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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.
Bladerunner. The original with the overdubbing.
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.
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.
"Show me a successful sci-fi movie that's not a remake, sequel/prequel or spin-off in the last ten years."
The Martian?
Interstellar?
Arrival?
2001: A Space Odyssey
Contact
Metropolis (1927) or The Fifth Element.
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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
>> 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."
Interstellar. Moon. Inception. District 9. The Martian. Ex Machina.
They aren't all my favorites, but they're all original (the Martian is an adaptation, not sure if that counts). And they are all firmly sci fi.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
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
...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
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
District Moon.
#DeleteFacebook
Worth it just for the Battle of the Dock. Up to that point, it was the best live-action mecha I had ever seen. Fun, fun times.
3. Profit!
2. ???
1. On Soviet Slashdot, a Beowulf cluster of alien Natalie Portman overlords welcomes YOU!
He who controls the spice controls the universe!
first VHS movie i bought
You may not like it, though a lot of my friends did... Jupiter Rising is firmly SciFi and very original.
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.
Edge of Tomorrow came out in 2014, a scant 3 years ago.
Interstellar came out in 2014, a scant 3 years ago.
Looper came out in 2012. It wasn't as big as the other ones I've mentioned, but its box office returns were 6x its production budget (which is much better than some of the bigger names above).
Gravity, 2013, might be argued to not be sci-fi but science fact, but presuming we can reasonably call it Sci fi, it did pretty well, bringing in about $723M in revenues.
Inception, 2011, made approximately 5.5x its budget and brought in around $826M, which is successful by most people's account
District 9, 2009, brought in only around $210M, but only cost around $30M or so, so a 7x multiplier, and hugely popular
(all numbers courtesy of http://www.boxofficemojo.com/)
Now, it's likely -- this being Slashdot -- that someone will argue that some/all of these movies aren't good, or particularly original. That's fine. The original claim was "no successful Sci-fi movies in the last decade who aren't remakes, [s|pr]equel, or spin-offs. None of these movies are that.
Not a 'great' movie, but for sure one of my favourites. =)
You forgot to mention his bigger-in-the-inside spaceship fuelled by helium-3 piloted by the android who aspires to be human.
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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.
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.
The question was just about "sci-fi movies" and not about "sci-fi movies but not in space". But ok:
Source Code
Chappie
Ex Machina
Edge of Tomorrow
Elysium
Tomorrowland
Limitless
The Book of Eli
Better? ;)
Avatar? Surely that was within the last decade...
Yeah he's just cranky; there have been lots of good original science fiction films in the last decade, though Avatar was original in the strictest sense and incredibly derivative in other ways.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
WTF? Arrival, the Martian and Interstellar were all successful science fiction movies made within the last ten years. They met the criteria perfectly, why by condescending?
Yeah, Night Watch really was something special. Nothing had that look when it came out... love that movie!
Right, right, right... but apart from Avatar, Edge of Tomorrow, Interstellar, Looper, Gravity, Inception, and District 9, what have the Romans ever done for us?!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
The question was about "successful" movies. Not about "movies liked by people over 30/50/90 years old". I'd argue that box office IS one criteria for measuring success.
That said, I do like all the movies I listed. If that makes me young, so be it.
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!
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.
...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...
Primer
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.
District 9, 2009, brought in only around $210M, but only cost around $30M or so, so a 7x multiplier, and hugely popular
District 9 wasn't too bad, but I still think it would have been a lot better in it's original form as a Halo movie. Forward Unto Dawn was surprisingly good, and the story behind Halo easily lends itself to film. It's also a well-known brand, and even people who aren't into sci-fi played Halo. Even the little live-action short for The Division wasn't too bad.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
...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.
this was the movie that set the Flying Saucer as the premier interstellar spaceship design. There were some good special effects, however, I think those effects pretty much blew the budget. They then had to rely on good plot, story, engaging character, script, acting skills, dialog to make this an epic film.
mfwright@batnet.com
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.
n/t
Have gnu, will travel.
> Avatar came out in 2009, 8 years ago. You could argue there are some derivative ideas in it (as you could argue for any other work of fiction these days), but it was not a remake, not a sequel/prequel, and not a spin-off.
Avatar was a 100% remake of "Dances with Wolves" -- and I'm saying that as someone who bought the BluRay the instant it was available AND The Ultimate Fan's Guide to Avatar
You might enjoy these reads:
* Avatar: A Multi-Dimensional Pop Parable for Ascension
* The Theology of Avatar
What makes Avatar so good is that it is layered -- you have dumb action at the lowest level and interesting perspective/philosophy at the top. It brings the Out-Body-Experience to the forefront of mass consciousness. It hinted that plants were conscious. Lots of interesting questions for the layman to think about.
nt
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
I would also put some of those originals (and their contemporaries) in the top tier: The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing from Another World, War of the Worlds... Obviously, you have to forgive the limited special effects of the day, but some of the stories were every bit as good as the top-rated films today.
And, though it's not a movie per-se, um... Twilight Zone anyone?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Planet of the Apes.
Bonus movie - the day the earth stood still.
Hard to pick just one!
Why do you think moon is overrated? I barely heard about it, and really enjoyed it when I watched it. (I can understand and agree regarding the rest).
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
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.
Why would that make it better? It's interesting to see wildly different conceptions of alien life and communication. It expands your own definitions of the terms.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
That Avatar's plot was very similar to Dances with Wolves does not mean it was a remake in any meaningful way. It's pretty f'ing derivative, I'll give you that -- heck, there's a list of sources from which it looks like it borrowed -- http://io9.gizmodo.com/5460954... But it's not a remake by any meaningful, objective, standard.
Primer may be my favorite Sci-fi of all time, certainly in the time-travel sub genre.
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Avatar came out in 2009, 8 years ago. You could argue there are some derivative ideas in it (as you could argue for any other work of fiction these days), but it was not a remake, not a sequel/prequel, and not a spin-off.
You mean "Dances with Smurfs"? While Avatar is an enjoyable movie, the story and pacing is near spot-on with "Dances with Wolves" and "FernGully: The Last Rainforest". The plot wasn't just a derivative, it was a copy.
I think the point is, no-one is going to remember them in the same class as Space Odyssey, Star Wars (technically Fantasy not Sci Fi), Matrix, Alien, etc. They're big now, but in the long time frame they'll be forgotten.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
OK, fine, this guy had a point. It's not the "Golden Age" (I'd go 1970's for that) but its true sci-fi isn't completely dead/Marvel-ized yet either.
I'll buy him a Geritol if the rest of you will just GTFO my lawn.
Were there aliens and spaceships in dances with the wolves? Shared themes and concepts... yes. Remake... no.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
The Day the Earth Stood Still,1951
My favourite has to be "The Matrix", watched it hundreds of times
I don't think there is a single story that isn't derivative in some ways.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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
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.
Avatar was a 100% remake of "Dances with Wolves"
There are a lot of "going native" stories it draws upon. It definitely evokes the feeling of Dances with Wolves the most, but I think there's a strong dose of Dune in there as well (which predated Dances' in book and film).
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
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.
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.
It hinted that plants were conscious.
Hinted? Sully talks to a tree (who also happens to be their god) and the next day about 5 different species of animals show up to help. That's pretty much in your face that plants were conscious. Plus when they were trying to save Weaver's character all the villagers were connected to the tree just like they do with animals. The whole idea behind Pandora was the very Native American (and found on multiple other indigenous religions as well) notion that everything had a spirit and everything is connected.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Equilibrium
Paycheck
Barbarella
Galaxy Quest (a movie without flaws)
Jumper
Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
Not borrowed stolen. James Cameron admitted it himself, and he won a plagiarism lawsuit because of it.
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.
OK, fine, this guy had a point. It's not the "Golden Age" (I'd go 1970's for that) but its true sci-fi isn't completely dead/Marvel-ized yet either.
I think that's a perfectly fair assessment. It's impossible to call the current crop of Sci-Fi movies the "golden age", when quite frankly, very few of them are very rememberable, and probably none will show up on anyone's top 100 all time movies list 20 years from now. That said, this isn't the dark ages either. A decade ago there were a lot fewer Sci-Fi movies being made than today.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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
For example, I'm pretty sure that
Anne Hathaway’s Husband Begs Her to Stop Practicing Oscar Acceptance Speech
and John Hinckley, Jr. Furious to Discover Jodie Foster is Gay 32 Years Too Late
Aren't to be taken too seriously :)
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.
Space Odyssey was based on a book
Alien is a horror movie in outer space. Same formula. All the characters have some flaw, movie takes place in a closed environment and they are killed except for the flawless hero. In the case of Alien the flaw was usually greed and love of money
star wars is Greek mythology in outer space. Lucas even consulted with Joseph Campbell to get the story right
Or maybe Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Everything steals from something else. The point being though, all those movies will be remembered 20 years from now, just as we remember them all from 20+ years in the past.
The Martian was original, it might have even been pretty decent. Who is going to think of it 20 years from now and remember it as a Sci Fi classic?
I'm not saying good Sci-Fi isn't being made- it's just a bit of a stretch to call this "The Golden Age". How can the golden age not contain any memorable classics?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Bladerunner. I always go back to that movie.
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
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...
"Edge Of Tomorrow" - a clever sci-fi interpretation of "Groundhog day" with a good choice of a cast
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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That one wasn't a great example of movie-making but it was the necessary one, and actually makes the trilogy both actual SciFi and reasonable philosophy.
Why? Because at the end of "The Matrix", Neo was flying around and shit, feeling all victorious. By the end of "Revolutions", Neo is in the "real world" doing supernatural stuff.
Does that make him The One? Does that make him magical?
No, it just means that the world that Morpheus helped Neo escape to was an outside fantasy, meant to contain those who could not accept the standard fantasy. There is no magic in the world of The Matrix. There's only the hard brutal reality of humans dominated by machines, and Neo can't do anything magical in the actual real world.
This gets back to Neo being offered two choices - the red pill and the blue pill. It's because he makes his choice from the palette of choices offered that he fails.
Do you want to vote red or vote blue? Pick one! But that "choice" is itself a means of control - to be free you have to make your own choices, and make the world what you want it to be on on your own terms. Be wary of anybody who offers you "freedom" on their terms.
The Matrix trilogy was a tragic allegory about control. Stop at film 1 if you want to remain in the fantasy.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Please only the original from 1951. The remake with Keanu Reeves as Clathu was a heartless and breathless interpretation of the original...
The Martian may well be forgotten, but it was a much better movie than any that you named. Space Odyssey is practically unwatchable because it's so full of anachronisms. Star Wars is a typical hollywood three-act play. Don't get me wrong, I loved it when I was twelve, but it's not great art, and it's not even great story. The Matrix was fantastic, I loved it, I even use imagery from it in my meditation practice, but there were way too many bandaids. One of them is even the bandaid that my wife and I use to joke about Hollywood scriptwriting bandaids: "combined with a form of fusion..." Alien 2 was pretty good, I'll grant you that, but it was basically a bug hunt.
What is great about The Martian is that it's got story, it's got adventure, it's got a kick-ass optimistic view of the future, and most of the science is fine. There is one plot band-aid at the beginning—the windstorm that can knock over a spaceship—but that's the worst one. And above all else, the film honors and lauds science. That's what science fiction is about, not blasters and bugs.
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.
I thought Moon was a great movie, but my biggest issue was that carelessness on the part of the movie makers left a bunch of not-hints that misled me to believe that he wasn't actually on the moon. e.g. when he exited the airlocks he was clearly not entering a vacuum, there were a few opportunities to showcase low gravity that were (what I thought was intentionally at the time) passed up. Up until the very end I was expecting him to run one of the vehicles off the grid and through the side of a giant dome to reveal that he was basically in the truman show: moon edition.
And if you think about it, that actually would make an interesting premise. Take a guy off the street who doesn't understand science very well, tell him you'll pay him a bunch to go to the moon (or mars... mars one reality show anyone?) for 3 years, stick him in a box with some rocket noises, give him some handwavium technobabble during his "training" that explains why he won't feel the gravity difference (assuming your citizen of average intelligence even understands there would be a gravity difference), stress the fact that he'll die if he goes outside without his space suit on, and I bet you could trick someone for quite a bit of time.
That and then the scene at the end with the corridor stretching off into infinity really annoyed me. That was enough to last up into the 1000s of years, at which point I'd think shipping up that many replacements kind of exceeds the expected life of the station by several orders of magnitude, and kind of squandered any kind of cost advantage they thought they were gaining.
"Show me a successful sci-fi movie that's not a remake, sequel/prequel or spin-off in the last ten years."
The Martian?
Interstellar?
Arrival?
Martian: Robinson Crusoe.
Interstellar: mashup of The Grapes of Wrath and the Jesus legend.
Arrival: Aside from dozens of SciFi novels about learning to communicate with an enemy (Childhood's End, The Forever War), How about "Columbus discovers America" ?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
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.
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I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
According to several interviews with NASA astronauts, Gravity is most definitely science FICTION. Most of their comments begin with "there's just no way that...."
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.
It's the golden age of sci fi cause a lot of sci fi is being made and it's socially acceptable. other than movies there are a lot of good series out there like the expanse or black mirror
Rogue One was awesome
Interstellar was pretty good
The Martian is essentially a remake of that Tom Hanks movie where he's on an island which is a remake of an older story like Robinson Crusoe
Inception was good
I'll watch Passengers with my wife in a week or so
Space Odyssey wasn't as good as people make it out to be. Classic drawn out Kubrik
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.
"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.
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
Not my favorite, but not mentioned yet
Men in Black
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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.
so, what happens at the end?
The humans killed each other off and the robots take care of the plant life in the dome that's floating in space. This is probably the only bot movie that ever have the bots coming out as the winners.
... 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.
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
Space Odyssey was based on a book
Nope, read the foreword to the book. Clarke wrote the book at the same time as working on the screenplay. The book was, as I recall, released slightly earlier than the film, but neither was based on the other.
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I agree that it definitely tries to hit a similar feel to Dances with Wolves. But maybe DwW is just a remake of Lawrence of Arabia with Indians and a post-Vietnam Hollywood ending? Both are very much bittersweet.
In the great literary tradition of romanticizing the Noble Savage, either the Savage comes to us or we go to the Savage. Variants of this story go back millennia.
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
Space Odyssey was based on a book
Nope - Clarke wrote the script, then later finished his ideas for the book. Also, it was visually appealing for the day but really drawn out and very thin on content - much like Avatar, if not so schlocky.
But in any case "based on a book" is very different from the sequels, reboots, and remakes - those movies are at least new to the world of cinema.
Alien is a horror movie in outer space. Same formula ... star wars is Greek mythology in outer space.
Everything is built from tropes. Everything. But that doesn't stop works from being original, any more than original architecture requires novel building materials - it's what you do with the pieces.
Star Wars had such an impact because of the world building - that element was good science fiction. The actual story was pretty shallow fantasy, but so many more stories were told in the world that movie created.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
District 9 was terrible. The premise was lifted directly from Alien Nation and the 'racism is bad' theme was ham fisted and the films assumption that all Nigerians are criminals somewhat detracted from its ability to retain moral authority regarding prejudice.
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I think you give Avatar too much credit, Avatar was a remake of Disney's Pocahontas in space lol. If it were Dances with Wolves, it would have had more nuance and depth.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
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
In addition to being around longer, we only discuss the good ones. Here we are discussing five standout movies over nearly 50 years rather than the thousands of terrible movies released over the same period. Yeah, most movies today suck. The same was true in 1980, but we don't waste our time re-watching "Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" is an very much extended and expanded version of the idea in Clarke's 1948 short story, "The Sentinel"
Any movie that names an element "Unobtainium" cannot be referenced as science anything.
The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The other one that sticks in my memory from when I was a kid was Brainstorm.
It is a well known and long standing practice for hollywood to remake movies in different settings. This goes way back, but one that springs to mind:
Kurosawa's Yojimbo (Edo Japan Ronin playing two factions against each other for profit) remade as "A Fist Full of Dollars" a western starring Clint Eastwood with the same storyline, but set in the cowboy American mid west.
It happens a lot more often than you think, and these are remakes in the truest sense of the word.
Here are more since I'm lazy and don't want to write out a longer list. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
. . . .even without Milla Jovovich.
Multipass!
The other band-aid is that the potatoes which would have been on the ship would have been treated with a chemical (chlorpropham or maleic hydrazide) to prevent them from budding.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
Variants of this story go back millennia.
Do they? Is there a story of a Roman that starts to identify the Visigoths or something, of which I am unfamiliar? It's not just the idea of identifying with your enemy, or switching sides, but of switching to the less civilized side. I always assumed it didn't come about until Romanticism took off.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Really? WTF is the point of a mecha with no armor? That whole scene can only be explained by assuming that the machines gave the humans all their gear in the first place, to ensure they'd be useless when it came time to exterminate them. But then, I like that interpretation.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Stalker (1979)
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
Maybe I'm narrow minded. Maybe I'm shallow. Maybe I'm too judgy. But I just could not get past the fact that he wanted to have sex with a blue monkey.
Visually, the movie was very impressive. The bestiality, not so much.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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
Not best, but pretty good and different. Made in 2007, but looks like it was made in the 70's.
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
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No love for the classic and important "Plan 9 From Outer Space"???
"The Martian is essentially a remake of that Tom Hanks movie where he's on an island which is a remake of an older story like Robinson Crusoe"
Well, except that Matt Damon's character wasn't "Cast Away" at the end/
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
It may or not be personal but I do not think Chappie belongs here - it is s-f all right but of rather questionable quality. This is besides your point but I Think Ex Machina is an outstanding classic now even if they say this is a modern version of Frankenstein - I did not think about it when I saw it but then indeed there are quiet some similarities. There are also significant, not negligible differences and novelties. The ending were a little weak but then again what is perfect. I would add The Road too - it made me feel sick and I still watched till the end. Here again it is a bit weak at ending.
I do not understand the 'no space' limitation. It may be that we never reach other stars. But then this is a nice entertainment and Interstellar was still one of masterpieces of S-F while touching the time travel - that is a feat considering how hairy and impossible that is.
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
Actually, Clarke wrote the book and the screenplay simultaneously.
See The Lost Worlds of 2001.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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.
Still, that's not too many bandaids. The Matrix was lots of awesome cinematography and a really cool idea pretty much held together with bandaids. Like, why does dying in the matrix kill you IRL? Doesn't make any sense at all, but required for the plot, so that's the deal.
There are about 150 plots in this world, and everything else is rehashing. If you really complain about that, you should not even consider Frankenstein by Mary Shelley an original, as its plot can be found in Goethe's Faust, which in turn is a reworked play from the 16th century, which is based on legends you find for instance in Boccaccios Decamerone, which are a collection of stories from greek classics and arab folk tales.
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.
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
Space Odyssey wasn't actually based on a book. The book and movie were done at the same time and are quite different. Same meat of the story, but lots of differences. The second book was a sequel to the movie rather than the first book interestingly enough.
This critique of the film depends on the reading that the material was named unobtanium rather than described as unobtainium. As the latter reading is fully consistent with the rest of the film and also makes sense, sticking with the former is shown to be an attempt to manufacture a failing out of thin air.
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)
Wrong again, it is just Pocahontas in Space
"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
Everything is just a retelling of Gilgamesh if you get down to it...
Yeah, the Matrix made no sense at all, but it really broke new cinematographic ground. It also did a really good job melding the sci-fi and good ol' kung-fu genres.
Agreed that the potato thing is not a huge hole, but in an interview with the writer he was aware of the band-aid and couldn't think of a way to resolve it so he just ignored it. I was a little surprised, since the main character is a botanist and all he had to do was throw in a line about wanting to have potatoes that he could grow as an experiment or something. Maybe it would prematurely reveal the plot twist or something writer-y that I don't understand :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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
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.
Eleven minutes ago was a nice little light, indie timetravel movie. It was like the anti-thesis of Primer.
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)
The best.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
God.. i loved this move :) The Seka inspired hairdo was nice ...
Oh shit.. remember Tank girl..
so many samples from this movie :) But unkle's lifting of those samples i really liked..
cloud atlas meh.. sense8 more meh..
the whole transitioning thing the wachowskis are/were going through i felt it muddled the overall narrative of the movies and pushed a agenda i could care less about..
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
Avatar would have been a lot better if the Na'vi revealed at the end of the movie that Eywa has been sending Pandoran life forms to the Earth via the previous mining missions, initiating a Gaia-like consciousness here and that now it is time to awaken it.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The original Kyle McLachlan version.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I was attacked by a coked up whore and a fsking crazy dentist! ;)
In some of the outside scenes i remember that rocks were falling very slowly, that made me sure that they are on the moon. I do like your premise as well, I wonder why someone would do that though, except for "to experiment".
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
I have been told by a classics scholar of reading a letter by a Roman complaining that his son dresses like a German.
Romanticizing Celts was also thing that happened. Apparently sometimes young married Celtic couples would feel forced to go out and win their fortunes by arms, and the young wife might fight directly alongside her husband.
I might have doubted the veracity of the first item above, but I have seen translated quotes demonstrating the second, by an author whose name I recognized.
When you decide your culture is decadent in a particular way(s), it is quite easy to find another culture that seems to be intriguingly different on that score, and then spin it into a big positive Lesson About Life. That is not necessarily a bad thing. While I do find cultural comparisons as valuable for understanding ones own culture, because it can be easy to forget that so many everyday habits have practical alternatives, it is very easy to go overboard. Hollywood likes to go overboard.
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.
Avatar: Fern Gully in space! (Now in 3D.)
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
Best sci-fi movie: Blade Runner
Most beautiful movie: 2001: A Space Oddysey.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.
well damn, shows me for not verifying my 3-second google searches. They lied to me!
Logan's Run
Dark Crystal
Dark City
Avatar came out in 2009, 8 years ago. You could argue there are some derivative ideas in it (as you could argue for any other work of fiction these days), but it was not a remake, not a sequel/prequel, and not a spin-off.
Avatar is simply "Dances With Wolves" in space.
"Moon" was interesting, but nowhere near as mind-bending as people claim.
In the last decade' majors, there's "Source Code". "Edge of Tomorrow" had potential, if they only hadn't cheated to keep the main characters alive at the end.
Great Indie stuff, though. "Safety Not Guaranteed," "The One I Love," "Time Lapse."
Classics are stuff like "Blade Runner," "12 Monkeys," "2001."
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.
A Man Called Horse just called...
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.
What? No Galaxina?
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"?
I had high hopes but I guess I just don't get it. I forced myself to keep watching even though I wanted to stop. Worst movie for me since Birdman.
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.
TIL Gravity was a true story. "Science fact."
...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!
Pandorum?
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
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.
The Martian is a remake of this: Robinson Crusoe on Mars which is a great movie, although it's no Forbidden Planet.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
"You know, you look like your head fell in the cheese dip back in 1957."
Blade Runner ?
Memorable lines from The Martian:
Great SF, near-future, heavy on triumph of humanity working together and science over superstitious antiscientific woo-woo.
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 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.
Star Wars had such an impact because of the world building - that element was good science fiction. The actual story was pretty shallow fantasy, but so many more stories were told in the world that movie created.
I was 12 when Star Wars came out. I'll tell you why it was popular. All of the big science fiction of the late 60's and most of the 70's was heavy with political and social messages. There was no real pulp science fiction. According to "Logan's Run" and "Soylent Green" we were doomed because of overpopulation. "2001" was about a computer killing people. In "The Omega Man" humanity is wiped out by a disease that turns people into zombie vampires. The only real movie science fiction franchise of the time, "Planet of the Apes", was about civilization being wiped out by a nuclear war. Star Trek of course had its social messages. By the late 70's we were more than ready for some good mindless fun.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Eh, I watched Ex Machina and Chappie (and Wall-E and Big Hero 6) on the same transpacific flight, and I think they all belong... exploring different aspects of the same AI imagination. Maybe more on the level of Short Circuit, but it was still cute. Anyway, same director as District 9, and it's a neat and somewhat pragmatic vision of the not-too-distant future.
what have the Romans ever done for us?!
This calls for a concrete example...
FernGully - The Last Rainforest, surely.
I saw a writeup of Pocahontas with the names scratched out and Avatar names put in, and it was a dead match. But that whole outsider becomes insider story is formulaic, to say the least. It's been too long since I've seen Donnie Brasco, but I bet it would compare, too.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
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?
The big deal is that Primer was filmed for under $10k
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
Nor was Tom Hanks's, so...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Also https://xkcd.com/657/
Tron
Be seeing you...
I always find it a classic when the two physicians talking about how Klatu recovered from gunshot wounds quickly, young healthy body for his age, and how backwards he makes modern earth medicine. And then pulls out a cigarette.
mfwright@batnet.com
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
I enjoyed it. Then again, I like Cloud Atlas too. I've run into a lot of people that don't like the Wachowski's stuff post-Matrix because they tend to be hard to follow if you're not paying attention to all the details and don't follow stuff that jumps around a lot... and they're longer movies. Too many people can't seem to focus on a single thing for 3 hours anymore.
I tend to actually like stuff with weird/convoluted premises though.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
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.
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
Finally, somebody who likes Cloud Atlas! I thoroughly enjoyed it. You really have to watch it at least twice to be able to follow all the plots.
I liked The Fountain for much the same reason. It's three separate stories set in three different times. Plus, you get to look at Rachel Weisz for the whole movie!
Alien is a horror movie in outer space. Same formula. All the characters have some flaw, movie takes place in a closed environment and they are killed except for the flawless hero. In the case of Alien the flaw was usually greed and love of money
Alien is a SLASHER movie in outer space. And Ripley is just another final girl there. She doesn't become Rambolina until Aliens.
Alien was running on the same zeitgeist fear that made Halloween a hit - Bundys and Zodiacs and Tool Box Killers and Atlanta murderers and killer clowns...
Not to mention that the media was always eager to help spread the panic and disinformation. Causing bullshit psychological studies and whatnot...
As for Star Wars... Lucas read Campbell's book. Which is about myths in general, and about his thesis of a single "monomyth" spanning across the entire human culture. A LOT of it being about Buddhism.
Lucas watched Kurosawa. Watched Riefenstahl. Watched Flash Gordon serials as a kid.
Watched Howard Hughes with John Milius standing up after "Hell's Angels" to hold a speech about how "This is the kind of movies that should be made! Movies that matter!"
And you better listen to what Milius is saying cause he's built like a bear and he's packing shotguns in the trunk of his car. In case the handgun he has on him isn't enough. And he is also a brilliant script writer.
Hell... it even has connections to that other famous desert planet where they harvest spice which some intrepid and enterprising space pirate might try to smuggle.
Lucas pooled ideas from many sources and worked the thing over and over and over again trying to push out that idea he constructed in his head from all those sources - while others helped shape it.
And he had a helluva team to help him. And a few palls who knew a thing or two about movies.
Plus a budget fit for a James Bond movie.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Every story has been told in some form or another.
"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.
The "dying IRL" part is modestly plausible, as described by the movie. See for example the nocebo effect (and an entertaining IRL experiment here [Red].)
I watched Passengers over the weekend. For all the bad reviews, I enjoyed it: sort of Space Odyssey meets WALL-E, with a touch of over-dramatic romance.
Actually Clarke wrote the novel after the script, but that doesn't change that it was the work of a very good writer and a very good director.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(novel)
On a cinema screen it is that good IMHO, on a television not so much. I really don't know why the long model shots set to classical music work so well and neither do the directors of so many movies that tried to copy it either (eg. In Trek 1 that sort of thing just came across as boring scenes).
The original from the 80s, not the remake.
That sounds like now as well and what stopped things like "Ghost in the Shell" and "Suicide Squad" being good movies despite having the ingredients for a good movie. The plots just do not fit either the settings or the characters, but the "message" gets applied with a trowel.
We kind of were, but the "green revolution" in agriculture, the death of Mao (giving China a chance to plan to feed it's people) and the situation where there are no more children on the planet than there were in the 1940s (two billion) changed that. By the time the movies came out however the solutions were well under way.
At the other extreme is Solaris where the aliens were so alien that communication was getting nowhere after a century despite the aliens being able to construct human looking and behaving bodies based on the memories of the people on the space station.
At least that was the book, I haven't seen the movie remake and it's a while since I've seen the original.
They belong... just, well, if those are your favorites you're not a real computer guy and are barely a sci fi fan.
Then again, if neither Tron nor WarGames make the top of your list, you're also not a real computer guy.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
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.
Real Computer Guys (tm) don't necessarily have lists of the best 'sci-fi' film tucked away in their heads.
'WarGames' would be like watching 'Big Bang Theory.' To a non-nerd it appears that the characters on the program are nerds. But nerds don't watch programs like that. The characters in BBT would never watch their show. Well... maybe they would....
By the late 70's we were more than ready for some good mindless fun.
I don't think you should say 'we' like that. Many of us who are SF enthusiasts consider Star Wars barely SF at all. What Star Wars can conclusively be shown to have done is suck a lot of air out of the 'genere' of SF and lead to decades of dismal space-westerns.
There is no 'continuity' in a Science Fiction audience that leads to Star Wars. Star Wars was what George Lucas came up with after he was denied the right to produce Flash Gordon remakes. People who were watching SF films before the Star Wars movie came out were not the huge audience who embraced Star Wars. Star Wars didn't make 'science fiction' a mainstream thing. It was just a mainstream movie that many people outside the SF community considered as being Science Fiction.
Avatar, and most of the films like it, are just obvious ripoffs of the Hasbro commercials we watched as kids.
They're simply vehicles to sell toys and spin-off merchandise. Lucus and Pixar films are some of the most extreme examples that come to mind.
The Time Machine. 1960 version
The movie that totally nailed everything that is wrong with society.
Caution: Contents under pressure
No true Scotsman would agree with your assessment.
Loved Event Horizon. Easily the best horror sci-fi movie next to Alien.
Pretty sure that An Inconvenient Truth has been moved to the Fantasy category.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
That's sort-of true, though it's closer to a sequel. In The Sentinel, the monolith was a pyramid and it was difficult to access. The short story ended as they found their way in and sent a signal. In 2001, the monolith was a rectangle with 1,4,9 (and so on in higher dimensions, according to 2061) ratio sides and sent the signal as soon as it was discovered. The events analogous to those in The Sentinel happened before the start of the book. The Sentinel didn't have the second monolith around Jupiter / Saturn (the film and book of 2001 disagree on which one it was), didn't involve a space flight to discover it, didn't include an AI computer, and so on.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
>so-so from a strict scifi viewpoint
it has MAGIC, so I would say DEFINITELY not SF.
> Star Wars was what George Lucas came up with after he was denied the right to produce Flash Gordon remakes
Jesus no. Whoever denied Lucas that right deserves a Nobel Prize.
First time I heard this story, do you have any sources?
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
We have a word for people like you in German: Korinthenkakker. A person who shits raisins.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Brazil. The greatest dystopia ever filmed. Also - that poster!
Alien 2 was pretty good
Aliens is the greatest action movie ever made, bar none, and features the best kickass female character in cinema, bar none. It is peerless.
What is great about The Martian....
Whereas The Martian is a boring movie made of probably the most boring book I have ever read.
That's what science fiction is about, not blasters and bugs.
The Martian fails appallingly at the 'fiction' part of 'science fiction', which is to say, it fails to tell a compelling story. Whereas Aliens tells a story of greed, of loss (Ripley loses her daughter to old age) of redemption (she finds, and saves Newt, who just happens to be same same age as her lost daughter), of inexperience in the face of terror, of promises kept and broken (Newt : "I knew you'd come"), of male vs. female bravado ('have you ever been mistaken for a man / no, have you?').
Nothing else has ever even come close.
All these will be forgotten, because The Martian is straight-up terrible.
I suppose you have to have grown up in South Africa in the 80s (like me) to truly appreciate District 9
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
No, the alien language does fundamentally alter the protagonists experience of linear time. Did you even watch it?
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.
A fair judgement, but maybe not a fair conclusion. It's definitely not 'terrible', but it did undermine its own moral high ground. There's a heartbreaking scene in which one of the aliens attempts to comfort his son, by pointing at the awful photograph of endless refugee tents and wondering if 'this will be our one'. Even if the film sits on shaky ground, that scene alone elevates it above 'terrible'.
Primer is the greatest time travel movie ever made. It's also the only 'hard sci-fi' movie that's so far been talked about in this thread that actually manages to have characters and a story.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Come on man, I hate "Birdman" as much as the next guy, but you really should give Primer another shot. The time travel scenario in it is literally the only believable one that exists in fiction anywhere. Although 'timecrimes' gets pretty close.
Jupiter Rising is firmly SciFi and very original.
Ok. So why's she still cleaning toilets at the end? God it's risible rubbish.
The first two Dollars movies (A Fist full of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More) are totally brilliant. The gunfight at the end of "For a few Dollars more" was way better than anything in Good Bad & Ugly
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
> The Martian is a remake of this: Robinson Crusoe on Mars
You're kidding, right?
Apart from the premise of a man being stranded on Mars, they have literally nothing in common.
I'm not entirely serious, but they do have some things in common. They both have astronauts who have to figure out how to get oxygen and water and food on Mars. I do think that "The Martian" would have been significantly improved if it had a monkey. Of course, most things are improved with a monkey.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Cloud atlas was an honourable failure, and had several storylines that were compelling and believable. It fell apart under its own weight, since just one of its threads could have sustained an entire movie easily. Due to the fact that no-one will watch a ten-hour movie, the Wachowski's could only really scratch the surface of each storyline, which ultimately let all of the stories down.
But Jupiter Rising is total, complete, absurd, nonsense. And believe me, I did pay attention, it's a little bit patronising to suggest that people didn't like it because they couldn't follow it. I could follow it fine, thanks. It was just very, very, very bad indeed.
Gravity, 2013, might be argued to not be sci-fi but science fact,
You tell that to an Orbital Mechanic. Great film. Great. But the orbital mechanics stuff was just nonsense.
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.
People that like Avatar are generally people for whom such overt and obvious themes appear subtle. They're also people that can deal with similar problems in its visual style - anyone that enjoys subtlety and nuance in story and image will be unable to handle Avatar's approach to color and metaphor. It's not a bad film, it's just made for people that have pictures of fractals and dolphins on their walls.
There is no 'continuity' in a Science Fiction audience that leads to Star Wars. Star Wars was what George Lucas came up with after he was denied the right to produce Flash Gordon remakes.
Star Wars was a continuation of the Flash Gordon styled pulp given a flashy modern look. People still remembered that kind of "science fiction", or more accurately, "science fantasy" adventure. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of real science fiction, and I prefer Star Trek to Star Wars, but in the late seventies science fiction was super heavy and we were ready for some light entertainment. And when I said 'we', I'm talking about us pre-teens at the time who were getting bummed out by all the stories that told us we were going live in a computer controlled or ape controlled apocalyptic waste land eating soylent green, which is people, by the way.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
It's not space and robots - sci-fi, but it made us contemplate and discuss the content for hours afterwards.
> "2001" was about a computer killing people.
Worst. Oversimplification. Ever!
2001 is probably my all time favorite movie, but if you strip out Clarke's star baby space mysticism, the crux of the movie is that a computer decided that the best way to finish it's mission is to kill the people around it. "Logic dictates we must kill the humans to satisfy our programming." Same premise as "The 100". Come to think of it, I wouldn't be surprised if Clarke was named after Clarke. Anyway, Clarke is great, and "Rendezvous with Rama" is one of the best science fiction books of all time, but his space mysticism is a bit too new agey and unscientific for me.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
star wars is Greek mythology in outer space. Lucas even consulted with Joseph Campbell to get the story right
How's that? I always thought Star Wars is World War 2 blended with Asimov's foundation.
Empire - Nazi Germany
Rebel Alliance - Allies
Space Combat - World War 2 style dogfighting
Everything else, Coruscant, psychic abilities, galaxy spanning empire, is obviously inspired by Asimov.
'The Similars' currently on Netflix. It's like a 90 minute Twilight Zone episode. It has a 95% rating by critics on Rotten Tomato. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt39...
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
"When World Collide"
DGDanforth
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.
The other band-aid is that the potatoes which would have been on the ship would have been treated with a chemical (chlorpropham or maleic hydrazide) to prevent them from budding.
The potatoes were of the botanic experiments planned for Mars (remember, Mark was a Botanist), so it is very unlikely they would not be ably to bud.
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.
Somewhere, in the distant future, a movie of the short story in which all humans die, and the remaining robots are left on a planet to build their own civilisation, eventually re-discovering earth but being unable to imagine that they were created by organic life, and assume their ancestors are the rusted remains of cars and bulldozers, will be made
And that will be the great bot movie in which the bots come out as the winners. Please, someone, make it.. (and also if you could let me know what the sci-fi story was, that would also be great). Remembered text from the story; "And now man dies, a mutant bacteriophage, vicious beyond imagination...".
I thought they were for the Thanksgiving dinner? I might be confusing the book with the movie.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It didn't ruin the film for me, nor did I stress over it. Suspension of belief is not a problem for me - I can watch movies about superheros, for God's sake. I only mentioned it because the whole potato thing was a band-aid, and that was a major plot point along with the windstorm.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
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!
I'd give these clowns a point just because it was their first real attempt at making a movie (please ignore "Star Wreck"), they did it on a budget (IndieGoGo and KickStarter), and it was at the very least funny ("one last .... ... trick"). The scene when only Finland is caught having a non-weaponized space station in the demilitarized zone (space) is quite funny, too.
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/...
If you're going for time travel, you may like Ivan Vasilevich menyaet professiyu
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."
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...
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.
Primer (2004) is pretty amazing sci-fi, and isn't nearly as well-known as it should be.
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-- See?
Absolutely. The Day the Earth Stood Still (original version) is a well-told cautionary tale for a cold war audience that resonates today. And no need for bloodshed and explosions. Runners-up: Forbidden Planet, 2001, DarkStar, The Martian, and Interstellar
> So why's she still cleaning toilets at the end?
GAH! Spoilers! LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
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).
What about Ice Pirates, or The Cat From Outer Space?
And if you think about it, that actually would make an interesting premise. Take a guy off the street who doesn't understand science very well, tell him you'll pay him a bunch to go to the moon (or mars... mars one reality show anyone?) for 3 years, stick him in a box with some rocket noises, give him some handwavium technobabble during his "training" that explains why he won't feel the gravity difference (assuming your citizen of average intelligence even understands there would be a gravity difference), stress the fact that he'll die if he goes outside without his space suit on, and I bet you could trick someone for quite a bit of time.
Like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No sig today...
and Blade Runner
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...
Gravity, 2013, might be argued to not be sci-fi but science fact, but presuming we can reasonably call it Sci fi, it did pretty well, bringing in about $723M in revenues.
Science fact? More like Science Fantasy with how it handles orbital mechanics. Very pretty, perhaps, but very impossible.
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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.
How many people walked out of Star Wars saying "These are not the drones you're looking for!" to each other?
No sig today...
"combined with a form of fusion..."
All they needed to do instead was say that they needed the processing ability of human brains. You wouldn't be able to call that "wrong" because we don't know enough about how the human mind works or how machine intelligence would work to say. Also, it would give them a reason to have used humans in the pods instead of, say, cows. If all you need is body heat, why bother with consciousness?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Interstellar, maybe - but I think The Martian will hold up well.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Space Odyssey was based on a book
Who said they couldn't be adaptations of books? Does that mean we're supposed to throw out all the Philip K. Dick adaptations, for instance?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
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
I wouldn't necessarily have called the end of "Source Code" a cheat. It was stated several times that no-one really know how it works, and therefore there's no "rule" set within the movie's universe that prevents a consciousness from migrating to an alternate reality... though what happens to the original consciousness is a matter of some debate at that point. As a result though, it's somewhat consistent with multiverse theory.
Edge of Tomorrow though... yeah... that one was a cheat that violated its own internal "rules". At least I can't find a way that it works within the narrative... but it was still a good movie :)
I'd say good classic sci-fi movies of recent years should include Ex-Machina and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Actually, the question was about favorite movies.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
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?
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And that will be the great bot movie in which the bots come out as the winners.
Transformers... Meh... ;)
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")
Sorry, I wasn't claiming cheating on source code. I totally bought the complete transfer of his consciousness to the pocket universe. Especially because it then "helps" the others in the experimental program to survive (however deep the universes go. Turtles all the way down?) I also agree on those other two (although Philip K. Dick should really have received some recognition for Eternal Sunshine and Truman Show. Total lifts of concepts from his 50's-60's stories and novels)
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
I couldn't agree more on Space Odyssey. I read the book and loved it, then watched the movie and wished I could have 3 hours or my life back. I really liked HAL 9000 in the movie but that was about it. I can understand how impressive some of the technical stuff was, and I get that it was meant to be artistic. It's like I went to a fine restaurant but instead of being trusted with my own utensils the chef periodically comes out of the kitchen and spoon feeds me a bite every five minutes over the course of three hours.
The most memorable bit was a 15 minute scene where a space ship is landing. It's memorable because nothing happens of any importance whatsoever and I kept watching it because surely something had to be about to happen which would warrant actually filming the scene. But nope, apparently they had made the models for this scene in their spare time or something and just had to use it in the movie.
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.
The scene with the spaceship and playing the music is awesome (I read that one of the Arp synthesizer guys was actually cast as one of the music crew), the mashed potatoes scene is funny, everything else I guess is meh. But a few scenes does not make a great movie. Overrated? Perhaps, but at the time it was really hyped.
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If you think being a long human stranded alone on Mars and having to find a way to survive and get home isn't a compelling story, you have some pretty odd ideas of what MAKES a compelling story,
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
District 9 Hunger Games Elysium Edge of Tomorrow (no, seriously) https://entertainment.slashdot...
~corporate tool, but employed~
I needed to read the book to make sense of the movie [2001 that is], while Star Wars made perfect sense on the big screen without having to read a book.
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.
Martian: Robinson Crusoe.
Yes, in the sense that Star Wars is the Illiad.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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post-apocalypse ......
The other band-aid is that the potatoes which would have been on the ship would have been treated with a chemical (chlorpropham or maleic hydrazide) to prevent them from budding.
There is no nerd like a potato nerd.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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Not my favorites, but not mentioned and deserve to be...
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
I feel the same about Star Wars.
No sig today...
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.
It's worse than that - I'm an NPR nerd and listened to an interview with the author. I think the interview doubled my potato knowledge and I had to google the chemical names.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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!
We kind of were,
Just like every generation., for at least 150 years, and probably longer, we were "ZOMG all going to die" and then technology did what it always does. It was bullshit in 1870, bullshit in 1970, and bullshit today.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Gattaca
Argue about plot holes till the cows come home, but it returns the romance to space travel. In suits and ties! Not space suits!
I always stop to watch this when it comes on.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Many of us who are SF enthusiasts consider Star Wars barely SF at all.
Many pretentious hipster douchbags in every field consider anything that gained mainstream popularity barely in the field at all.
Star Wars was not Transformers, it wasn't just explosions and meaningless action for 2 hours. There's more to science fiction than the narrow sub-genre of "hard SF", where everything must have a legit scientific explanation. Sure, Star Wars was a bit schlocky as fit its theme of the old serials, but it also did amazing world-building. It presented the idea, somewhat novel to SF, than maybe all this technology wouldn't change anything important about society.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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).
Can't speak for the person you are replying to; but,I thought the book overall was OK, the plot was interesting, I found the writing style abhorrent, but the plot very interesting.
I think the book would have been an all time classic if written by a better author with the same plot ideas.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Because I'd really like to go back in time and prevent this movie from being made.
Agreed.
I appreciate that they didn't dumb everything down, and that they had actual characters and a story.... and a realistic view of science.
Most of the time when something is "invented" in a sci-fi movie, it's all about pretty lights and special effects. In real science new inventions usually look relatively boring. The second and third versions get the LED treatments and the fancy paint jobs..
Ya know, I could go on all day about what Primer does right.. That's why it's my favorite by far.
The Kalevala
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
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"
"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.
There was no theology or mysticism or significant philosophy in Avatar. Everything that looked like it was in reality jacking into another computer or the big server that runs the planet.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And you type your comment on a what? And stop lights are controlled by what? And your bank account is controlled by what? Need more examples?
We just haven't gotten to the apocalypse part ..... yet.
You seem to misunderstand the question "What's Your Favorite Sci-Fi Movie?".
Eat the rich.
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.
And you type your comment on a what? And stop lights are controlled by what? And your bank account is controlled by what? Need more examples?
We just haven't gotten to the apocalypse part ..... yet.
I didn't say we weren't heading for a computer controlled apocalypse. I just said that I was sick of being told my future was fucked when I was a kid in the 70s. If you want to know how much I agree with you, read my dystopian teen romance, Girl in a Fishbowl.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Oh wow, I'd never heard of that before. Basically exactly like that.
In some of the outside scenes i remember that rocks were falling very slowly, that made me sure that they are on the moon.
Ah yes, but but we mostly saw the slow falling rocks as viewed as from the cameras inside the habitat. During the movie I figured that bit could have been CGI to convince the guy that he was on the moon, though in hindsight I guess that wasn't the best of logic.
I do like your premise as well, I wonder why someone would do that though, except for "to experiment".
That's what I was hoping to see in the big reveal during my first watchthrough :P I could think of a bunch of reasons though. Reality TV show (I just learned from another commenter that this was actually done in 2005), some kind of twisted experiment, some kind of legit experiment gone wrong (e.g. some apocalyptic scenario happened outside and it was just computers running things inside not knowing they should have stopped years ago), crazy billionaire finding ways to entertain himself...
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."
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...