call the burrowing train into magma a wash.
I think either NASA is really rather optimistic and bullish on actually meeting ET, or perhaps they should all be fired and replaced with safety cones.