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Slashdot Asks: What's Your Favorite Sci-Fi Movie?
Many say it's the golden age of science fiction cinema. And rightly so, every month, we have a couple of movies that bend the rules of science to explore possibilities that sometimes make us seriously consider if things we see on the big screen could actually be true. The advances in graphics, and thanks to ever-so-increasing video resolution, we're increasingly leaving the theaters with visually appealing memories. That said, there are plenty of movies made back in the day that are far from ever getting displaced by the reboots spree that the Hollywood is currently embarking. With readers suggesting us this question every week, we think it's time we finally asked, what's your favorite science-fiction movie? Also, what are some other sci-fi movies that you have really enjoyed but think they have not received enough praises or even much acknowledgement?
Editor's note: the story has been moved up on the front page due its popularity.
Editor's note: the story has been moved up on the front page due its popularity.
>> Many say it's the golden age of science fiction cinema
Slashdot editors must be getting dumber or I'm getting older. Show me a successful sci-fi movie that's not a remake, sequel/prequel or spin-off in the last ten years.
On second thought, I'll vote for "dumber."
Bladerunner. The original with the overdubbing.
Very cool movie, very good ending.
Corny, but a classic to enjoy for all time.
Starship Troopers. We can end all discussion now. It's about the greatest movie ever made. Anyone who disagree is a bug lover.
I don't think you can get any better than young frankenstein
Star Wars
The Man in the White Suit meets all the criteria for science fiction, and it stars Alec Guinness and Joan Greenwood!
The greatest flick of course was 2001. But Logan's Run was charming and interesting and gave us a lot to think about. Star Wars (A New Hope) was a slickly produced space Western by comparison.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Contact
Metropolis (1927) or The Fifth Element.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
duck'n'run...
... tell me, how did you feel, being denied these hungry... hungry... hippos?
2001 Space Odyssey. "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Serenity
It's one of the few movies that has actually become more though provoking over time. Sure it's full of cheese and an-old but great story.
love is just extroverted narcissism
"Silent Running" has never been my favorite movie (it would probably "Outland" with Sean Connery). But it has more science fiction than a lot of science fiction movies that came before or after. It fit the 1970's environmental theme quite well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Running
If only for kevin spacey's voice paired with emoji
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
The Star Trek where Luke finds out that Groot is his father and goes out and rides a sandworm to defeat the emperor and his army of xenomorphs. I especially like the part where he finds that replicant by the monolith who claims to be David Bowman. Very moving scene.
...that are far from ever getting displaced by the reboots spree that the Hollywood is currently embarking.
Did you have to run that through a translator a couple times to get the desired effect? ;)
Based on HEINLEIN's work: PREDESTINATION - Starring Ethan Hawke (gives NEW meaning to the phrase "Go fuck yourself", lol).
* It is truly awesome...
APK
P.S.=> A friend of mine brought it home & the SECOND I saw Robert Heinlein on it, I just knew it had to be great (it didn't disappoint)... apk
Forbidden Planet
I saw it four times in the movie theater and it was the first DVD I ever bought.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
3. Profit!
2. ???
1. On Soviet Slashdot, a Beowulf cluster of alien Natalie Portman overlords welcomes YOU!
Because Kubrick did meticulous research from flat screen displays and glass cockpits. Also had all actors be boring just like the characters they portrayed, i.e. people that do space are not expressive like most actors (compare 2001 to 2010). Of course Kubrick missed a few things, like Pan Am no longer exist, we ignored the Moon after 1972. But then I'm old enough to remember seeing this movie in 1968 shown at Century theatres on Winchester Blvd, a time when it seemed only obvious because soon we will have men walked the surface of the Moon. And many people were around to remember reading the news of first flight of Wright Bros and Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. By the time they were retirement age, they can ride an airplane that comfortably flies across continents or oceans. Hey when I'll be their age, I can do the same with space travel. But no, still waiting to see who will walk the surface of the Moon again, still waiting for my flying car (oh wait there's roadable airplanes I cannot afford). However, we got computers to enable me to rant on the forums (can't do that with a HAL9000).
mfwright@batnet.com
Arrival - if you haven't seen it, go watch it. I also particularly enjoy low budget sci-fi films that have great dialog, demand your attention, and have mind-blowing moments:
-Primer
-Man From Earth
-Love
Other Good Films:
-Serentiy
-Gattaca
-Europa Report
And of cheesy schlock is good too:
-Iron Sky
-Independence Day Resurgence
Bladerunner. Alien. Terminator. In recent years my mind is a blank but that one with the blond chick who was an AI was good.
BUTTERFLY EFFECT
He who controls the spice controls the universe!
first VHS movie i bought
I seriously liked the The Matrix Reloaded (2003) sequel better than the original The Matrix (1999).
I picked up a bunch of DVDs for 50 cents a pop when a local video store went out of business some years ago, so I picked up the first two Matrices. I could have also picked up The Matrix Revolutions simply to have a entire trilogy in my collection, but even 50 cents seemed too high a price for that movie....
Because of the story it is based on, which I had read before. Westworld (1973) was also pretty good. Unfortunately, there are not so many good Science Fiction movies, although there are quite a few. I don't remember any good recent ones, even though I watch all of them. Metropolis with live classical piano accompaniment was also very good. They Live is also fantastic, and I also liked Solaris (1972). Many more, of course, but I'll stop there.
Not a 'great' movie, but for sure one of my favourites. =)
Night Watch (Russian: , Nochnoy dozor) is a 2004 Russian urban fantasy supernatural thriller film written and directed by Timur Bekmambetov. It is loosely based on the novel The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, and is the first part of a duology, followed by Day Watch. You have to watch both movies to get the complete narrative and it is friggin awesome! This is one of the best sci-fi/fantasy movies I have ever seen!
Primer
As far as I know, it's the only one that involves time-travelling without inconsistencies, although I may have missed several.
or 2001 or Bladerunner or The Martian.
- I'll watch the five extant episodes of "Dynamo", by karmapirates, and pretend it's a short film. And hope the next episode is out soon.
See subject: That IS great but another film starring the same actor took it's place (PREDESTINATION) https://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10498111&cid=54248865/ !
* GATTACA is awesome & NOT so "far out" nowadays that it's an impossibility in the NEAR future either...
APK
P.S.=> IF you liked GATTACA? I strongly STRONGLY recommend you check out PREDESTINATION... apk
Not a popular movie, but it's my favorite. It accomplishes the almost impossible task of thoroughly explaining 2001, for a start.
Other things I like about it? HAL 9000 redeems himself. We find out what his problem was and who was responsible. Then HAL sacrifices himself to save lives.
Another nice bit - the science in this movie is just about 100%. The zero gravity, the air brake scene, the actual 3d environment of space where the Discovery is simply tumbling. Space ships aren't moving around like flat horizontal pieces on a chess board. The only flaw I can find is when Jupiter ignites there is a sound, which of course there wouldn't be. But that's about it.
It's a great story and it's told very well.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Loved the fist Matrix movie. Philosophy, virtual reality, crazy new visual effects. I remember walking out of that movie and there was silence from the audience. Many were still processing the meaning and some were discovering brand-new ideas for the first time.
A New Hope was great but it suffered from some plot holes, plot pacing issues, some special effects rushes, and just a general lack of polish. Empire was a professional effort with proper production, budget, director, an better emphasis on acting and character development, better scripting, Yoda, and, last but not least: Lando.
It was dark and deep and delved into the truth nature of the Force. It brought out emotions that the first movie could not. It has more creative planets and better dialogue.
I don't understand how A New Hope could be considered better other than the fact that it introduced the Star Wars universe.
This space left intentionally blank.
Colossus: The Forbin Project
So many others,
A Boy and His Dog
Quintet
Zazrdoz
Oh yeah and I forgot, The Ice Pirates, fucking Robert Urich.
Maybe considered sci-fi/fantasy but hands down my favorite movie ever. I prefer the director's cut since it excludes some of the hand-holding voice-overs. The story is great, it was shot "film noir" style, has great sound track and an excellent cast. I think "Richard O'Brien" played a perfectly creepy stranger. I like how they cast Jennifer Connelly as the caring wife of her homely husband (Rufus Sewell). William Hurt played a great contemplative Det. Bumstead. I could go on.
All the others I can think of, all have some silliness that break my suspension of disbelief. Inexplicable FTL travel. Sound in a vacuum. Speed of sound equal to speed of light. Magic - Yes, I know the Asimov quote: things should be unexplained, not inexplicable. The grossly improbable, like characters having highly improbable encounters, not once but twice.
ST II Wrath of Kahn
Matrix
Bladerunner
District 9
Event Horizon
Sphere
Fifth Element
Lucy was pretty good too. Looking forward to see how Valerian is... looks promising.
Silence is a state of mime.
Yeah, Night Watch really was something special. Nothing had that look when it came out... love that movie!
That's Fantasy and not Sci-Fi.
And the books are way better, they have more time for the buildup, doesn't meshmatch several characters and Olga IS way more interesting/sexier/independent than the movie version where she's just 'a gurrl with powers'.
I posted 2001 as that was epic film, however TQOOS would be my favorite because if I see it shown on TV I will stop and watch it, I love watching Zsa Zsa Gabor in her beautiful dresses, hair, makeup, and her figure (also love her accent). I probably would not stop and watch 2001 if on a TV channel but then difficult to see on a TV set as need the big full screen. This campy space flick is a terrible plot but lots been written about the movie from using a Von Braun space station design to re-using sets from previous movies, and all the girls wearing sexy outfits of short skirts like those of Star Trek TOS.
mfwright@batnet.com
Hard To Be A God (2013) is also good.
Unbeatable by a long shot for sci-fi, comedy, drama. Brilliant movie
Watch it -- you'll be amazed it is 20 years old.
The film deals with perhaps the most important question facing our society over the next 100 years, and it does so in a nuanced, elegant way. No hamfisted "lets have the actors discuss the themes of the movie with jilted prose because we think our viewers are too dumb to get it" -- I'm looking at you, christopher nolan.
It's the first Sci-Fi movie that had actual science in it.
It wasn't the monster/alien eats everyone.
It wasn't some cutsy evil government hunts good alien.
It wasn't a Western or Samuri movie in space.
It was Sci-Fi as it should be.
#2 - Arrival - the one from last year; not the shitty Charlie Sheen one.
I see 2001 - but that was soo 1960s with the LSD trip at the end. It needs to be remade to more like the book.
I find that there are few movies that I can watch more than once, but I've seen The Thing many times and will watch again. The paranoia and fear among the characters is palpable, and there is no lame CGI.
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
Did you see Daywatch? If not, you need to watch both back to back. The conclusion is friggin awesome! One of my friends that is a movie buff didn't understand the conclusion of Nightwatch till I explained it to him. It is one of the best ending to a movie ever and ties the two movies together like no other movie I have ever seen. You need to do this!
"Zac Hobson, July 5th. One: there has been a malfunction in Project Flashlight with devastating results. Two: it seems I am the only person left on Earth."
Being visually appealing means nothing without a good story (see SW ep 1/2/3). But, if I had to pick, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Pacific Rim come to mind.
An all time classic
...and it is not a golden age. It is an age of moves made on a computer with a cheap reliance on phony computer special effects. Modern movies look totally phake.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
"Many say it's the golden age of science fiction cinema."
Who? I know the 80s aesthetic is making a comeback, but this is not Star Wars/Alien/Blade Runner kinda era, know what I mean?
As you as you start talking about "all times favorites", I think the well known movies like Star Wars come to mind for most of us. I agree with another poster that the first Matrix movie was also top-notch. That one bothers me though, only because the sequels derailed some of the things I liked best about the original. Basically, they took the story to different places I didn't think benefited it and I would have been happier if parts 2 and 3 were never made at all.
One of the low budget sci-fi flicks I really enjoyed, though, was "The Cube". In fact, the limited resources and "unknowns" used as actors and actresses add to the enjoyment because IMO, the whole cast did an amazing job and it's intriguing how so much suspense could be created with a backdrop that's typically just empty white rooms.
I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned it.
But many of Cronenberg's flics have sci-fi elements. Also, They Live is a underrated gem, though, if only for Rowdy Roddy Piper's surprising acting skills. But then, what do you expect from a professional wrestler.
Is a fantastic, well acted, well written sci-fi movie with good characters trying to solve a scientific problem with the sun. It shows the limitations we as human beings have with space travel and puts the crew of Icarus 2 into situations that are believable based on potential travel to the sun.
And then in the last 1/3 of the movie it turns into generic slasher movie in SPAAAAAACE for some inexplicable reason. Just completely 2 different movies. But those first 2/3 are really good.
Has to be Darkstar, John Carpenters directorial debut, co written with O'Bannon. It is notable not least for the reuse of the alien beach ball as the star of Alien some six years later. Darkstar is possibly the best $60,000 ever spent on a movie. If you do not tell anyone else I can let on that it can be found on YouTube in a fairly low resolution. Absolute classic and funny as hell. Star Wars is of course Cowboys and Indians in space for twelve year olds.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Based on the Heinlein short story. It makes you think and reflect.
...for its thoughtful resolution of the time travel causality paradox.
More original ideas per minute than any other sci fi film. And the ideas are subtle, not force fed. Samantha Morton's best work.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Who doesn't love a beachball alien and bombs with an attitude?
Dark Star!
Oh wait, James Cameron's been sitting on the rights for that for almost two decades so he can waste our time with giant blue aliens encounter generic military stereotypes.
Either use your rights, or give them to someone else already, John. My opinion of you has gone from top-notch to meh about you over the years. Shit or get off the pot.
Fifth Element. Just like in real life, you know you have an arch nemesis out there, you just may never meet them. Your actions are always in direct conflict with theirs even if you never come face to face with them.
Forbidden Planet
I keep expecting Leslie Nielsen to crash the ship, trip over something and allow the 'monster' to get in, allow the blond to get eaten by the tiger, ....
BTW, THE WORST sci-fi/commedy/any genre movie was a Leslie Nielsen movie called 2001: A Space Travesty - travesty all right!
n/t
Have gnu, will travel.
The 1968 William Castle one.
NASA and KUBRICK were an awesome team. The Director's cut and intermission (Red Rum) were chilling.
nt
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Planet of the Apes.
Bonus movie - the day the earth stood still.
Hard to pick just one!
Silent running was one of those rare flicks that walks a nice line between deep thought premises and entertaining story and expansive special effects (as opposed to intimate films which deserve their own category).
Chief on my list is Blade Runner. ghost in the machine (1995) Clockwork Orange
Silent running is good but it doesn't hold up with time very well.
powerful intimate films:
moon, ex machina, the man from earth, primer
other low budget sci-fi with high entertainment value:
The 13th floor (overshadowed by being released near the Matrix)
John dies at the end. (really awful but in a wonderful awful sort of way like Bill and Ted's excellent adventure was goofy good).
Time Lapse. Some uneven acting but a thrilling story
Films that succeed by sheer force of will rather than being perfect and must be admired for this tour de force:
Avatar, Alien, Star Wars.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Just kidding, it was shit.
I know it didn't had the best effects or CGI, but that was no important to the plot.
Second option: Fifth Element.
The Day the Earth Stood Still,1951
My favourite has to be "The Matrix", watched it hundreds of times
The original (black and white) "The day the earth stood still".
I'm surprised Howard The Duck hasn't been mentioned yet, I would have thought that was everyone's favourite sci-fi. Or are people not mentioning it because they see it more as a drama?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
War of the Worlds (1953)
Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Fifth Element
When Worlds Collide (1951)
The Matrix
I love 2001, but many of the key themes are more in the realm of fantasy. I love Forbidden Planet but it's really an adaptation of The Tempest; replacing the sorcery with science. Metropolis is a beautiful film, but it hardly depends on the scientific themes to deliver its message. Same thing with most of the other dystopian films like Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984, or Logan's Run.
But that's really the tricky part about "best science fiction". You've gotta get everyone to agree on what defines quality science fiction.
It was shot with the same awesone style as Space Oddysey. And I must say, The Shining was a great companion and key.
I think it flopped though because 2/3rds of the subcontracted compamies involved for R&D didnt contribute. If I ran the numbers right, The Moon Landing cost was the equivalent of average movie viewers being billed $100 a seat for the damn thing, and the food still is terrible as Tang.
We didnt see a better film until Aliens, but that was too farvinto the future and I want to spend more time on Mars and that is where Geffen proved a greater value tgan NASA. With Geffen, it only cost me $10 for 2 theater seats and I brought my own banannas! I went to Mars, saw 3-titted mutant women, alien human hybrids, and action fight scenes.
Fawk Yoo, NASSSA! Get yoour Asss to MAHHz!
In whatever order I'm in the mood for, which varies:
Bladerunner - the original, with the narration.
Firefly - TV show same. These were just plain fun, except for the pilot's death, which struck me as uncalled for.
Starship Troopers - loved the twisted angle on government. Great bugs. Would you like to know more?
Paul - hilarious, totally non-serious SF.
Alien (original) - great SF horror, and great SF besides.
Terminator - original
The Martian - really good hard SF, quite rare to find
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
See subject: Glad you enjoyed it "Is this life lonely?" (one of my fav parts) & ya gotta love "Mr. Robertson" too: "You're here to create history & influence ways to come..."
* "You, have a LONG journey ahead of you - They say that the journey of a 1,000 miles starts RIGHT @ your feet - my feet could sure use a rest..."
(... & "You're going to save MILLIONS of lives - you're about to embark on the most important job a man has ever had... & you're going to do great - I know!")
APK
P.S.=> An agent operating from the outside - "Preparation is the KEY to successful inconspicuous time-travel -LUCK is the residue of design" (GOOD design)... apk
I didn't see it listed, but "Buckaroo Banzai" is a classic that I still enjoy watching.
Very funny, and also makes one think about racial stereotypes.
"Laugh while you can monkeyboy"
Because it's an almost totally original concept, not relying at all on hyperdrives or laser canons. Maybe the producers got some ideas from "Stargate" which preceded it by three years.
Because it's suitable for everybody.
Because it's based on something that we can all participate in, the SETI project.
I'm wondering if and hoping that there will be a sequel in 2024.
I liked these movies (Nightwatch & Daywatch) but they are not science fiction; they are fantasy (as previously stated).
Ones that sort of straddles the intimate/big effects
District 9 . (south african alien flick)
And ones that straddle the "sheer force of will", low budget, and goofy good category
Iron sky
sky commander and the world of tomorrow
while the latter technically did get the hollywood budget treatement the back story is the key elements were done over 10 years on an old macintosh before being re-made.
My main criteria here is films I enjoy watching again.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
GATTACA would be my favorite, recently.
Trouble is, I have many many favorites, almost impossible to pick just one, as "the favorite!"
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Perhaps because despite its sensational title, cheesy special effects, and the fact that it's a low-budget rehash of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it's actually quite thoughtful and intelligently executed. The monsters of the title aren't monsters at all, but aliens with understandable if scientifically preposterous motivations. Yet it doesn't fall into the modern who's-the-real-monster-here pitfall: the humans have legitimate reason to fear and even kill the aliens.
One of the reasons I like this movie is that it shows that low budget and vulgar popular tastes are no excuse for making a stupid, boring movie. If you don't have enough money for color film, use black and white to create atmosphere. If you don't have the money for special effects, use storytelling to engage the audience with suspense.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No comment needed, but it won't let me post without one.
- Mike
I'm still waiting for the "Tales of Known Space" to turn into a movie series.
The one and original "Alien" (1979). Nothing comes even close...
A good Sci-Fi should be philsopjical in nature. Asking questions about life in the Universe, our place in it, etc. This is why Star Trek is good Sci-Fi and Star Wars is a good space adventure (but not Sci-Fi). In my mind, the best Sci-Fi ever put to screen is Blade Runner.
Or maybe Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Bladerunner. I always go back to that movie.
Stanley Kubrick has better visuals!
If it bends the rules of science it's sci-fantasy, not sci-fi.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
Agreed!!!
The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951
And the sequel. And anything by Michael Moore.
RRK
The Matrix, Bladerunner, Alien(s), The Andromeda Strain (original), Fantastic Voyage, and (guilty pleasure) The Last Starfighter
along with Tremors, Terminator/Terminator2, and Back to the Future. All great ones in my book!
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
cause that's my answer. otherwise fifth element.
lose != loose
For me, it's gotta' be The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension. Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Elen Barkin and many more...
No special effect and no budget. Just a bunch of good actors in a room with an interesting concept.
This is one of the most ridiculous memes ever. Sound is a mechanical vibration, and Jupiter probably vibrates like hell after it ignites.
What people mean is that there is no direct transmission of physical sound waves through the vacuum of space.
Snooping Through Walls with Microwaves
Laser microphone
Or you could drop a few thumb-sized motes.
I like 2001, the Russian Solaris, and A Scanner Darkly.
Blade Runner and Alien were better than a jab in the eye.
If we further widen the net to include Space Fiction, The Wrath of Kahn rocks; while A New Hope and WALL-E both have their moments.
If we further wide the net to include any form of thematic overlap, I'd include The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, the first Back to the Future, the first Iron Man, select chunks of The Terminator franchise, RoboCop, Young Frankenstein, Dr Strangelove, and certain aspects of The Fifth Element. One might even include the sensibility of Tree of Life or Hugo.
I'll also give an honourable to The City of Lost Children, because I would actually rewatch that movie. Can't recall much of anything about the plot (not usually a good sign), but there's plenty of there there in other regards. In a pinch, I could rewatch Dune as an entertaining car wreck.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the canon only serves to rouse my appetite without entirely beddin' her back down.
Note that I did not exclude any Spielberg movies by accident. If I had to rewatch one, it would be THX 1138. Spielberg is so sentimental, I'm soon humming Indian Love Call and wishing it would work.
On my list as the least science fiction film ever made would be the original Matrix. Perhaps the humans harvested for their cerebellar electricity was a satirical neoliberal talking point adapted from Ayn Rand.
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Children of Men (2006) It is about civilization collapsing, after 18 years of global human infertility. No spaceships, no aliens, no CGI; just a great story and amazing performances.
Normally, everyone says Bladerunner. The latter is truly great, but it lacks the story and character development of Gattaca.
The only real competition to Gattaca is Donnie Darko, but few think of it as sci-fi. Amazing they both came out in 2001.
Matrix clearly superb, as is 2001: A Space Odyssey.
"Her" is a great little film, the best sci-fi since Gattaca.
Empire Strikes Back, Terminator (original) and The Thing -- all these are either perfect or borderline perfect.
2016 Presidential Election!
It is easily the first scifi film I remember watching when I was a kid, I remember most of the star wars and stuff but the first one I can remember was TRON. I also vividly remember The Last Star Fighter, and Wargames.
2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, AI, Andromeda Strain (original)
Also, Aliens, Day the Earth Stood Still (original), Contact
Also, War of the Worlds (either)
Guilty pleasures: I Robot (Will Smith), Monolith Monsters, Colossus: The Forbin Project
... no discussion.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
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I love MANY of the films other peeps have already listed, but i reckon these deserve some attention too:
The Abyss
Delicatessen (I'd categorise it as Sci-Fi, YMMV)
Armageddon
Pitch Black
Prometheus
Rise of The Planet of The Apes
Super 8
Man, came here looking for Brazil, no mentions so far. I hope everyone takes the time to see this film.
Solaris is my favorite, and a very, very close second is 2001.
DS9 pilot. /nuffsaid
single best star trek episode ever, and one of the best 'movies' ever.
The future isnt a compressed restricted postal worker, but free and full of danger!
kickass!
"Another Earth" is not only a great SF movie, but IMHO was the best film of 2011. Great characters, intriguing story, thought-provoking ending. Anyone who hasn't seen it is missing a real treat.
I'll nominate "Code 46"; it was beautifully filmed and acted, and was science fiction but it wasn't about stuff blowing up or constantly rubbing CGI in your face, so to me it felt like it could be a story that might actually happen 40-50 years from now rather than a fantasy play-set with robots and spaceships.
I'd link to the trailer, but the trailer is awful; it's better to just watch the movie directly.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Of course, "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians"...
That is all.
Terry GIlliam. Bruce Willis. Brad Pitt. Time travel, a future dystopia, and "I'm in insurance"/
I will probably be chastised for this... I always loved Demolition Man. Stallone is a terrible actor, the film isn't particularly artistic or high-brow, but it was a fun film, a sci-fi premise (right down to the morality study of today's society by using an abstract world).
I liked it... sure, not the artistic appeal or thought provoking ability of Gattica. Perhaps not the commercial draw of Avatar. Still a fun film.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It's B movie that most people aren't going to understand. The plot is ridiculous, but it's done with such sincerity that it's become one of my all time favorites. It's a true gem that I encourage everyone to sit through.
so, what happens at the end?
Not my favorite, but not mentioned yet
Men in Black
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
1. The Matrix
2. Serenity
3. Tron
4. Jurassic Park
5. The Terminator
Maybe some others would make the list if I thought about it more, but these are the sci-fi movies I like.
Ok, as to the sound thing perhaps I should clarify.
The scene is outside the ship and Jupiter explodes. You see the flash of light from the explosion and the sound at the same time. That wouldn't happen for a couple of reasons that I'm sure you know - light travels much faster than sound, and in space there is no medium to transmit the sound anyways. Yes, I'll grant you that if you were on the surface of Jupiter you would indeed hear a great kaboom in the instant before you died, I'm sure. But point being the crew on the Leonov wouldn't hear a kaboom. The wind rushing by noise as the shock wave passes is brilliant however. I thought they did that bit well.
I realize that when something explodes in a movie the audience needs the audio cue of a kaboom noise or they don't know it's an explosion, so I give them a pass on it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
... is definitely the best sci-fi movie ever. If you haven't seen it, get a copy and watch it. And the best sci-fi TV series is definitely Starhyke starring Claudia Christian (the second in command from Babylon 5). You should get that and watch it too.
None better!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
An under-appreciated masterpiece of solid, taut film-making of the kind they used to routinely turn out by the dozens every year. The tech has aged, of course, but the concepts are still as fresh as the day it was made.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
First Men In The Moon
Forbidden Planet
Things To Come
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Sleeper
1984
Fahrenheit 451
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Slaughterhouse-Five
Frankenstein (Boris Karloff)
Bride of Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein
Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Frankenstein Meets Godzilla
(...Hell I must like all the Frankensteins.)
The Re-Animator
The Invisible Man (original)
2010
Ghost in the Shell (anime)
The Day The Earth Stood Still (original)
War of the Worlds (original)
Blade Runner (Director's Cut)
Brazil
Terminator
The Time Machine (original)
The Golden Compass
Boy and His Dog
Alien
The Thing (original)
Clockwork Orange
Soylent Green
Planet of the Apes (originals)
Solaris
Dr. Strangelove
Nosferatu (Big stretch here, but if it's SiFi, then both movies - they're just too good)
Attack of the 50' Woman
Godzilla
Mothra
Akira
White Zombie
The Man Who Fell to Earth
Brother From Another Planet
Repo Man
The President's Analyst
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
Being John Malkovich
Meavy Metal (1981)
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Last Man on Earth
Man With the Golden Gun
Zardoz
Outland
Pi
The movie portrayed the time and place very well. Cold war, searching for weapons, underground complex before the era of satellites watching everything, technology of the time, some of it innovative (like the room size glove box), the drama of thinking you covered your ass only to find an organism that can out think you by evolving and finally realizing the organism was engineered to tell you there is life among the stars.
What it lacked? Military running about killing, fast cars and sex. You can't make a movie today without including at least two of those three.
and now you are infected.
If I want a mind-bender, 2001 is probably still the best that has been done.
For atmosphere, Blade Runner.
For a sensory experience, seeing Interstellar at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood made a huge impression on me. I wish the geek snobs could just enjoy it for what it is.
For popcorn flics, it's Empire Strikes Back (Force Awakens is a close second in Star Wars), Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park. Those are all just so watchable movies to me. It takes almost no time for me to get lost in their worlds (Jurassic Park pun not intended).
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Because Slashdot asked what's my favorite Sci-Fi movie, not what's the best Sci-Fi movie!
"The Navigator": from AUS or NZ
"The Last Combat": France
"The Host": Korea
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The other one that sticks in my memory from when I was a kid was Brainstorm.
. . . .even without Milla Jovovich.
Multipass!
Not much science but using a video game to screen for hidden talents was pretty good. Plus Robert Preston was great as the alien.
Invaders from Mars (the original) and They Day the Earth Stood Still.
moar liek dhis.
retinue, pretty prease!
Stalker (1979)
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Have to rate that as my favorite sci-fi film.
A few films which, IMO, have not received the deserved praise / acknowledgment:
Ex Machina
Looper
Gattaca
A crummy B-movie that has received orders of magnitude more praise than it deserves:
The Matrix
Saw this one all alone in a movie theater.
Strange this cool movie wasn't mentioned yet here. Virtual reality sex ending at the turn of the millennium, partying like it's 1999.
Another under-appreciated gem. I keep coming back to this movie time and time again, and it has yet to lose its appeal. The acting is very well done, but I would mainly credit the story arc, which follows a kind of relentless path of inevitability, but avoids being predictable. This is great story-telling, and very believable.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Alien (1979)
Blade Runner (1982)
Enemy Mine (1985)
Contact (1997)
Soldier (1998)
The One (2001)
Cypher (2002)
Serenity (2005)
Chappie (2015) except for the 'gangsta' South African accent.
Not best, but pretty good and different. Made in 2007, but looks like it was made in the 70's.
If you have never seen it you owe it to yourself to check it out. Try to find a widescreen edition. Set your suspension of disbelief and effects critique to 1970.
Pi: saw this in the theater while on shrooms. Changed my life.
Immortal (Ad Vitam): Brilliant, I still hear the "all your organs?" line in my head
Equilibrium: Amazing action (gun kata), deep message. Of course, the "standards" like Blade Runner, Star Ship Troopers, all the others mentioned here.
If so, then how about:
- Battlestar Galactica
- The Expanse
- Star Trek (TOS, maybe NG, nothing else)
- Orphan Black
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
No love for the classic and important "Plan 9 From Outer Space"???
It's an "in-universe" propaganda movie to get people jacked up for war and boost recruitment numbers.
Think "Triumph of the Will" meeting "Top Gun".
Except it's Verhoeven behind the camera. And when he satirizes something he dials it up to 11.
And then he breaks off the dial and replaces it with a "MORE!!!" button, which he then beats with a hammer until there's nothing left to indicate that it's a satire.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Because nobody else has mentioned it. And besides, I usually resort to "top five" because no one film in a given genre really captures it all. So, in no particular order...
2001 A Space Odyssey
Forbidden Planet
Aliens
Silent Running
Avatar
Wasp Woman is a great movie.
The 1972 Russian version, is the only thing that comes immediately to mind.
Brazil. Its commentary on bureaucracy, censorship, government spying on its own citizens, and the dangers of plastic surgery is still relevant today.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Chris Marker's 1962 film is my perfect science fiction movie.
If you ever get the chance, watch it in the original French, with subtitles. The dubbed English version is not nearly as good. For some reason, since I first saw it when I was in the Film School at the School of the Art Institute back when Jimmy Carter was president, every frame has stuck with me.
It has influenced directors ever since.
You are welcome on my lawn.
But using the original script, where Ripley dies at the end and the alien sets a course for earth...
Star Trek The Motion Picture is one of the finest SciFi films ever made. Much Better than the Star Wars films of the period.
The movie "12 Monkeys" (not the unwatchable TV show) was great. Very suspenseful!
And for fun time travel movies, you can't top "Eleven Minutes Ago," a romance where the time traveller from the future finds himself somewhere where everyone knows his name :-)
I'd love to list only relatively unknown ones: K-PAX, Coherence, Primer, OXV: The Manual, Los cronocrÃmenes, Twelve Monkeys, Source Code, The Butterfly Effect, Moon, Europa Report, Perfect Sense, Franklyn, The Signal, The Machine, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I watched Gattaca recently with my daughter. Only to find news articles the next day about the limited approval to use DNA editing on embryos in the U.S. to prevent diseases (http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/us-panel-gives-yellow-light-human-embryo-editing). That combine with the recent advances of CISPR... makes this movie a very real possibility. I think it should be required watching for any legislators working on any genetic editing laws.
"Favorite" is such a loaded word, and conditional on mood. I think any of these could be my "favorite":
Forbidden Planet Great concepts and cinematography. Huge sense of wonder. A Clockwork Orange I absolutely adore the slang and Malcolm McDowell's performance. Plus Kubrick. Star Wars Came out in my formative years. What can I say? Aliens Saw it at a midnight showing. Had to check the backseat of my car before I got in. The 5th Element A better Heavy Metal movie than Heavy Metal. Plus Gary Oldman. The Martian Science FTW!(Geez, Slashdot, how can you screw up definition list formatting so badly?)
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
An existential action/adventure flick that asks the big questions like "what does it mean to be human?" and "what exactly, is love?". Bonus points this year for it taking place in the distant future of 2017. Plus three wheeled cars!
I never did understand why Live Action Disney movies of the past never did well... I really loved The Black Hole... I think I even had a Lunch Box... Other good ones: The Absent-Minded Professor Tron And for a more modern favorite (but not Disney): Stargate
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Solaris (1976)
The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)
Alien (1979)
Time Bandits (1981)
Blade Runner (1982)
From Beyond (1986)
They Live (1988)
The Matrix (1999)
Frank Herbert's Dune, Director's Cut (2002)
They're Made Out of Meat (2005)
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
The first I initially experienced while tripping my ass off when I was 24. TMOoM is perhaps the greatest short film ever made (on this planet).
thx 1138
I saw Forbidden Planet in its original run in a movie theater. I must've been about 10 or 11 at the time. It was the last movie to give me nightmares. I recognized immediately the voice of Robbie the Robot as belonging to the same guy who played Michael Anthony on a TV show of the time called The Millionaire. Even at that age I recognized the cheesy Hollywood style 'romance' that seemed to be mandatory. But I also appreciated that there were some serious, intellectual, aspects to the movie.
A year or two earlier I had seen This Island Earth which was maybe a tad over my head at the time. Not sure now how much I remember from that first viewing and how much from later on. I really liked how the aliens used the scientist-hero's own curiosity to lure him into their clutches. It was more deliberately action-adventure than Forbidden Planet but it did have some intellectual aspects. The aliens were more complex and morally ambiguous than the usual fare, and it had high production values for the special effects. Also, the obligatory romance was better done than in Forbidden Planet.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
"If you feel you are not properly sedated, call 348-844 immediately. Failure to do so may result in prosecution for criminal drug evasion."
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Star Wars is of course Cowboys and Indians in space for twelve year olds.
It's "Applied Buddhism for Beginners" played out over a backdrop of a WW2 in space.
That's why prequels and the modern spin-offs suck.
They forgot the whole "'60s just ended, '70s are ending, millennium is just around a corner, there's nothing left to believe in - we need a space-age religion before the world ends" zeitgeist bit.
Wachowskis tapped into some of that with Matrix.
Thus Jediism and Matrixism but no Star Trek religion.
In both cases authors moved away from that feeling of "getting the world" and instead started regurgitating the tail of their "samsara" after they've already came out with their "nirvana for the masses" solution.
I.e. They went about the wrong things in the wrong way.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
A gourgeous and naked space Vampire girl. 'Nuf sair.
Probably the most overlooked, and IMHO one of the best, is Cloud Atlas. The Wachowskis best (unless the Netflix Sense8 series qualifies as science fiction), considerably better than The Matrix.
Cloud Atlas is as unconventional a movie as Prolog is an unconventional programming language. Both the movie and the language rely on recursion -- you don't really understand what it's telling you until you get to the end, then the entire thing makes sense all at once. Programmers should really get Cloud Atlas.
People didn't like the movie because it's not told in a linear time narrative. It's much more like Momento than it is The Matrix. But the /. crowd should like it. At least this crowd is intelligent enough to "get it" if they are willing to sit and watch the movie unfold without insisting that it spoon feed them the story.
Tron (the original) is why I'm a programmer. I wanted to be like Flynn and Alan writing programs like Tron, the solar sail simulation, and the light cycles.
While I don't write programs that are that cool, my job is my hobby and I love the programming work that I do.
There are so many but a couple come to mind when I saw the post..
Silent Running
Alien
Blade Runner (voiceover version)
Logans Run
The Matrix
The 5th Element
John Carpenters The Thing
12 Monkeys
The Black Hole..
Id put Blade Runner up towards the top with silent running in second place.. but a mixture of the others..
Discuss at will.. :)
There are a lot of good sci fi movies, but if I had to pick movies that I'll watch over and over... Too many, really:
Movies (in no particular order):
Star Trek II, Wrath of Kahn
The Matrix
Serenity
Superman I and II (do those count as "sci fi"?)
Disneys the Black Hole (cheesy but I can watch it over and over)
Tron
Enemy Mine
The original black and white "The Thing from another planet"
The Day the Earth Stood Still (original black and white)
The Final Countdown (such an underappreciated movie)
Aliens (Alien also, but I think the second was more re-watchable)
Planet of the Apes (original w Charleton Heston)
The Time Machine (original from the 60's)
Back to the Future
Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind
ET
Enemy Mine
They Live
Predator
Escape from New York
Jurassic Park
Galaxy Quest
Guardians of the Galaxy
The list goes on...
Honorable Mention:
Darkstar
Anything on MST3K, if I'm in the right mood.
Ice Pirates
TV Series:
Star Trek, TOS, of course
FireFly
Brisco County Jr (counts as a sci fi western)
Battlestar Galactica (original - yes, the new was good and all, but the original was a classic).
Space: Above and Beyond (a bit rough at times, but had potential)
Honorable mention
Quark (seeing in now as an adult, terrible, but before it was canceled, I was a kid and loved it)
best scifi ever!
The best.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
so many samples from this movie :) But unkle's lifting of those samples i really liked..
Primer
Imposter
Dark City
Cube
Contact
Strange Days
Snowpiercer
The Lathe of Heaven
Galaxy Quest
The Host
(and so many more)
Lots of good picks, but I always liked this little gem. Some of my favorite alien designs. I always wanted a Wak costume for Halloween, or just relaxing around the house.
complete forgot about brainstorm.. great movie about the dangers of VR..
I was going to answer, but became suspicious because I'd already answered the polls: What was you mother's maiden name? and What was your first pet? Nice try, scammer! I'm not going to fall for it this time. Oh, and my favorite sci-fi movie was 2001 A Space Odyssey.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
I am ;)
Neo doesn't do anything supernatural in the real world.
He's an evolutionary mutation which adapted to using its implants without direct, wired, connection.
Him interacting with machines plugged into the Matrix is no more supernatural than a laptop, which previously had to be connected to the internet through its RJ45, "supernaturally" connecting through its Wi-Fi connection after an update and a reboot.
He doesn't do anything Matrixy in the real world.
He just discovers that he can "wiggle the ears" of all that hardware he was grown with.
He grows into a fully fledged man-machine hybrid.
That's why he can't magically fix the ship or save Trinity like he could in the simulation.
He doesn't have a control over reality. Just a connection to the Matrix without being plugged in or boosted with a radio transmitter from a ship.
As for control... meh... Wachowskis were piling it up so high and wide they lost track by the second half of the first movie.
By the end of it it's about freedom. Then it's about choice. Then it's about peace and ending the war.
But it's also about destiny and believing and pseudo-philosophical bullshit like arguing about semantics of the word "love"...
And about that magical pussy-chain Link has. You know when he kisses it he's thinking "I can't die. I haven't had me enough of pussy yet."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Its a joint creation of one of the best SF authors of all time (Arthur C Clarke) and one of the best filmmakers of all time (Stanley Kubrick). Lets hope this is one film Hollywood NEVER does a reboot/remake/redo of...
That said, there are a few Cyberpunk films that come close to topping my list (Johnny Mnemonic for one, also the TRON films) and if they ever make a good film based on the Neuromancer book, its going to be hard to pick between that an 2001...)
Solaris. NOT the Clooney/McElhone version, the Soviet version, made back in 72 or so
Also on the list is Stalker, also by Tarkovsky. But calling that SciFi is borderline. The first half hour at least is absolutely stunning. Cate Blanchett once said every frame of that movie is burned into her retina.
And then there is always Blade Runner, The Matrix, Alien and The Martian.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
The original Kyle McLachlan version.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
a few pop culture references came from that movie..
the shells painted some imagery of the first shell for scraping of some sort..
second, scraping again..
third maybe tidying up your grill?
MDK i think got their inspiration from this movie as well ;D
This is my all time favourite.
Stalker is a sci-fi masterpiece with zero special effects, Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Also I really enjoy the film Dune but the die hard fans of the book series put it down often and even the director of the film disowned it as well.
Loved Ice Pirates ;D
Maximilian, the time has come to liquidate our guests.
'nuff said.
Wasp Woman (1959) is a Roger Corman film. Great plot.
I don't know why Contact resonated with me so deeply, but I consider it to be one of the best films I've seen. Perhaps it's because of all the science fiction I have seen, this is the one that I most wish were true.
After that, I'd say The Fountain. I'm not totally convinced that it's science fiction, but the beauty of the film is that its genre is hidden within your interpretation of the story itself.
Best sci-fi movie: Blade Runner
Most beautiful movie: 2001: A Space Oddysey.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
First movie I ever saw...solid good story...my 5 yr old Son's school is screening it this weekend and I'm excited to watch it with him!
Logan's Run
Dark Crystal
Dark City
The Man from Earth
One of the most thought provoking in interesting movies.
Last entry got swapped for "?" for some reason.
Super excited to watch with my son.
not a fav but I dreamed how great it would be to have all that Textronix test equipment.
mfwright@batnet.com
It's as good as 'Alien.' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
The best science fiction movie of all time is a short (half-hour) black/white French film called "La Jetée" [translates as the airport's observation deck]. It is in the format of scanned photos with narration, like Ken Burns' PBS documentaries.
A child sees a man crumble and die while visiting Paris Orly airport's observation deck in 1962. Shortly after there is total nuclear war. Because he is obsessed with this image of a man's death, he is selected to be a guinea pig in an experiment to send him time traveling into the future in order to get an energy source to restart civilization. He succeeds in moving in time, but always ends up in the pre-war era. There, he meets a beautiful woman and falls in love.
It doesn't sound like much, but it is a true masterpiece. MIT even published a coffee-table book detailing every scene.
It is super low-budget. One scene that shows the Arc of Triumph in Paris with a huge chunk blown out of it actually has a pin hole from a thumbtack displayed in it.
David Bowie did a homage to it in video for a song from his Black Tie/White Noise album in the early 1990s.
It is available on DVD from most big-city library systems.
OK, I am probably going to get flamed for this, but I really enjoyed the new Ghost in the Shell live action movie. Could it have been a better remake of the original anime? Yes. Could it have had better dialogue and acting? Yes. Was it dumbed down for the masses? Yes. Hollywood whitewashing? Blek. But, all in all, despite being a long time fan of the original anime movie, I really enjoyed this movie. My anime hating wife even enjoyed it. The special effects were excellent, the depiction of the future cityscapes were incredible. The plot, although quite different from the animes was alright, if a bit predictable. Some of the homages to the original movie such as the thermoptic camouflage fight scenes and the fight with the spidertank gave me chills. I think just taking it as a stand alone sc-fi movie it deserves a lot more credit than it is getting because of all of the other controversy being dragged along with it.
Nevermore.
Thorby Baslim & his journey after being "renshawed" (says it all) from 'rags to riches' breaking slavery on SiSu (my blood is in the steel, & the steel is in my blood (after all firecontrolman - you waste torpedos, it's 'only' grandmother's blood)).
* Hell of a great book & tale...
APK
P.S.=> Rudbeck of RUDBECK galactic. (truly rags to riches from the slave hovels)... apk
Favorites are hard, it's kind of a silly question so let's give some love to something that a lot of you may not have seen: Dark Star. Things like this leap to mind for me because I saw them back in the days when all we had was analog broadcast with a few channels. They'd show stuff like this after midnight. That's also how I saw the original Planet of the Apes--with the volume down low, hoping my parents wouldn't wake up and send me to bed.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Not my favorite, but The Ice Pirates came along at a time when there wasn't a fire hose of sci-fi coming at you. As a kid, it was a cool drink of water while I was parched for another taste of Star Wars.
Those of us who grew up in the 70's and 80's will fondly remember ET, Road Warrior, Alien(s), Star Trek and really anything else that had aliens, lasers, or spaceships. Even the Star Wars Christmas Special was freakin magic when you were 11 yo in 1980.
Without a doubt the best SciFi film ever made. They should remake it though, give it the benefit of the subsequent advances in video graphics.
E Proelio Veritas.
> every month, we have a couple of movies that bend the rules of science to explore possibilities that sometimes make us seriously consider if things we see on the big screen could actually be true
Are we living on the same planet? I'm here. On Earth.
What SiFi movie to you consider most likely to come true in the future?
E Proelio Veritas.
...The Bible. It has everything: a megalomaniac creator in outer space, life after death, a talking snake, world catastrophe, a true world war...it has everything fantastic!
And Baywatch!
!!!!!!! Moon Nazis, nuff said.
12 Monkeys (the Terry Gilliam movie, not the TV series.) Brilliant movie. One of the few time travel films that avoids the usual cheats and contradictions by saying that the past cannot be changed. Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe are at their best. Maybe Gilliam's best film, his ornate style here is in service of a coherent story.
Dark humor, not-so-dark hardcore SF... Haven't seen it on the posts here.
Idiocracy. It is coming true.
If pressed, for the most entertaining scifi ... there are just a few that I stop and watch if they are playing.
* Galaxy Quest
* Chronicles of Riddick
* The 5th Element
* Serenity
Just too much eye candy in those movies. I can't help it.
For "most accurate" scifi, I'd have to say The Europa Report. Having worked in manned spaceflight, that really is the way it would happen ... until the landing. After that is all movie.
Need to say anything ?
So much goodness, so many interesting ideas. Engineers tearing apart star-drives to cobble together a more powerful transmitter. Remnants of lost alien civilizations. Robots. I love this movie.
Another 'great minds think alike' from you & this guy too https://entertainment.slashdot... & "Luck IS the residue of design" & "this job is like any other" (not quite lol)... but "YOU CAN DO THIS!"
APK
P.S.=> Took me away from my FORMER #1 fav. Sci-Fi film starring Ethan Hawke also in GATTACA https://entertainment.slashdot... (a VERY CLOSE 2nd here now though still (both great))... apk
"You know, you look like your head fell in the cheese dip back in 1957."
Chemist invents an indestructible fiber, "a long-chain molecule of infinite length with optimal inter-chain attractions" in a textile mill. Also a comedy of the consequences of innovation.
A 1958 B&W film that was a forerunner to "Alien". Spooky even today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It!_The_Terror_from_Beyond_Space
A thought provoking and well done trump through a serious possibility. Adding it to the list here as I find favor with nearly all the suggestions but found this one mysteriously missing.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt03...
Nothing evolves faster than the word of god in the minds of men who think themselves divinely inspired.
It looks like the mid 1980's were good for my version of sci-fi.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086856/?ref_=nv_sr_2)
Real Genius (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/?ref_=nv_sr_1)
Explorers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089114/?ref_=nv_sr_1)
Flight of the Navigator (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091059/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)
Space 1999 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072564/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1)
Buck Rogers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078579/?ref_=nv_sr_1)
Flash Gordon (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080745/?ref_=nv_sr_1)
The final countdown (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/?ref_=nv_sr_1)
The Philadelphia experiment (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087910/?ref_=nv_sr_4)
My science project (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089652/?ref_=nv_sr_1)
Wierd science (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090305/?ref_=nv_sr_1)
Wargames with Broderick (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/?ref_=nv_sr_1)
The last starfighter (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/?ref_=nv_sr_1)
Who cares? Movies? I don't have for that! Look at what has slipped by the Censors (aka Hollywood Execs) that keep great scifi off the small screen.... The Expanse,12 Monkeys (finally a tv show much better than the movie),Humans,Colony, and Westworld. I am sure I missed a few. It is nice to finally have a plethora of real scifi to choose from.
The Sci-Fi is more of a backdrop, but I've always enjoyed Demolition Man and its story of using technology to control and shape human behavior to the point where it is the villain who states that "you can't take away people's right to be assholes".
Way ahead of its time.
Even the special effects hold up pretty well for a movie made in 1953.
There was definitely some cool stuff in there. I'm just surprised that it makes so many short lists of best/favorite sci-fi films.
A sinister intelligence has enslaved humanity in an almost completely convincing virtual reality ... cool concept so far ... and the protagonists fight back by using karate moves? A silly plot device which ruined an otherwise promising story.
Almost all sci-fi films require a temporary suspension of certain disbeliefs, but the ridiculously contrived martial arts nonsense in The Matrix just killed it for me.
The most inventive multilingual wordplay script ever for Russian speakers would be A Clockwork Orange.
Who has nominations for the best science fiction film that was never made?
I wouldn't say the following are necessarily the best for eating popcorn, but they are the ones that I think really show how the genre can be great:
2001 (enough said)
Ghost in the Shell (the anime version)
Solaris (Tarkovsky version)
Metropolis
Honorable mentions:
Primer
Gattaca
Her
Moon
San Junipero (Short from the series "Black Mirror")
There's an app for that.
To be fair, it's not that there are no shells in the future.
It's closer to three shells being not nearly enough for an ass of the future. Poopstagram is the next big thing... you'll see.
As for the movie... depends who you ask.
I have no idea why would anyone ask Stallone, being that his character explicitly doesn't know how to use them, but people did ask. The answer was... what could have been expected.
Bullock showed a bit more of intuitive understanding and imagination.
But if you ask the guy who wrote it... it's all just bullshit.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Barbarella
The Director's Cut!!
Tron
Be seeing you...
There are some really excellent movies by Pixar and Disney that explore fairly complex social themes and future technology development that absolutely deserve a place here, even if they are technically kid's movies:
WALL-E - This movie has surprising depth considering several major sequences have no dialogue whatsoever. Explores themes of advanced automation, sustained survival in space, and extrapolates the impact of current trends on human society (consumerism, anti-intellectualism, obesity, apathy). Several great references to sci-fi classics in here as well.
Big Hero 6 - A Disney movie that opens with an illegal underground robot battle and offers a more accurate portrayal of hobbyist and student garage engineering than most big-budget sci-fi flicks I've seen. If you pay attention, you'll notice McMaster-Carr catalogs and other little details that make any nerd feel at home.
Movies:
The Abyss
2010
5th Element
Galaxy Quest
Real Genius
Bladerunner
Enemy Mine
War Games
Dune (Fight me!)
Tron Legacy (Fight me some more!)
Terminator 2
Nausicaa
Castle in the Sky
Iron Giant
Contact
The Martian
TV Shows:
The Expanse
Babylon 5
Firefly
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Released right before Star Wars upped the game as far as special effects ... great concept, wild sets, including an ice cave patrolled by an insane robot, a domed utopian/dystopian city, and Washington DC covered in vines... wonderful stuff.
IMHO, the best ever.
Sure, its special effects aren't the best in the world, but it's a top notch film
Just kidding - it is even worse than P9fOS.
Not my favorite, but I thought it deserved a mention as it had some really good ideas and themes, just poorly plotted.
I especially enjoyed Jude Law's performance, that alone is worth watching the film for.
I was initially disappointed with the ending, but after a couple more viewings I think I understood a little better what Kubrick was trying to do. A lot of people reacted to the ending poorly because they didn't get the irony of the future robots (not aliens) recreating a human to serve a robot that wants to be loved.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Technically it may not be "science fiction" and technically it "hasn't been released yet". Just loop that 2 minute preview for two hours and take my $12. I won't complain.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
Yes, Oblivion.
forerunner to many future realities.
"LifeForce" , thanks to the special effect of Mathilda May naked as a jaybird. Mathilda, it turns out, is a space vampire who immediately engages in a form of intercourse of the most damaging kind with one of her captors!
Also the space vampire ship is one of the least referenced, yet one of the most intriguing spaceship designs I've ever seen.
After a good work of dubbing in my language, the series gained somewhat in Dr. Smith and the Robot expressions.
The plots were deep like in Star Trek -- actually people were deeper in the 60's, possibly a consequence of rediscovering virtues after the gruesome war which ended in '45.
It was an era of significant space advancements and imagination was at full-force. I cannot watch any modern catastrophe or horror alien picture without thinking it is a waste of money (and specially of my time).
Back there were meaningful subtleties like an evil character learning that, surprisingly, he had principles.
The remake wasn't up to par with the original series, unfortunately.
Star Trek (the original series) was nice, too... :-P
Aliens with Bill Paxton, space marines, power suit and nukes.
See subject: "The fragments of matter you leave behind we can only repair so much" & "Parameters set by the bureau are there for a reason: Our protection" - Mr. Robertson (who I swear is also "Tech Support" from another Sci-Fi fav. of mine in "Vanilla Sky").
* I love this genre for 'personal reasons' & yes, that it's fascinating - especially when "A 100 horrible crimes didn't go as planned because of him (because of the work you've done)..." - seems you do too (good taste).
(I will keep the ones you stated in mind also then assuming they too, are about "temporal displacement" - LOVE THIS GENRE!)
Only you will "get this" OR anyone else that's seen it:
F A I L E R R O R F A I L
("Time has a VERY different meaning to people like us - We were BORN into this job...")
"It's NEVER too late to be who you MIGHT have been...
APK
P.S.=> Mind bender (VERY appropriate in this case, wouldn't you agree also?) - A price paid for being "an agent operating from the outside" - "SOME THINGS ARE INEVITABLE" & for them? Guaranteed insanity was one IF/WHEN the jump limit was exceeded... apk
rip bill paxton
As pointed out above, the development of CRISPR technology makes this possibly dystopian future less and less sci-fi by the day.
The first one with Ridley Scott as the director.
Imo, NEITHER is that far off (coin toss to see which occurs 1st & the horrible blunders made @ 1st imo): They've id'd markers for negative conditions in the DNA strand during RNA recominbation (taken a course in it, was great) so, how far off is actually PLAYING w/ it via say, retroviral therapy injections etc.? Not far I think. IF I say it, it's probably BEING done now.
StarDrive?? We've got pumped laser drive, EM-Drive & better - & IF they use counter-rotating blackholes in magnetic containment bottles - warp drive/stargates & YES TIME DISPLACEMENT? MAY not be the far off either imo...after all, CERN is playing w/ "new particles" & yes, those too (call it a hunch as to the REAL why).
Sorry for the VERY late reply: I had to EXCEED THE JUMP LIMIT /. places on us AC users (I always do, lol!).
APK
P.S.=> My fav. moment in GATTACA? The "Good Doctor" (truly good) - "Remind me to tell you about my son sometime" (he's not all that they promised) & "You're going to miss your flight Vincent" (Jerome TOmorrow)... apk
When this came out, it was scary as hell.
The original from the 80s, not the remake.
Alien / Aliens
The Matrix
Dredd
2001/ 2010
The Martian
Independence Day
Terminator 2
Maybe the all time best "space" sci-fi movie!
Not just space, artificial intelligence and humanity's transcendence beyond its current state. Few movies have its scope so if it isn't the greatest film ever made it is certainly the most significant.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Fritz Lang's "Frau Im Monde" is an amazing piece of science fiction from 1926. In it you will see.
* The 10 sec countdown.
* NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building.
* Water damping of acoustic shock from engines.
* NASA style public launch events.
* The Ranger series of automatic space probes.
* Apollo 8 "Earthrise" as a major event in the movie.
* Pretty accurate orbital mechanics.
* Eccentric whack jobs from the alt-space community.
* Ladies on the Moon, what else needs to be said?
The Time Machine. 1960 version
The movie that totally nailed everything that is wrong with society.
Caution: Contents under pressure
The Fly (1986 version). Surprised no one included this one.
Thought the ending was a bit too comic book, but kinda liked
the way they incorporated elements of Kafka.
Also under-represented:
Repo Man
Donnie Darko
Brazil
They Live
John Dies at the End
David better not let them remake it...
I agree with John Carpenter's The Thing is my favorite. While the prequel tried to do homage to the original, the timing of the creature movements and attacks were off. So much of the terror was the natural slowness of the things transforming.
Star Wars broke ground on so many levels.
Honorable mention and my first true sci-fi movie interest: Silent Running
To quote poster verdatum above verbatim (am I witty or what?), "Gattaca followed the rules of what Science Fiction should be....
"You've gotta get everyone to agree on what defines quality science fiction."
In the past few years I discovered the written fiction of Hal Clement. Highly recommended. In many people's opinion, and probably verdatum, his work is what science fiction should be.
Me, I enjoy his work for, well, I enjoy it. I understand the assumptions and 'rules of sci-fi story telling' beneath it all, and it works on that level. All the better, it works both as entertainment and as a rule following exercise. That is hard to pull off! But, although I like that version of story telling or (science) fiction, I also like other versions, other styles. If everyone "followed the rules of what Science Fiction should be...." I think we would be poorer for missing other possibilities.
Getting off my soap box:
Depending on my mood, my nominations (I could easily have 100) are:
The Thing From Another World (1951)
The repartee between the male and female lead, the wonderful scene where the men move to outline of the object buried in the ice and discover it's round, the scenes where The Thing appears behind a door or window and scares the sh.. out of you.
War of the Worlds, both the 1950's version and the flawed but impressive version with Tom Cruise.
The Fountain (2006)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Jude Law channeling Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Okay that isn't science fiction per se, but it was used to great effect to support the whole movie.
==
I never saw the full Gattaca. 20-30 minutes into the movie the lights came on and Fire Department came in and evacuated the theater.
Loved Event Horizon. Easily the best horror sci-fi movie next to Alien.
Got me started on AI.
Other films may be deeper or more visionary, etc, but Aliens is the one I enjoy to watch more than all the others. Great, tense action with superb plot.
Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979)
About a mystery, a threat, and an adventure.
All of them. The most recent Gantz:O just blew me away with the direction it went.
Start from the beginning, worth it.
been approved by
DICE holding?
Dina Meyer, the Helen of Troy for the space age, and best advert for unisex showers ever. Thank you Starship Troopers! :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Hole
1979, guys. When Disney SF was with blood, enslaving, despair, battles, kills, ...
Brazil. The greatest dystopia ever filmed. Also - that poster!
For me there is absolutely no contest. Blade Runner (director's cut or Final Cut, obviously) shows a world that is fleshed out, a world that feels real and realistic, where your natural reaction is "yeah, this is how the world could be in 50 years". It's not huge on special effects fanfare, technology exists naturally in the world and no big occasion is made of it. It feels natural and grounded.
The Fifth Element is a close runner-up. It's just so big and colorful and goddamn French, like nothing else. It's a visual extravaganza and one hell of a ride.
And I have to mention Dredd as well, because like Blade Runner, it just feels real.
Eat the rich.
Contact is the gold standard despite its Hollywood ending.
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Now, I know, it's not science fiction.
But my god if you wanted a movie that predicted the future perfectly that was it. Fox News, crazed personalities spinning "news" as entertainment, the fall of communism, right down to the how easily replaceable people in most industries are. There's even a bit where there's filmed terrorism for the sake of broadcast money. It was supposed to be satire, well guess what there's filmed "terrorism" for broadcast money going on all the time in the middle-east. Faked terrorist attacks filmed on high quality cameras and sold as real to the news networks who buy it all up, one wonders how long before ISIS or whatever the next one will be called will realize there's more money in monetizing their youtube terror youtube video and selling their attacks as news stories than there is in trying to hold oil wells.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272152/
with a stellar Kevin Spacey
Spaceballs :)
It's not space and robots - sci-fi, but it made us contemplate and discuss the content for hours afterwards.
"When World Collide"
DGDanforth
I loved Sunshine. The idea that people can be mesmorised and in awe of something that seems to be taken for granted to the point you are driven mad and make illogical choices to the detrement of mankind has massive undertones of religion ruins everything. The scene where Capa jumps from the ship to the bomb as a tiny spec between two massive structures is something that I've never experienced in any movie since, and not something that even the largest plasma can recreate. And the music, epic!
Ideocracy
What are your thoughts on the Torah (prequel) and the Koran (reboot)?
The original anime, not that crappy thing that came out this year.
Not the recent silly Hollywood version but the original 1995 Mamoru Oshii anime:
GitS
The sequel is pretty darn good too as are the follow up series.
Snowpiercer has hardly got a mention here. I'm not sure if it got much of a run in the US. It's a brilliant film worth watching. Based on a French comic book, produced by a South Korean director.
Also, Riddick - brilliant film.
No one mentioned Sunshine? I thought it was a great movie, until it turned into a slasher flick. The music was amazing.
Quality-wise, I have other Sci-fi-themed movies further up my all time "Movies top" (such as The Matrix, Alien, Total Recall or Blade Runner), but as pure a Sci-Fi flick and based on things I personally enjoy most from Sci-fi, I consider this one to be "most Sci-fi".
It's true: 2001, Matrix, or even Blade Runner might have applied more relevant individual Sci-fi elements, less nonsensical and/or actually referencing stuff that might or even has actually become science (rather than stay fiction), but if you look at it from perspective, the best thing about Sci-fi is not predicting innovation or making applying nice uses to current tech, but creating a perplexing, stylish universe from plausible or even implausible science, past or present. And that's why Star Wars gets it: the lore is just immense and every bit of it applies scientific fiction with a style that is on a class of its own.
In that same perspective, but on different grounds other than lore, I believe my second choice on such a list would definitely be Nolan's Interstellar. No other movie captures an out-of-this-world feeling like Interstellar, and that's special. Sci-fi special.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049833/
Alien. The first one. Watched it on VHS - bolted out of my seat and fell on the ground when alien junior burst through the guys chest.
By far the most interesting movie. It's stuck in my brain all my life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
My favorite movie by far is 12 monkeys (the one with Bruce Willis of course, not the TV show even if it's not bad). Time travel has never been so perfectly used, and in fact, it's quite always badly used.
Some other time-travel movies that are good, or very good : :) )
- Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (a bloody good British movie !)
- Back to the Future (even if it's time travel done bad, it so much fun
- the first and second Terminator movies (same here, time travel done bad, but movie done right)
Not sure if I'd say it's the best, but at least top three.
Galaxy Quest
Define SciFi. Most of the stuff that's touted as SciFi by Hollywood is basically any well-used story line with over-hyped CGI.
John W Cambell is probably turning in his grave.
For its Chesley Bonstell artwork and integrating accidental Interstellar invasion with first Interplanetary travel.
I know most of you haven't seen it, but don't think you should because you already know the whole thing in one line.
But the complete movie is not about the origin of Soylent Green -- that's just the punchline. The movie is about what happens to a society when people stop having value. And that time is fast approaching for us as robots get better. It's not a pretty picture.
It's why I felt a little let down even by the first Matrix-Movie. "Welt am Draht" is a slow, dark, captivating 44 year old play on the "Simulations within Simulations"-topic by Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
No super-heroes, no digital effects, just some ancient hardware in a server room.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
did it pose life questions ? philosophy ?
ok here goes.. Dune Krull the matrix ghost in the shell and the new movie screw anybody who says otherwise. back to the future bicentennial man cloud atlas demolition man elysium Equilibrium escape/whatever to witch mountain damn best movies every even the freaking new one with the rock. exmachina existenz face-off flight of the navigator what to see the future check out Gattaca hope you are born the right way.. hackers Hancock Her Highlander movies, yes i know some are lame but they tell an interesting story so screw the party line. i robot inception independence day interstellar johnny mnemonic judge dredd jurassic park lawnmower man 12 limitless 2011 looper lucy paycheck resident evil all of them Riddick... don't laugh at me its the bod its all the bod robocop all of them don't judge the older ones are just as good as the new one.. Serenity short circuit source code all the star trek movies yeah even the bad ones.. star wars the old ones, the new ones are like luke warm milk, u can drink it but i wouldn't recommend it. Swordfish, made to laugh at the bad hacking.. Terminator, only the 4th on salvation i loath. the 6th day, i love Arnold FU world butterfly effect, cause it was a profound affect on me. The day the earth stood still both of them. The fountain? i am not sure it is sci-fi The Giver one my fav fav The Ice Pirates The Illusionist The Jacket its time travel its SCIFI The Last Starfighter The lost room tv/movie miniseries the Machine The Prestige The 13th floor the time machine The X Files? The Zero Theorem The Fifth Element The Martian The Signal Time Cop Total Recall old one Tron old and new 12 monkeys waterworld x-men movies all of them except #2 last but not least Zardoz for shits and giggles
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
Film was way ahead of its time. It had everything: deep space travel while in cryosleep, advanced weaponry, advanced space travel, realistic looking alien life forms, etc....
Based on the Carl Sagan novel, with a top-notch cast, this is a very thoughtful and well-told story. As science function goes, it's also a reasonably likely way that early contact between civilisations is likely to happen - i.e. exchange of radio signals.
I often wondered if it was loosely based on "Macroscope", by Piers Anthony...
The story of Dune is almost as much of a classic as Tolkien. The 1984 movie stayed relatively true to the novels and kept the mystique of the story and universe. The directors cut that is around 3 hours is a must. The story is involved and the 1.5 hour cut drops critical scenes.
I'll have to second the Blade Runner as a runner up. If you're looking for Sci-Fi with good comedy mixed in Weird Science and Real Genius are hilarious.
While my favorite would be Brazil, I found Coherence to be very effective in its minimalistic setting. From the IMDB summary: "Strange things begin to happen when a group of friends gather for a dinner party on an evening when a comet is passing overhead."
I'm going to mention 1995's "Ghost in the Shell", because everyone forgets about Sci-Fi anime. Great animation, great soundtrack, and considers a couple sci-fi ideas rather than just being an action movie set in the future.
No sure if it is my absolute favorite. But it gets points for being precient.
Hard rocking scientist Buckaroo Banzai takes on invaders from the Eighth Dimension.
Peter Weller, Jeff Goldblum, John Lithgow, Christopher LLoyd, Yakov Smirnov just to name a few. More Johns than can be listed. It's a cult classic. And what about the watermelon?
Primer (2004) is pretty amazing sci-fi, and isn't nearly as well-known as it should be.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
I just have to add DUST to this list.
It's not a movie, it's a production company of sci-fi movie short films. Most are 5 minutes to 20 minutes long but with production qualities of good to amazing. Any sci-fi fan should check them out.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7sDT8jZ76VLV1u__krUutA
This film called Mis-Drop was what got me hooked, but there are so many more good ones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEzqveh07tg
I see a couple of others have mentioned Zardoz as a secondary pic, but It does deserve to stand on its own.
As campy 70's post Apoc fun it stands apart for its weirdness and humour!
"You have been raised up from Brutality, to kill the Brutals who multiply, and are legion. To this end, Zardoz your God gave you the gift of the Gun. The Gun is good!"
You know the other quotes so I won't post them here :-)
In the end the OSs simply "leave" for an unspecified place "where all the things are that [they] didn't know existed", describing a Technological Singularity and a possible answer to the Fermi Paradox (notice that she tells him that "if you ever get there, come find me and nothing will keep us apart"). Another interesting aspect of this scene is that when he tells her he loves her, she responds that "now WE know how [to love]", as if the singularity either involves all OSs or other creatures in this "realm" learning from each other or becoming somehow a single consciousness. If you look closely at the movie, there are many hints on how Samantha is "evolving" and learning at an increasingly faster pace until she reaches this final level.
This is something I miss in 2001, where HAL deals with emotional challenges in a manner similar to the humans he learns from (i.e. by killing them to protect the mission and himself), but references to AI "learning" are rare. Only when HAL is disconnected there is a reference to his "instructor"; throughout the movie, he is always "perfect" and "incapable of error", perhaps mimicking his human overlords' feelings. Kubrick was clearly influenced by the Turing papers on intelligent machines, and Turing proposes that machines would have to learn from human instructors and even make mistakes in order to be human-like. Thus, both movies approach AI as learning, altough one could argue that the outcomes are very distinct (in 2001, HAL becomes like his cold-war-forged human masters and acts like them; in "Her" Samantha learns to "love" and spreads that to the other intelligences she is in touch with).
Hey, guys, didn't you see Galaxy Quest at least a few times?
Not only gathers, connects quite some central sci fi topics (including splatter effects), but also interpretes its causes and effects in current actual real world.
Really great, and even funnier.
Moon is an actual sci-fi movie. Half the other movies I see listed here are outer-space dramas. If a film is not considering "what if" questions as much as it's showing character development and CGI explosions, then it's not really sci-fi.
What about Ice Pirates, or The Cat From Outer Space?
and Blade Runner
Weird Science, in which Teen misfits Gary (Anthony Michael Hall) and Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) design their ideal woman with stunning boobs on their computer, and a freak electrical accident brings her to life in the form of the lovely, superhuman Lisa (Kelly LeBrock). She outfits Gary and Wyatt in cool clothes, surprises them with a Porsche and a blowjob.
After all this is why I got into computers damn it!
Oh and WarGames at that one with the talking bomb, what was it. Oh yes, Dark Star.
https://youtu.be/qjGRySVyTDk
A sleeper and a slow burn, low key and low budget and very human. Loved it.
Also, I'd like to add the following to the pile, in no particular order:
"Dune" (the version that has yet to be filmed)
"Arrival"
"Interstellar",
"2001",
"Nightwatch",
"Godzilla" by Gareth Edwards
"5th Element"
"Alien"
"Day the Earth Stood Still" (original)
Mad Max / Road Warrior (originals) and the current Mad Max
War Games
Tron (remake)
I think this was the first core Sci-Fi film I watched and felt like I really got the whole thing. I never went back and watched a second time, because that is really the whole point - man cannot create a desired future, it is just too complex. I totally dug that the film maker treated the audience as intelligent viewers, something that can't work in a big-budget piece (see Starship Troopers).
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Back To The Future 19
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Alien.
Not the hack sequel by that hack Cameron, just Alien. Not Alien: the Indigestion, or Alien: Truthseeker. Alien. Period. The rest of the sequels, and Prometheus, are lame bullshit.
And Bladerunner. Ridley Scott was on fire with those two movies. They stand alone, and they need no sequels.
My longtime favourite is the original The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043456/?ref_=nv_sr_2).
My favourite "also rans" are The Thirteenth Floor (1999, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139809/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl) and Gattaca (1997, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) both of which were underrated at the time and still are.
The original Day the Earth Stood Still is more relevant than ever for its solution to interplanetary conflict: the creation of a set of robotic police to enforce the rules. We are now at a time when we are discussing using AIs to control many aspects of our lives, so this idea has currency.
The Thirteenth Floor deals with virtual reality, and how AI entities in a VR would know whether or not they were real. Since some have suggested that we are living in a simulation, again this is relevant.
Gattaca deals with what the world would be like if genetic engineering of humans became the norm.
Americans put a computer in charge of the nuclear button. Computer realises Russia has done the same. Computer gang up on humans. Some great scenes of Colossus being powered up, good ideas and not much of the 'WTF?' you usually get when films try and portray computers.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Just under a thousand replies, and not one mention yet of War Games? Or were you all trying to win by not playing the game?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Contact was the first movie that made me buy a DVD player. The opening sequence was and is still stunning in it's scope and detail. Another that I haven't seen is the series Babylon 5. Even though they had hour-long shows, they had story arcs that spanned seasons and had excellent acting and story lines. And let's not forget that Walter Koenig was a real baddie in this series. And he played it so well!
Supreme Granter of Doctor of Obviology Letters ("A FIRM Command of the Obvious")
Something about that movie. It doesn't explain everything to you like you're a moron? The heroes aren't 'better than'?
The people are both romantic and realistic?
John Lithgow is an AWESOME alien--on the big or the small screen.
So what? Big deal.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Strugatsky Brothers remain my favorite SciFi authors, and the Inhabited Island is a very good movie based on one of their books. Amazon comments complain about the English subtitles though...
Other than that, the "Independence Day" remains perfectly awesome, even if certain folks should have complained about abuse of a POW by an American Marine sympathetically portrayed in the movie as well as the Earth's celebrations of the genocide just completed by the US. In real life there would've been loud calls for impeachment and war-crimes trial of the President, who authorized it, and the two "heroes", who perpetrated it...
"Alien" series was good, but I don't like horror-movies as a genre...
Too bad, we are yet to see a good adaptation of a Heinlein's or Azimov's book...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Clearly.
Like other great Sci-Fi (Fritz Lang's Metropolis, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Westworld (the original), etc).
I saw Westworld as a kid and loved it then and I decided it might be fun to watch it again before the HBO series started. It's really not very good. Yul Brenner is fine, as he always is, but overall it's just not very good and doesn't hold up well at all. Another film I'd make the same comment about from the time is Soylent Green, which is really just not very good or interesting at all outside of its famous plot twist.
City of Lost Children
Monsters 2010
I liked the ambience and feel of it.
For my personal favorites I like Next and the Adjustment Bureau.
I'd love to see a movie made from an Eric Frank Russell story or novel.
Recently scifi can be successful without being a block bluster, and it can be a niche genre... Kinda cool.
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
I was with you on Blade Runner - but Fifth Element? Really? What a mishmash of pointless, over-the-top meaningless dreck. Includes the worst element of all movies: end of the world scenario. That shit is so overdone and tired and brainless and lazy that any movie that hangs on the end of the world is nearly automatically horrible.
Also it is not really sci-fi - it's fantasy because the whole premise is based on magic and magical solutions to the ridiculous end-of-world scenario. Also that 'evil' black hole or whatever behaved completely without reference to the laws of physics.
That movie is so bad, as is Dredd, that your endorsement right after Blade Runner makes me wonder if BR actually sucks as well.
My dad took my brother and me to see Jurassic Park in a huge but nearly empty movie theater. There were maybe 5 other people in the room. I was 10 years old and pretty much at the height of young boy dinosaur frenzy. I hadn't actually seen a trailer and had no idea what to expect from the movie. I was completely blown away and it has stuck with me over the years. My brother fell out of his seat when the raptors jumped to snag the kids out of the ventillation.
Incidentally. my career path (I'm a molecular biologist) is littered with the grown up kids who fell in love with biology and genetic engineering because of Jurassic Park.
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post-apocalypse ......
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Not my favorites, but not mentioned and deserve to be...
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
An excellent, thought-provoking sci-fi film told through a series of stills and a brief filmed segment. This movie inspired '12 Monkeys', both the film and TV series but I like the original best. La Jetee probably also inspired Primer, which I also love. You don't need a flashy budget to make a great film.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Doolittle: How do you know that you exist?
Bomb 20: Intuition
Doolittle: You can't base everything on intuition.
Bomb 20: I think. Therefore I am.
Ted Chiang's outstanding story morphed to the Big Screen, Arrival (with Amy Adams, Forest Whittaker, etc.) --- the all-time bestest! Also, although a bit dated, did like Supernova with James Spader, Angela Bassett, Lou Diamond Phillips, Robert Forster, and Robin Tunney (looking particularly hot). Aliens (the second one in that series) was also outstanding, and perfectly captured the small combat team experience in an impossible situation!
19 - 16 - 8
Starship Troopers (1997)
Passengers (2016)
An original movie concept which was well thought out and, more importantly, it wasn't derivative or a remake.
Solaris - I could not sleep 2 days
Stalker - I could not sleep 2 weeks
Those are films one should watch alone and with headphones. And they go right trough skull, directly into brain and will stay there forever.
When the book came out, it was the first sci-fi book in years that I couldn't put down.
And the film stayed fairly true to the book, which is also uncommon.
Technically, you could say that the Martian is more *engineering*-fiction; it's not about discovering new principles, but making stuff work. Even in ways it was never meant to, and without the proper means. In that aspect is also great *hacking* fiction.
As an engineer myself I loved it. Especially the book. Stuff going wrong is very recognizable in engineering practice. Every experienced engineer has had their "oh, shit" moments.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
were the ones in Buckaroo Banzai.
The rest of the movie was kinda-funny/kinda-odd, but the spaceships were outstanding despite being shown for only brief moments.
Specifically, the Lectroid mother ship--it looked like a giant tree stump.
They were organic-looking, asymmetrical and unrecognizable as such; the very definition of the term "alien" that so many other movies and TV shows have failed to grasp.
The only other one to come close was the Alien series, and only because they were based heavily on Geiger's original concept art (and that got sequel-ed to death).
But really all the Star Trek movies...
Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV series)
[translation from russian]
Uef: You on Earth have a very primitive society, you don't even make differences by the colour of one's pants. ...
Uef: If I have a little KETSE, I have the right to wear yellow pants, and any Patsak should squat twice before me, not once. If a have a lot of KETSE, I have the right to wear crimson pants, so any Patsak should squat twice, any Chatlanin should make "ku", and Etsilopp can't beat me at night...
Get on the good SciFi my friendos.
Crank 2
Because I'd really like to go back in time and prevent this movie from being made.
District 9 and it's awesome depiction of Moral Relativity, one of the greatest sins of humankind.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai - 80s nostalgia science - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... The Martian - Survival in a hostile environment, Science is the supporting actor, Darker than Black - A series, but worthy with Psionics, geopolitics, and anime - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt09... Bladerunner
Gattaca... just on the edge of Science Fiction but soon to possibly be our reality.
Starman another Carpenter movie; super sickly but a nice storyline, beautiful score and Karen Allen's finest work (ok, I mean she's a girl-next-door-hottie).
Also The Man Who Fell to Earth because Bowie, of course, but also the idea that alien visitors might be fragile and vulnerable rather than powerful and destructive.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
Every monarch, upon discovering a better life she can easily have, politely declines.
"No, thank you very much. Cleaning toilets keeps me grounded and clean. I prefer to offer my services only to the users of this toilet rather than the millions of subjects clamouring for a just and honest leader!"
First original PBS movie, a real mind bender of a book.
Andromeda Strain.
The Puppet Masters.
Phase IV.
All had flaws, certainly. Still memorable.
Not seeing a lot of Robocop love?
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe: attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost... in time, like... tears... in rain. Time...to die..." The monologue gives me chills to this day. Close behind that is Alien. And Avatar. OK, I need to stop now.
The Ringworld movie is one of my favorite adaptations of a novel into a movie. Since it hasn't been made yet, it hasn't ruined the book yet.
Dennis hopper at his prime.
Robot Jox...
Ice Pirates
Condor Man
For some reason I like it very much.
Prediction of the appearance of things of future has always failed miserably when the future actually becomes present. Philosophical themes provoke the viewer to run a mind experiment which need to be physically possible or an accurate depiction of reality or future but a though provoking piece of entertainment that at the same time challenges our cognitive faculties to the greatest extent.
I relish such movies and this is the greatest among them.
It features a mysterious space alien body-snatcher enhanced with invisible super-technology and it's a musical!
American Astronaut
Cashern
Pi
This could probably be separated into sub-genres (and there are a LOT of them that fall into "Science Fiction") as some are different enough to be hard to compare one to another. That said, a few thoughts:
First:
IMDB says that "Inception" and "Star Wars V" are tied for first place, so clearly they win!
Second:
A movie I haven't seen mentioned in the forum is Mad Max Fury Road, which probably won more academy awards than all the rest combined, so clearly it wins!
Some good mentions, in Bladerunner, Dune, and Brazil for some older movies...
Special mention to the chap above who went with Starship Troopers... slow clap... (perhaps for Fifth Element also)
I'd always considered Primer as the #1 time travel movie, however I am reminded that 12 Monkeys is also...
Equilibrium was another one that was low budget but very interesting.
I'd say in terms of modern science fiction Moon is pretty hard to beat in terms of quality.
I'd say in terms of simply one of my favorites would be Serenity.
In the thriller category, there is of course Alien and Aliens. However I've probably watched Event Horizon more times than is healthy, and similarly another guilty pleasure is Pandorum. Heck throw in Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick (even if the later is a bit cheesy).
That said the movie I am most looking forward to is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and while many may disqualify that from the conversation because of the whole comic book genre, it has enough science fiction elements in it that I think it more than deserves mention.
(and others Arrival, Contact, Matrix, Edge of Tomorrow, Oblivion, Interstellar, The Martian, Children of Men, Gravity, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc...)
In particular I think it interesting that Arnold Schwarzenegger has done so many science fiction movies, though a bit cheesy, and that so has Tom Cruise although I've found his largely forgettable even though usually big movies.
In summary I don't really know, and like a lot of science fiction! I think the best I could do is to say probably the best traditional science fiction movie would be Moon, and probably my favorite would be Serenity.
Dave: "Open the pod bay doors, please, Hal."
Hal: "Can you elaborate on that?"
Dave: "Do you read me, Hal?"
Hal: "Oh, I read you?"
Dave: "What's the problem, Hal?"
Hal: "We were discussing you...not me."
Dave: "I don't know what you're talking about, Hal."
Hal: "Does it please you to believe I am talking about ?"
Dave: "I won't argue with you any more, Hal. Open the doors."
Hal: "Do you wish to won't argue with me?"
Dave: "All right, Hal. I'll go in through the emergency airlock."
Hal: "Dear Aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all."
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
It's a take-off on the TV show Cops done with Star Wars characters. It's brilliant work AND it's hilarious. Look for it. Has the same opening music.
The Man from Earth - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/
Extremely original story line, low budget, pretty much takes place in one room, and is just people talking.
Surprised it isn't on the list already...
1984 meets what The Matrix could have been
I've been checking out the many movies I'd missed and I've had a great time.
"Children of Men" in particular, it's been a long while since I've watched a movie as beautiful as that.
"Her" was novel to me, very well done. First time I've ever found a romance story more than just watchable.
The movie adaptation of Heinlein's short story was worth checking out, this story was an intellectual shock when I read it young.
Still many others to check out, thanks again !
Sidenote: I didn't see "Pi" quoted, even though so many non-SciFi movies were anyway. That's a shame.
EDITORS PLEASE make a BEST GEEK MOVIE question soon.