Greatest sci-fi movies of the decades- but only one per...
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Saturday, December 3, 2005 08:30
VIEWED: 17340
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Quote:Sorry Finn. An excellent post that offers the usual in-depth insight, but this list of movies pales beside Serenity. The only one that even comes close (and pretty close it is) is A.I..(although, I haven't seen The Island yet....)
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
A few other competitors that I think are promising would be Frequency, A.I., Minority Report, Final Fantasy, I,Robot, Terminator 3, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and The Island.
Jurassic Park, interesting choice.
Chrisisall, aka Mr. DNA
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Good topic -- Tough Choices. I'm going to go with best as being that which endures, whether it be for the acting cinemetography or story, it has to be something I'd still watch today.
1950's: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Runner up, War of the Worlds (1953)
1960's: 2001, a Space Odyssey (1968)
Runner up, The Time Machine (1960), which would have been a top contender for the 50's had it been a year earlier.
1970's: Alien (1979)
Runner up. Logan's Run (1976). Star Wars: A New Hope, which many have mentioned, just does not hold up as well.
1980's: Blade Runner (1982)
Runner's up: Terminator, Aliens, Highlander, Wrath of Khan (still the best ST film) and Enemy Mine (1985), which no one has mentioned yet. Clearly the 80's was the decade of the classic SF film.
1990's: I'm going to go with Finn Mac and say Jurrasic Park, with The Matrix as a runner up. There was a LOT of bad SF in the 90's
2000's So far Serenity is the best SF Film I've seen from this decade.
-Caius
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Why limit our lists to the 50's?
Y'all should know that there landmark and *good* SF movies prior to 1950 such Fritz Lang's Metropolis from 1927.
Y'all know without this there would have been no Bladerunner, Matrix or Dark City.
And to think, C-3PO may never have existed.
And in 1933 there was King Kong, the ultimate classic, but does that count as SF?
Just a thought.
TS
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"God has a plan for you, Gaius. He has a plan for everything and everyone." Number Six '33'
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Carl Sagan
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Quote:Don’t be sorry. I don’t necessarily disagree with you. I’m just a little cautious about assigning a favorite so soon. I like to analyze the intel first, as it were. However, if I had to pick one film that was closest to Serenity, it probably wouldn’t be A.I.. That’s just me.
Originally posted by chrisisall:Quote:Sorry Finn. An excellent post that offers the usual in-depth insight, but this list of movies pales beside Serenity. The only one that even comes close (and pretty close it is) is A.I..(although, I haven't seen The Island yet....)
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
A few other competitors that I think are promising would be Frequency, A.I., Minority Report, Final Fantasy, I,Robot, Terminator 3, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and The Island.
Jurassic Park, interesting choice.
Chrisisall, aka Mr. DNA
TIENSHAODUH:
The problem with going back before 1950 is that there really isn’t much to choose from, and only the most anal-retentive of sci-fi fans even remember back that far. Even though there are a few landmark movies prior to the 50s, science fiction really began in the 1950s, that’s why it is referred to as the “Golden Age of Science Fiction.”
I don't think anyone is limiting anything to the 50s though. If you would like to detail movies before the 50s I’m sure there would be a lot of interest, because, as I said, its not popular knowledge, even though I think most people would be surprised how many movies they actually know about.
Before the 1930s there really weren’t a lot of movies at all, and certainly not a lot of science fiction. Metropolis has been mentioned, and I’m not terribly familiar with it. I’ve never watched it. It was a foreign film of a futuristic dystopic society with a heavy gothic mood. There’s of course A Trip to the Moon, which is considered the first science fiction movie ever made, and “science” should be very loosely interpreted in this case. Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea is an adaptation of a Jules Vern story.
All of these movies have their historical value and, in one way or another, have made considerable impact on the genre, but my choice for best movie prior to the 1930s is The Lost World (1925), which was an adaptation of a novel of the same name by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whom you may know form the Sherlock Holmes stories. This was the first movie that used stop motion special effects. I’ve heard many give King Kong that distinction, but it was not. The Lost World created the dinosaur sci-fi genre, which led to King Kong, etc, etc, Jurassic Park (even several tv shows.) So it had tremendous effect on the genre and not that difficult to watch either.
In the 1930s, science fiction started to pick up and actually many of the movies during the 1930s have actually become very popular and remain in popular vernacular to this day. This was the depression era and people wanted escapism. So you’ve got Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, Frankenstein, King Kong, The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein and Flash Gordon. If you aren’t familiar with all of these, you’ve been living in the hills somewhere. I would have to agree with most people, that King Kong was the best movie from that decade.
The 1940s was a dry period of science fiction. Most people where concentrating on winning the war, and I can’t think of any sci-fi movie that really stands out. Imagine that kind of resilience today? It really makes you wonder if we’ve misplaced some of our priorities, but I digress.
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Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum.
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Thanks for the insight Finn.
TS
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"God has a plan for you, Gaius. He has a plan for everything and everyone." Number Six '33'
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Carl Sagan
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There was the Rocketman serials during the 40's
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/r/rocketmn.htm
http://dialbforblog.com/archives/122/
I used to love watching this show when they aired it during the school summer holidays.
The
Somnambulist
www.cirqus.com
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I'm surprised nobody's mentioned THX-1138 or Star Trek IV yet. Call me crazy, but I thought Voyage Home was worlds better than Wrath of Khan.
_____________________
"Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?"
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Quote:
Originally posted by Orpheus:
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned THX-1138 or Star Trek IV yet. Call me crazy, but I thought Voyage Home was worlds better than Wrath of Khan.
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"Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?"
To be quite honest I thought that THX-1138 was not that great a film. It was interesting and all but its not a film i would want to see over and over again.
Also Star Trek IV was perhaps the worst of the TOS Trek movies, it was boring and about whales. WTF?!!
What was the point of the whale probe. I did not like that film, it was more of a parody than anything else.
TS
=================================================
"God has a plan for you, Gaius. He has a plan for everything and everyone." Number Six '33'
=================================================
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." Carl Sagan
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Quote:
Also Star Trek IV was perhaps the worst of the TOS Trek movies
I'll give you THX. I thought it was alright, but I know some people who think it's a complete work of genius. Just bringing it up.
Far as Star Trek IV goes, I've never been a Star Trek fan anyway, so the films I have seen have been objective viewings. Wrath of Khan was a good film and all, but story-wise, it didn't do anything for me. It was just one long space battle. And given how the effects have dated, it's turned into one long, dull space battle.
But Voyage Home actually tried to tell a story that wasn't about big space battles and aliens. I appreciated it for trying to be a parable on the environment. In tone, it's the closest to Firefly that any of the Star Trek films ever got.
But as far as absolute worst goes, Final Frontier was pretty awful.
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"Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?"
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Quote:
Originally posted by Orpheus:
I'm surprised nobody's mentioned THX-1138 or Star Trek IV yet. Call me crazy, but I thought Voyage Home was worlds better than Wrath of Khan.
_____________________
"Were there monkeys? Some terrifying space monkeys maybe got loose?"
Ok, you are crazy. ST IV had serious continuity issues.
-Caius
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