What Are Your Favorite Science Fiction Films ?

[polishgenius]

27 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

Matrix: I did not care for the first two films, but the third one really did it for me, quite awesome.

 

24 minutes ago, Nictarion said:

You have T2 on your list though...

Calibandar said this and the time travel in T2 was what caught your attention?

[Eggegg]

31 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

Matrix: I did not care for the first two films, but the third one really did it for me, quite awesome.

I assumed this was initially trolling. But now I'm not sure. 

 

[Calibandar]

I'm not trolling, that 3rd film really appeals to me.

Mainly because of the Zion mecha vs machines extensive fight scene, but it has other stuff as well, this is where The Matrix really gets going IMO. Time to see that film again actually.

[boojam]

30 minutes ago, Calibandar said:

Disagreed on the last two films in the Alien franchise.

Predator- The one with Adrien Brody, 2010 or something. Decent. War of the Worls the new version of course, not the ancient one from the 50's.

I generally don't care for old science fiction movies which explains the absence of 2001 and the Star Wars OT. Just feels so dated.

Predestination- Everything involving time travelling bores me tremendously. Ex Machina however I still have to see.

Matrix: I did not care for the first two films, but the third one really did it for me, quite awesome.

Man! 2001 makes any 'space travel' science fiction look archaic , and there really is no other BIG THINKS SF film that I know of.

The War of the Worlds , 1953, has the Spielberg beat 4 ways from Sunday. It has better pace , is crisper, flat out more smart than the later one.

Preditor was just a adolescent guess-who-gets-killed , Aliens was sort of that but with a ton more style! Did you just leave Aliens off? 

Predestination , seems you have not seen, is a quadruple down time paradox story told with a canny eye , clever and ingenious , not a popcorn movie.

Terminator , talk about a stupid time paradox! If the underground had of NOT sent Kyle Reese back, John Conner would never have been born , Skynet would never had existed and the Terminator would not have been sent back. Stupid story , only thing good about those films was at the action sequences and I guess that's all people want??

 

[Nictarion]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

 

Calibandar said this and the time travel in T2 was what caught your attention?

Touché

[Calibandar]

2 hours ago, boojam said:

Man! 2001 makes any 'space travel' science fiction look archaic , and there really is no other BIG THINKS SF film that I know of.

The War of the Worlds , 1953, has the Spielberg beat 4 ways from Sunday. It has better pace , is crisper, flat out more smart than the later one.

Preditor was just a adolescent guess-who-gets-killed , Aliens was sort of that but with a ton more style! Did you just leave Aliens off? 

Terminator , talk about a stupid time paradox! If the underground had of NOT sent Kyle Reese back, John Conner would never have been born , Skynet would never had existed and the Terminator would not have been sent back. Stupid story , only thing good about those films was at the action sequences and I guess that's all people want??

 

Aliens- Yes, left it off. It's not bad, I'd watch if it happened to be on tv, but a great SF film? Nah.

WotW- You can't compare the 1952 version with the Spielberg film, the latter is so much newer and better looking, they are worlds apart. You have to be a real fan of ancient films to still like stuff from the 50's, and I am not.

You can't touch T2, it is a masterpiece. "All people want" are iconic movies that people remember decades later? Then this one counts.

It's going to be the same if we are going to do a "favorite WWII" movie thread. There have been so many excellent WWII films the last 15 years, the stuff from the 50's 60's and 70's doesn't make my top 10 list.

[Eggegg]

2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

I'm not trolling, that 3rd film really appeals to me.

Mainly because of the Zion mecha vs machines extensive fight scene, but it has other stuff as well, this is where The Matrix really gets going IMO. Time to see that film again actually.

For me thats turning reality on its head and its like I'm living in an upside down world. 

I guess there is some stuff to like in the third movie, the ending was somewhat interesting in terms of what it was trying to say. But on the whole the 2nd and 3rd movies were huge disappointments to me. I do slightly prefer the 2nd movie because it simply has more moments in the Matrix itself. And the Highway chase was good and occasional moments of interest.

For me Zion was so utterly godawfully imagined, such a tired, unimaginative vision of the future, full of bland cliche characters, that every moment we spent there made the movie worse. That Zion battle is absolutely forgettable, I have in fact forgotten it. But I do remember is lots of CGI things flying around, and the level of excitement of a Transformers movie. Dire. 

The interesting part of the Matrix, is the Matrix. Its the metaphorical world created within a computer and all the permutations that it brings. That was the ultimate failing of the movies I think, they could never really express the world outside of the Matrix in a satisfactory way, it was just raves and orgies.

[boojam]

2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

Aliens- Yes, left it off. It's not bad, I'd watch if it happened to be on tv, but a great SF film? Nah.

WotW- You can't compare the 1952 version with the Spielberg film, the latter is so much newer and better looking, they are worlds apart. You have to be a real fan of ancient films to still like stuff from the 50's, and I am not.

You can't touch T2, it is a masterpiece. "All people want" are iconic movies that people remember decades later? Then this one counts.

It's going to be the same if we are going to do a "favorite WWII" movie thread. There have been so many excellent WWII films the last 15 years, the stuff from the 50's 60's and 70's doesn't make my top 10 list.

Spielberg' s War of the Worlds has better SFX due to CGI but it has a muddled story and kind of crawls along, it's not as interesting.

You really like Predator better than Aliens? Can you explain?

Movies just because they are old? Not a very good reason, some the finest films ever made were before 1960. I don't think you have seen a lot of 40's and 50's films.

Before 1950 there is only one that I know of that is a fine film that is Battleground 1949.

One thing is during WWII almost everything was 'propaganda' and they after wards there was a kind of cliched idealism , there had to be some distance between the war before the stories were even accurate.

The 1962 The Longest Day is as good as the 1998 Saving Private Ryan , D Day , but told in a different way.

The 1970 Tora Tora Tora is a 100 times better than the 2001 "Pearl Harbor' .

Can you name a better movie about Geroge Patton than the 1970 Patton?

In recent times HBO has done the best WWII visual narrative historical dramas about WWII Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

[GAROVORKIN]

The Last StarFighter   1984.  This film didn't score well at the box office which is sad because it ia a really good science fiction movie and  a classic .  The film was ahead of tis time with is use of Computer graphics.     I also with the had done a sequel to this one. 

[Theda Baratheon]

Ooooh I really love a film called The Machine - came out around the same time as Ex Machina, a little bit earlier in fact, I think and it's quite similar in theme and even plot and I actually prefer it. Made on 1/10th of the budget. I think it' an excellent science fiction lowbudget film with lots of cool concepts, a couple of absolutely cracking performances and a great 80s throwback synthy score

I totally recommend it 

[GAROVORKIN]

Colossus The Forbin Prohject 1970   staring Eric Braeden    A US scientist builds the ultimate supercomputer as a defense agains the Soviet Union not realizing that the computer has come up with its  own agenda. This movie is based on the  novel Colossus by Dennis  Feltham  Jones.   

 

 

[boojam]

1 hour ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Colossus The Forbin Prohject 1970   staring Eric Braeden    A US scientist builds the ultimate supercomputer as a defense agains the Soviet Union not realizing that the computer has come up with its  own agenda. This movie is based on the  novel Colossus by Dennis  Feltham  Jones.   

 

 

That is a good one , sort of unexpected since the two big AI machines essentially take over.

As long as we are reaching back to the 1970s. There is No Blade of Grass an adaptation of John Christopher's novel The Death of Grass. This is a smart post apocalyptic film , mostly forgotten nowadays.

1971 saw George Lucas's THX 1138 (based on his student film) which is an ok dystopian story , showed Lucas had promise as a film maker.

1971 The Andromeda Strain ... nicely done SF film, tho this is the kind of story I call the Popular Mechanics SF movie.

From 1972 Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running which seemed be made because Trumbull figured out how to do a VFX Saturn which he and the VFX people on 2001 had failed at. Really nice looking film with mostly in-camera FX , but with a lackluster story.

72 saw the Russian version of Solaris , this is a bit of a masterpiece , tho having read the Lem novel I have no idea why anyone would make a film of it. Later , 2002,  Soderbergh made a good version , not as good as Tarkovsky;s , but still good, and anther case of why do it as film?

Also in 72 Slaughterhouse-Five  based on Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same name , a surprising movie , and it really is a science fiction film, movie , might be the best adaptation of Vonnegut.

In 73 Soylent Green was based on Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison , the novel is better than the film, with it's irradiating focus on the tomato surprise which screws up the story message about over population.

In 77 a good remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

There were, surprisingly a number of SF Z films in the 70s ...The Thing with Two Heads ....Invasion of the Bee Girls! ... others... Why were they still making this crap!

One film from 1977 Close Encounter's of the Third Kind I liked the first time around, but now , to me, it comes across as sappy and sophomoric now.

[GAROVORKIN]

14 hours ago, boojam said:

That is a good one , sort of unexpected since the two big AI machines essentially take over.

As long as we are reaching back to the 1970s. There is No Blade of Grass an adaptation of John Christopher's novel The Death of Grass. This is a smart post apocalyptic film , mostly forgotten nowadays.

1971 saw George Lucas's THX 1138 (based on his student film) which is an ok dystopian story , showed Lucas had promise as a film maker.

1971 The Andromeda Strain ... nicely done SF film, tho this is the kind of story I call the Popular Mechanics SF movie.

From 1972 Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running which seemed be made because Trumbull figured out how to do a VFX Saturn which he and the VFX people on 2001 had failed at. Really nice looking film with mostly in-camera FX , but with a lackluster story.

72 saw the Russian version of Solaris , this is a bit of a masterpiece , tho having read the Lem novel I have no idea why anyone would make a film of it. Later , 2002,  Soderbergh made a good version , not as good as Tarkovsky;s , but still good, and anther case of why do it as film?

Also in 72 Slaughterhouse-Five  based on Kurt Vonnegut's novel of the same name , a surprising movie , and it really is a science fiction film, movie , might be the best adaptation of Vonnegut.

In 73 Soylent Green was based on Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison , the novel is better than the film, with it's irradiating focus on the tomato surprise which screws up the story message about over population.

In 77 a good remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

There were, surprisingly a number of SF Z films in the 70s ...The Thing with Two Heads ....Invasion of the Bee Girls! ... others... Why were they still making this crap!

One film from 1977 Close Encounter's of the Third Kind I liked the first time around, but now , to me, it comes across as sappy and sophomoric now.

In seen THX 1138 visually impressive but a pretty dull film.

The Andromeda Strain  a classic 

Ive seen Slaughterhouse Five  and I've read the book.  The film wasn't bad but couldn't do justice to the book.

I like the 72 version of Solaris a whole more the n the 2002 remake with George Clooney 

Silent Running , I agree with on that one, great visuals but lacking in the story department. 

Ive never seen No Blade of Grass but I do have the novel 

Ive seen Soylent Green a number of time, great film but has not aged well.  If remember correctly its Also Edward G Robinson's last feature film.

The 77 edition of Body Snatchers is quite good .   Kevin McCathy from the original has a cameo in this film.

 Close Encounters , I  Can't even watch anymore.

[GAROVORKIN]

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun  a k a  Doppelganger   1969   A live action feature film from the people that brought us, Stingray  Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet .

[boojam]

2 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Journey to the Far Side of the Sun  a k a  Doppelganger   1969   A live action feature film from the people that brought us, Stingray  Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet .

Doppelgänger had ingenious idea but did nothing with it. Yeah Gerry and Sylvia Anderson , they later did Space 1999 with some of the silliest physics ever foisted on an audience. That was klunky TV show, I remember in F&SF Baird Searles titled his review of the show as Space 1949.

Funny story , when Kubrick was making 2001 he tried to hire the Andersons , but they declined knowing what a task master he was.

[boojam]

2 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Ive seen Soylent Green a number of time, great film but has not aged well.  If remember correctly its Also Edward G Robinson's last feature film. 

Yes it was Robinson's last movie.

It was odd, I read Harry Harrison's Make Room Make Room in 1966 , it is a better than average SF novel , was puzzled tho that anyone wanted to make a movie of it, the film started out well with the police story but ends with the adolescent jack-in the box gee gaw that was not central to the Harrison story , I was irritated by that , because there is so little modern science fiction prose adapted to the screen and they screwed it up.

 

[GAROVORKIN]

3 hours ago, boojam said:

Yes it was Robinson's last movie.

It was odd, I read Harry Harrison's Make Room Make Room in 1966 , it is a better than average SF novel , was puzzled tho that anyone wanted to make a movie of it, the film started out well with the police story but ends with the adolescent jack-in the box gee gaw that was not central to the Harrison story , I was irritated by that , because there is so little modern science fiction prose adapted to the screen and they screwed it up.

 

In Planet of the Apes he was cast to play  the role of Dr Zaius  but because of poor health  he had to bow out. There  exists a screen test scene footage of him as Dr Zauis along with Charlton Heston and a young James Brolin in the role Cornelius. The makeup  used in tha scenes looks nothing like the makeup in the subsequent films ,it actually quite crude by comparison.   The story setup in the screen test suggests originally a different type of film  then one we finally got, It stuck as being more in line  Pierre Boule's  novel.

 

The problem is that back in early 70's movie executives for most part,  didn't take science fiction all that seriously, even with notable success of films Planet of the Apes films , they still tended to view it as the stuff of B movies . 

[boojam]

1 hour ago, GAROVORKIN said:

In Planet of the Apes he was going to be cast in the role of Dr Zaius  but because his fragile health   he had to bow out. There  exists a screen test scene footage of him as Dr Zauis along with Charlton Heston and a young James Brolin in the role Cornelius. The makeup  used in tha scenes looks nothing like the makeup in the subsequent films we got in the films   The story set up in the screen test suggests originally a different type of to then one we finally got, It stuck as being more in line  Pierre Boule's  novel.

 

The problem is that back in early 70's movie executive for most part didn't science fiction all that seriously, even with notable success of films Planet of the Apes films , they still tended to view science fiction as the stuff of B movies . They didn't see it  as the stuff of serious film making. 

Prose science fiction has never been a favorite for adaptation by Hollywood. There are an uncountable number of Mystery-Detective and Westerns as genre adaptions , only a small number of SF. Take the Hugo nominations and winners between just 1953 (when the Hugos started) and 1990 ,say, there are roughly 185 possible worth novels. My count may not be accurate , but only five have been made into film or TV. 

Starship Troopers
The Man in the High Castle
Dune
2010: Odyssey Two
Ender's Game

The film version of Star Ship Troopers is only an approximation and a dumb-down version of the novel. (Story is that someone wants to make it again.)

Man in a High Castle is a strange one to make, seems just because of the Dick name. The TV series 'action-o-files' the novel and is actually a decent drama even it its not like the book.

Dune, is an odd ball. It is a 'cinematic' story, Lynch was totally defeated by having to make it as one film and the Blivit problem , which is trying to pound 100  pounds of prose narrative into a 5 pound visual narrative. The TV series presented the narrative better but the production was plagued with a bad cast and production values and all in all was off. 

2010 was ok, but it was a useless extension of the original. 

Did someone mention Ender's Game in the thread? That was another Blivit problem , director  Gavin Hood wanted a longer film but could not get it. I am not one who is all that taken by Enders Game , like Dune , it is not in my top 10 SF novels, still it is a good story and they did a good job of it.

Two non Hugo novels, not nominated at all, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep were made into films.2001 as a film is far superior to the novel and is the only science fiction I know of that is totally in the spirit of modern science fiction prose and as Big Thinks at that! Best SF film of all time.

Blade Runner is based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep* , but as a movie is a totally different fish. Ridley Scott ginned up a film that feels like a realization of all the prose science fiction that was appearing on the pages of H L Golds Galaxy Magazine 1950-1960 , which was a lot of proto-cyber-punk written by Phil Dick, Fred Pohl, C.M.Kornbluth and Alfred Bester , and I don't think Scott was even aware of it! 

*Because of Blade Runner 2049 I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep again, it is strange, there are parts of that novel that are light years away from the movie story... then there are sequences that are exactly the same! For instance when Deckard gives Rachael the Voigt-Kamp test at the Tyrell corp, the film version is almost exactly the same as the novel! Even the part about the Owl which goes nowhere in the movie. The backbone story is the same in both film and novel but in different ways.

 

 

[GAROVORKIN]

4 hours ago, boojam said:

Doppelgänger had ingenious idea but did nothing with it. Yeah Gerry and Sylvia Anderson , they later did Space 1999 with some of the silliest physics ever foisted on an audience. That was klunky TV show, I remember in F&SF Baird Searles titled his review of the show as Space 1949.

Funny story , when Kubrick was making 2001 he tried to hire the Andersons , but they declined knowing what a task master he was.

Space 1999 was originally to be sequel seres to the 1970 series UFO.    Yes the show very implausible, but it does entertainment value. of the two season . the first is the best of the two.  

Kubrick was a perfectionist and very difficult to work for.

 

 

[GAROVORKIN]

3 hours ago, boojam said:

Prose science fiction has never been a favorite for adaptation by Hollywood. There are an uncountable number of Mystery-Detective and Westerns as genre adaptions , only a small number of SF. Take the Hugo nominations and winners between just 1953 (when the Hugos started) and 1990 ,say, there are roughly 185 possible worth novels. My count may not be accurate , but only five have been made into film or TV. 

Starship Troopers
The Man in the High Castle
Dune
2010: Odyssey Two
Ender's Game

The film version of Star Ship Troopers is only an approximation and a dumb-down version of the novel. (Story is that someone wants to make it again.)

Man in a High Castle is a strange one to make, seems just because of the Dick name. The TV series 'action-o-files' the novel and is actually a decent drama even it its not like the book.

Dune, is an odd ball. It is a 'cinematic' story, Lynch was totally defeated by having to make it as one film and the Blivit problem , which is trying to pound 100  pounds of prose narrative into a 5 pound visual narrative. The TV series presented the narrative better but the production was plagued with a bad cast and production values and all in all was off. 

2010 was ok, but it was a useless extension of the original. 

Did someone mention Ender's Game in the thread? That was another Blivit problem , director  Gavin Hood wanted a longer film but could not get it. I not one who is all that taken by Enders Game , like Dune , it is not in my top 10 SF novels, still it is a good story and they did a good job of it.

Two non Hugo novels, not nominated at all, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep were made into films.2001 as a film is far superior to the novel and is the only science fiction I know of that is totally in the spirit of modern science fiction prose and as Big Thinks at that! Best SF film of all time.

Blade Runner is based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep* , but as a movie is a totally different fish. Ridley Scott ginned up a film that feels like a realization of all the prose science fiction that was appearing on the pages of H L Golds Galaxy Magazine 1950-1960 , which was a lot of proto-cyber-punk written by Phil Dick, Fred Pohl, C.M.Kornbluth and Alfred Bester , and I don't think Scott was even aware of it! 

*Because of Blade Runner 2049 I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep again, it is strange, there are parts of that novel that are light years away from the movie story... then there are sequences that are exactly the same! For instance when Deckard give Rachael the Voigt-Kamp test at the Tyrell corp, the film version is almost exactly the same as the novel! Even the part about the Owl which goes nowhere in the movie. The backbone story is the same in both film and novel but in different ways.

 

 

The book Starship Troopers is a favorite of mine as to Verhoeven film, I dislike it immensely and parts 2  and 3. Part 4 Invasion is decent.  I do recommend the CGI tv series  Roughneck Starship Trooper Chronicles.   

Man in the High Castle   I've not seen . The book , I liked up until the ending which I hated. 

Dune Looks visually impressive but I agree you cannot do justice to it in 2 hour format.  It might have worker as 3 films but the studio would never have got of that .

I was under the impression that 2001 A Space Odyssey book  was a novelization of the Kubrick film which was actually based on his 1945 Short Story The Sentinel.

i read  Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and seen the Blade Runner ,  I did note a few of the differences.  I liked both.