It’s time for a new recount due to Gravity being amazing! I was going to just do 10, but I felt guilty about leaving out something as wonderful as the Fifth Element. In order of preference.
Aliens (the 2nd one)
Empire Strikes Back
Matrix
Blade Runner
Gravity
2001 A Space Odyssey
Dune
Terminator 1
12 Monkeys
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
The Fifth Element.
War of the Worlds (both)
HG Wells Time Machine (the 1970’s version)
Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind
Planet of the Apes (the first one)
Movies I have not seen that could be contenders via my scale:
Wings of Honneamise: an interesting animated fantasy where a decadent kingdom is undertaking something like the Mercury program. It took some digging to find but Tasha Robinson, now with The Dissolve, wrote this perfect review for it.
Strange Days: A look at the far off future date of New Year’s Eve, 1999. Beyond the millennial madness is a neo-noir about technology that can record memories and the lives it ruins. Great POV sequences and great acting all around. After this, director Kathryn Bigelow kind of disappeared until coming back with The Hurt Locker.
The Iron Giant: family movie about a boy that finds an alien colossus, and their wacky and heartbreaking adventures. In some ways, it’s a spiritual remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still
Back To The Future: Causes and effects, grandfather paradoxes, and endearing characters jammed into a time travel comedy with a screenplay so tight it sings an aria.
The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2): post-industrial barbarism, Visigoths in cars, the struggle to be moral versus the need for survival.
Forbidden Planet: Shakespeare in a flying saucer, and it works! I probably should swap this out with Children of Men, though.
The Incredibles: If superheroes count as science fiction, this is one of the best superhero stories.
Akira: Kaneda! Tetsuo! Telekinesis! Strange experiments! Neo-Tokyo will E.X.P.L.O.D.E.! This movie predicted that Japan will host the 2020 Olympics.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Great romantic tragicomedy about the fluid nature of memory, personalities, and willingness to suffer brain damage to forget an ex.
The Thing From Another World: I still like this a little more than the John Carpenter version. Great spitfire dialogue, scientists that do science, a great underplayed comedy bit that was later done in The Big Lebowski, and tremendous work by a stuntman that gets set on fire.
The Omega Man: I like it better than the Will Smith and Vincent Price versions of this story. Probably was better when watched as a teenager, when the New and Old Testament parallels weren’t quite as blatant. Still like how Charlton Heston, the paragon rugged individualist, watches Woodstock in an abandoned movie theater.
Cloud Atlas: I’ve only seen this once so far and think I scratched the surface of all its intricate connections. There are several futuristic settings that would be good movies on their own.
Gattaca: Can the human spirit be reduced to DNA? Probably not!
Upstream Color: This plot won’t hold your hand. If you want to know what the plants, the pigs, the worms, the robber, the sound designer, and our heroes have to do with each other, you have to figure it out for yourself. Control your mind to decipher this story about mind control.
Plus, I suppose, several on Jeff’s list. We can’t reuse the same movies, right? Galaxy Quest is still up for grabs!
1.) Oblivion, mainly for AR and the sound design. These are not ordered by how good they are.
2.) Alien
3.) Avatar. Just kidding! NEVER THAT! District 9 is the real pick.
4.) Red Planet. Please don’t yell at me.
5.) Sphere.
6.) Galaxy Quest.
7.) Equilibrium
8.) The Andromeda Strain
9.) Primer
10.) The Thing
11.) Jurassic Park
12.) Event Horizon (Which wasn’t good, but it left at least an impression of what I wanted it to be.)
13.) Jaws, though I’m not sure it’s really Sci-fi.
14.) Stargate
15.) Star Trek (2009) for visuals.
Wait a second… How can someone with the username of Hal9000 not have 2001 Space Odyssey on their list?! You know that means your computer is going to gain sentience and try to kill you now.
A lot of these I would consider only secondarily sci-fi, and they’re in no particular order and inevitably missing something I’ve forgotten:
Primer
Dark Star
Alien
Wall-E
Gattaca
Galaxy Quest
Blade Runner
Brazil
Starship Troopers
The Day The Earth Caught Fire
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Battle Royale
2001
The Thing
Robocop
Not sure I’ll come up with fifteen and this is in no particular order
Alien
Blade Runner
Serenity
Empire Strikes Back
Sunshine (this really falls apart for me at the end but I’ll forgive it)
The Matrix
Star Trek 2 KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN
2001
Looper
Elysium - not sure about this one… I really liked how it did the sci-fi tech and design, but the story was fairly bland
12 Monkeys
Eternal Sunshine
Children of Men - not 100% sure here either
Solaris
edit: I haven’t seen Gravity yet but I could see that earning a spot here.
Actually, jpinard listed it as #7 in the very first post of this thread. There’s also a very good reason that it shouldn’t be on anybody’s list, but that’s just my opinion. For me, the top 15 looks more like:
2001: A Space Odyssey - “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.”
Alien - “You bitch!”
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 edition) - “Klaatu barada nikto.”
Blade Runner - I’m in the minority on this, but I like the voice-over.
Star Wars - “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
The Wrath of Khan - “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.”
Back to the Future - “Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth’s gravitational pull?”
The Thing (1982) - The John Carpenter version is compelling enough to bear repeated viewings.
Escape from New York - “Call me Snake.”
Robocop - “Dick, you’re fired!”
Terminator - “Come with me if you want to live.”
The Road Warrior - “The last of the V8 Interceptors.”
Silent Running - Because… Bruce Dern and goofy robots named after Disney ducks.
Logan’s Run - The only reason for this to be on the list is quite honestly, Jenny Agutter.
Not gonna bother with 15 (it would mostly be restatements of ones listed above) but the lack of Moon so far is inexcusable. Another one that needs to be mentioned is Rollerball, but it’s old enough that I can understand not thinking of it.
I’d of listed Moon, but I factored in the desire to re-watch the movies that I chose to list. All the ones I picked I’d watch again anytime. Moon is sort of a once and done movie. Still its VERY GOOD.
Obviously I wasn’t given enough space to finish out the greatest movies of all time, sci fi or not, but I think you guys get where I was going with that.
These are “What a cool way to do science fiction!” picks.
Never Let Me Go
Melancholia
Jurassic Park
A Scanner Darkly
The Prestige
And I’d be lying if I didn’t say Back to the Future fits into this category.
These are all movies that get at the heart of what makes science fiction great: human reactions to unwordly situations. Too often hard science fiction or space fantasy gets distracted by its technology. The human element is always more interesting.
I also think getting to experience The Matrix as a teenager was about as impactful as growing up with Star Wars, particularly since I didn’t really discover Philip K Dick till after the movie.
