Blade Runner tops scientist poll (1 Viewer)

[Zen Butler]

I prefer your initial "beaten to death with a fluffy ?" review of the film.

Please direct any unused heat my way. I've watched it at least three times and I still can't stand it. Although, Jude Law is a joy to watch.

 

[Max Leung]

I loved the ending to A Boy and His Dog. Good movie!

As the pure embodiment of SF, 2001 would be number one in my list. Almost all other SF has more focus on characters and personalities, with the SF elements as mere backdrop. 2001 transcends all that and reaches a new level that no other SF film can match.

But then, I haven't watched a lot of the other SF listed here - Solaris, The Day the Earth Stood Still, etc.

 

[Nick C.]

I wouldn't hesitate in adding A.I. to my personal list, it's more "real" sci-fi in the moral and humanity issues it covers than STAR WARS, certainly. I'd also want to add MINORITY REPORT and SOLARIS (2002) to my list of fave sci-fi pictures, along with the several times mentioned GATTACA, although perhaps these titles will naturally make their way atop a sci-fi list in a decade or few.

 

[DaveF]

I agree, but it doesn't use science in a sciencey way, which is what I think this list is after.

I must confess to disliking Solaris (2002); I thought it was a dreadful movie. Minority Report was fun, but not in my top tier.

But Gattaca is a favorite; I think of that as a very strong sci-fi movie.

 

[Tony_Ramos]

There's not much hard science or scientific theory in many of these films, i.e. 2001 and Star Wars. the first is more an evolutionary parable, chiefly concerned with ethics and metaphysics, completely abstract concepts. And the 2nd is well, it's STar Wars!

but it's good to see that scientists are ppl who like to be entertained, just like the rest of us.

 

[Zen Butler]

Minority Report was a very surprising film for me. It's a favorite of the last few years. Great disc too.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

DaveF wrote (post #44):


I keep swearing I'll get to my "serial tv space sci-fi" thread, and am I'm getting there---slowly, but in advance of it let me say that "real science fiction" doesn't have to be "techno" to qualify, in my opinion. Good ("genuine") science fiction can, and often does, focus on ontological issues: the "meaning of life" and/or of "human existence", and the like, which aren't questions that science can answer, since it can only deal with "the what" (process or form), not "the why" (content). That's where philosophy and/or religion come in. And what film could be more "ontological" than 2001?

 

[Cees Alons]

Fine, very important issues indeed. That makes it Ont-Fi, but not necessarily Sci-Fi.


Cees

 

[Jason_Els]

I agree that Star Wars isn't really sci-fi as much as it is a space romance. It is, however, a perfect movie.

I remember, very clearly, my mother taking me to see Blade Runner when it first opened. There weren't many people in the theater so we talked the whole time about what was going on, trying to work out where the missing replicant was and if it was Rachel or Deckard, if Deckard was a replicant, the symbology behind the origami figures, and just the whole lushly vivid world of Scott's. We both agreed the voice-over wasn't a good idea and while my mother came away uninspired, I was enchanted. Blade Runner was the first DVD I bought, even before I owned a DVD player, and despite its lousy quality, I still love to watch it. Blade Runner asks questions that the Terminator series answers the way our sneaking suspicion fears; technology will slip from our control and, in its sentience, become an end in itself.

My top 11, not counting Star Wars:

1. Blade Runner
2. Alien
3. The Day the Earth Stood Still
4. Logan's Run
5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
6. Forbidden Planet
7. Total Recall
8. War of the Worlds
9. When Worlds Collide
10. Destination Moon
11. The Matrix[/list=1]
    
    Very Honorable Mention goes to:
    
    Le Voyage Dans Le Lune- The first still has magic 102 years later. A charming film that must have stunned audiences.
    
    Aelita: Queen of Mars - Mind-boggling collage of art deco, murder, infidelity, and Marxist theology. It's dull until Soviets land on Mars and inspire the Martians to overthrow the Queen and install a Soviet-style government.
    
    The Black Cat - Karloff! Lugosi! Mad scientists! Bauhaus! It's just great.

 

[Paul_Scott]

pretty inane list them scientists cooked up.

as has been said, SW is fantasy.
for that matter, Alien is horror.
both just have a surface veneer that make them appear to be sci-fi.
although, i guess you could argue that Blade Runner is a detective story with a sci-fi veneer too.
what seperates it- is the investigation of the human condition and how technology plays with that.


anyways, Gattaca is a huge oversight (and you call yourself a scientist?!), and while the physics may be shakey, The Day The Earth Caught Fire is pretty compelling sci-fi and a UK classic.
and what about the Quatermass films?

 

[Brian Lawrence]

What, No Barbarella?

Fuck that list !!!

 

[george kaplan]

From the dictionary:

Sure looks like Star Wars and Alien qualify to me.

 

[Steve Christou]

I never understood people insisting that science-fiction should be logical, possible and consistent with our laws of physics, why? If a story or movie is set on another planet, galaxy, universe or dimension, and governed by it's own peculiar science, that shouldn't automatically make it a fantasy.

The late Isaac Asimov arguably the greatest science-fiction author of our time and a scientist, wrote the Hugo and Nebula award winning The Gods Themselves. Containing probably the weirdest, strangest, most unique alien society ever written. Existing in parallel universes with their own natural laws and three sexes. One of the weirdest novels I've ever read, yet it's pure sci-fi.

Why should Star Wars be labeled as science fantasy when some of the greatest SF novels contain imaginative concepts beyond anything George Lucas dreamt up?

 

[AdrianV]

Alien is horror and science FICTION. I like the selections.

 

[Kevin M]

UK?

 

[Jason_Els]

Have you seen this film? You do realize, that in this film, the Earth doesn't actually stand still?

Klaatu doesn't explain how what he does is possible. I don't see how the physics could be "shakey".

 

[Paul_Scott]

sorry- i meant to write The Day The Earth Caught Fire.

as far as Alien and SW- the sci-fi aspects to both seem very superficial.
i always thought (or it seemed that other people liked to impress upon me growing up) that science-fiction was actually one of the most intelligent literary forms that got ghettoized by a surfeit of cheesy 'westerns in space'.

i like SW a great deal (in its original form), but to call it science fiction seems to set that genre back a few paces.

 

[Steve Christou]

I blame the 'orrible prequels for the complete lack of respect Star Wars is getting nowadays. And now that Lucas has customised the classic OT to fit in more neatly with the new it can only get worse. Star Wars as the name implies is war in space, WWII in another galaxy far far away. I don't see it as the Adventures of Luke Skywalker or the Rise and Fall of Anakin Skywalker. I see it as Galactic Warfare. Space Nazi's Conquer the Universe. Space Opera: a popular branch of science fiction.

For far more elaborate space operas there's Peter Hamilton's massive hard core SF space opera 'The Reality Dysfunction' and it's sequels. Vernor Vinge's jaw-dropping galaxy spanning 'A Fire Upon the Deep'. Iain Banks hugely entertaining Culture novels. Stephen Donaldson's graphic Gap novels to name just a few.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Steve, regarding your next-to-last post, you're slightly missing the point. The rules of physics are universal. The same physical laws the govern all things here on Earth apply to other planets orbiting other stars. And regarding the dictionary definition offered by George, I'd submit that it is not quite as accurate as an SF fan would have it. SF is science-based literature; for it to be good literature, however, it must have a human heart. Hence, Rex's ontology-based argument, which nails it for me.

By the editorial standards of print-based SF, the Lucas movies are fantasies.

Now, if one looks at George Pal's Destination Moon, he or she is looking at the real deal — even though the film has been upstaged by history, it's still "real" SF.

 

[Jason_Els]

How could I have left this out?? I love Barbarella! Those dolls still creep me out....

"An angel can't make love because an angel is love."

Great cast and a lot of silly fun. The perfect 60s movie, IMHO.