blastr's List of the sixteen smartest sci-fi flicks

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Fun Size

Fun Size

Since I'm a fan of the sci-fi, cheesy, intelligent and otherwise, I thought I'd get some opinions on this one. I haven't seen a few of these (just added Moon to my Nexflix on someone's suggestion from these parts), but it's not an awful list, as far as random internet lists go. Here's the list for those who fear the clicky:

2001: A Space Odyssey
12 Monkeys
Children of Men
Dark City
Pi
Primer
The Matrix
Quatermass and the Pit
Altered States
Minority Report
Contact
Gattaca
The Fountain
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Moon
Donnie Darko
 
P

Papillon

In my opinion 2001 suffers too much from the hard sci-fi fallacy: it's so focused on the tech they forgot the story.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Outland. First movie I remember watching where people exposed to hard vacuum ruptured.

Edit: dammit, I totally misunderstood what we were supposed to be doing in this thread.
 
sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Papillon said:
In my opinion 2001 suffers too much from the hard sci-fi fallacy: it's so focused on the tech they forgot the story.
Click to expand...
That was a huge problem with Sci-Fi. The Star Wars Lived In Universe helped to get the genre away from the mouth agape moments of this NEW GREAT TECH THAT SOLVES ALL PROBLEMS. Hell the Star Trek franchise still suffers from making the tech too important, and to awe-inspiring.
 
W

Wyrminarrd

Of those movies I've seen twelve and while some of them may have been smart they weren't very entertaining.
 
S

Soliloquy

I've only seem some of these... I'll have to check out the others. Here are my thoughts.

Children of Men: My favorite movies of all time, thus far. This film is proof that you don't need quick cuts, shaky cameras, and fancy special effects to make things exciting. And it has my favorite character death scene in all cinematic history.
pull my finger.

Dark City: Fun movie, nice twist, awesome themes, but I hated the way it ended. I think it could have been done much better.

Pi: I wasn't quite sure what I thought about this movie after I saw it, but it certainly was enjoyable.

Primer: I love the way that this movie attempts to create a new set of mind-bending time travel laws that aren't found in any other movie, doesn't talk down to the audience, and allows there to be unsolved mysteries left dangling at the end that are literally impossible for anyone to figure out.

The Matrix: Yeah, how could you not include this in the list?

Minority Report: Didn't really like it that much. Then I heard a theory that everything that happened after Tom Cruise's character was put into stasis is a hallucination. Now I love it.

Gattaca: I was extremely impressed with this movie. I thought it would be dull, going into it, but it managed to keep me on the edge of my seat the entire time, along with being thought-provoking and part of a well-crafted universe.

Donnie Darko: Maybe it's because I watched it with friends late at night the evening after I flew back to California from England... but I didn't understand it. At all.
 
O

Oddbot

Funny, I never really thought of Pi as science fiction before, but yeah, I guess it is. Still a great flick either way.

Glad Moon made the list, I really liked that one

Also, no District 9???
 
T

TwoBit

I postulate that Donnie Darko is not smart at all. Not even a little bit.

I do love me some Dark City. I gotta get me that movie on Blu-ray.
 
I

Iaculus

I postulate that The Matrix is not smart either. The first one's a great, imaginative action movie, but really not that intelligent beneath all the quasi-philosophical mumbling.

For a start, lrn2thermodynamics, people.

This list definitely seems to be confusing technobabble/philosobabble with intelligence.
 
Rob King

Rob King

Great Science Fiction has to have some sort of bigger point than a fun ride in order for me to love it.

District 9 was commentary on the problem of migrant workers in South Africa.

Moon was an exploration into how time and experience changes us as people.

Some of the other movies on the list I enjoyed, but I didn't get the feeling from them that they were really trying to communicate anything other than fun and adventure. I guess Minority Report was a study in which is more important between intention or action, but it sort of got lost in the action of the movie. Similarly, 12 Monkeys was fun, but other than a time travel adventure, I'm not quite sure what it was trying to tell me.

2001 was a commentary on our tools (hence the technology being the story) and how if we're not careful we may very well lose control.

The Day The Earth Stood Still was an exploration into how the cold war would look to outsiders, while simultaneously serving as a sobering look at our increasing potential.
 
Rob King

Rob King

Iaculus;416396][QUOTE=Rob King said:
District 9 was commentary on the problem of migrant workers in South Africa.
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Migrant workers? Try apartheid.

It is South Africa, after all.[/QUOTE]

That too, but I can recall an interview with Blomkamp from before the film was released about how it was as much about expatriate Zimbabweans (and others) being taken advantage of in South Africa today as it was about Apartheid. I prefer to focus on that, because I feel like the Apartheid focus robs the film of some immediate value. Nobody disagrees that Apartheid was garbage, and while there are still some repercussions to deal with, it is over. The problem of migrant workers is ongoing, though.
 
phil

phil

To me, good sci-fi asks a good question or presents you with a situation that is out of the ordinary. I haven't seen most of these but from the ones I have, I think they fit. The day the earth stood still asks if we as humans can put aside our differences and work together for peace. The matrix asks if you would rather live in an ideal world, or face the harsh reality of truth.

That's what I liked about the twilight zone so much. It often used a simple formula of taking an ordinary person, and presenting them with an extraordinary situation. There is something on the wing of the plane, messing with it but only you can see it. You enter a town and there is simply no one there. You're the last man on earth, but then you find someone else.

To me, that's the essence of good sci fi.
 
tegid

tegid

How is Donie Darko sci-fi? Or Pi?

And, yeah, children of men is the best movie on that list (that I have seen). It's very very good.
 
I

Iaculus

GasBandit said:
Outland. First movie I remember watching where people exposed to hard vacuum ruptured.

Edit: dammit, I totally misunderstood what we were supposed to be doing in this thread.
Click to expand...
Sorry, was this sarcasm, Gas? Because explosive decompression as Hollywood interprets it is largely an urban legend. Losing one atmosphere of pressure is not enough to burst a human. It can really fuck up our internals, though.
 
Rob King

Rob King

Iaculus;416440][QUOTE=GasBandit said:
Outland. First movie I remember watching where people exposed to hard vacuum ruptured.

Edit: dammit, I totally misunderstood what we were supposed to be doing in this thread.
Click to expand...
Sorry, was this sarcasm, Gas? Because explosive decompression as Hollywood interprets it is largely an urban legend. Losing one atmosphere of pressure is not enough to burst a human. It can really fuck up our internals, though.[/QUOTE]

From what I understand, as long as you do not try to hold your breath, you have thirty seconds before unconsciousness, a little longer before brain damage, and about five minutes before death.
 
S

Soliloquy

Iaculus said:
I postulate that The Matrix is not smart either. The first one's a great, imaginative action movie, but really not that intelligent beneath all the quasi-philosophical mumbling.

For a start, lrn2thermodynamics, people.

This list definitely seems to be confusing technobabble/philosobabble with intelligence.
Click to expand...
Apparently the original script of The Matrix had it so that computers were using our brains as basically a bunch of computer chips to increase its processing power, but studio execs thought that people wouldn't understand it, so they had it switched to batteries. or something.

But the whole questioning-the-nature-of-reality thing hadn't been done to that scale before in a popular movie, as far as I know. So I'm going to have to stick with calling this "smart"
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Iaculus;416440][QUOTE=GasBandit said:
Outland. First movie I remember watching where people exposed to hard vacuum ruptured.

Edit: dammit, I totally misunderstood what we were supposed to be doing in this thread.
Click to expand...
Sorry, was this sarcasm, Gas? Because explosive decompression as Hollywood interprets it is largely an urban legend. Losing one atmosphere of pressure is not enough to burst a human. It can really fuck up our internals, though.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, it was a mistake. I somehow got it in my head that this thread was about most entertaining, LEAST intelligent... but when I realized my mistake I just left it there with an edit to show I realized I dun goofed.
 
MindDetective

MindDetective

I am not sure I agree on The Fountain.

Having just watched Inception, I would almost put it on the list. It was wildly entertaining but I would say it falls heavily under science fantasy (not that many people make the distinction). It was smart in the sense that it told a complicated, convoluted plot in a simple manner, not in the sense that the characters espouse any unique philosophical insight. In fact, most of the characters are two-dimensional, save for Leonardo. Though it treats the science of the mind in a fast and loose manner, it does so in a consistent and thoughtful manner. It was just about good enough to be considered, I'd say.
 
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