The greatest science fiction of all time poll?

[Clair De Lune]

Yeah I can live with that still deserved a mention as does total recall for much the same reasons.

 

[Clair De Lune]

I'd have equilibrium up there tbh. A truly great and underrated scifi film imo.

Oooh yes, now we're talking, love that film

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Total Recall would be right up there, yeah. In fact for me it trumps anything in the poll. Anything which can be gratuitously violent and still have my dad, who hates anything violent at all usually, saying it was 'really good' because it was so cleverly done, has to be up there...

 

[DotCommunist]

I'd have equilibrium up there tbh. A truly great and underrated scifi film imo.

Equlibrium suffers from the fact that it as a rip-off of visual styles and plot contents. It's stylish enough to get away with it but more of a pastiche than an original badass film. Hence it can be considered very good, but not great. In my opinion.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

Yeah - I get that it's a big broth of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. However, loads of things have been influenced by other things and it's better done than the actual film of 1984. IMO.

 

[DotCommunist]

Yeah - I get that it's a big broth of 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. However, loads of things have been influenced by other things and it's better done than the actual film of 1984. IMO.

yes, everything bleeds into everything. But with the examples you mentioned, and the clear nod to matrix-style shooting it can only be considered a pastiche (of paranoiac dystopian worlds). Which is different from a film which has obvious influences imo.

It wins for Gun-Kata though. One of the most pleasing combat disciplines in sci fi. Up there with Prana-Bindu 'wierding way' combat

 

[Clair De Lune]

Thing is I think of films in the same way as music. Loads of bands rip each other off but they end up as part of a collective and create their own genre in doing so.
Sure Equilibrium ripped off a few different films but it also had some fantastic moments that were unique to it and quite powerful I feel.

 

[DotCommunist]

Thing is I think of films in the same way as music. Loads of bands rip each other off but they end up as part of a collective and create their own genre in doing so.
Sure Equilibrium ripped off a few different films but it also had some fantastic moments that were unique to it and quite powerful I feel.

oh don't get me wrong, I don't see the pastiche label as a bad thing. Just that, for me, it rarely surpasses the source materiel.

Equilibrium is an exception to this. It combines elements obviously and still makes for a very good film

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

I'm actually dubious about the extent to which it is similar to the Matrix. Only the gun kata and beneath the surface that's actually based on very different principles...

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

The Handmaid's tale is a good dystopic scifi film I've just remembered. Not read the book though.

Oh, and while we're there, Children Of Men has to be up there too.

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm actually dubious about the extent to which it is similar to the Matrix. Only the gun kata and beneath the surface that's actually based on very different principles...

visual style. Combat esp.

It's a lot more clinical than Matrix in terms of visual style but the parallels are there

 

[mentalchik]

Have you read This Perfect Day - Ira Levin dotty ?

 

[DotCommunist]

The Handmaid's tale is a good dystopic scifi film I've just remembered. Not read the book though.

Oh, and while we're there, Children Of Men has to be up there too.

Read it.

Margaret 'I don't write sci fi' Atwood writes well

Read 'Hierarchy of Contempt'
http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Atwood.pdf

Start with a metaphor for literary respectability: a spectrum,
ranging from sullen infrared up to high-strung ultraviolet.
Literature with a capital L (all characters, no plot) sits enthroned at
the top. Genre fiction, including science fiction (all plot, no
characters) is relegated to the basement. Certain types of fantasy
hover in between, depending on subspecies: the Magic Realists get
loads of respect, for example. Tolkein gets respect. (His myriad
imitators, thank God, do not.) Down in the red-light district,
science fiction's own subspectrum runs from "soft" to "hard", and
it's generally acknowledged that the soft stuff at least leaves the
door open for something approaching Art—Lessing, Le Guin, the
New Wave stylists of the late sixties—while the hardcore types are
too caught up in chrome and circuitry to bother with character
development or actual literary technique.
I call it The Hierarchy of Contempt, and although you might
point to exceptions at any wavelength, it seems a reasonable
approximation of the literary "credscape"—according to the current
regime at least, who hold the realist novel to be the benchmark
against which all else is judged.

 

[DotCommunist]

Have you read This Perfect Day - Ira Levin dotty ?

I've not. Any good?

 

[mentalchik]

I've not. Any good?

Not bad, along the same lines as already mentioned.......haven't read it for a looooooooooong time......

same writer as Stepford Wives.......which is a sci-fi movie really !


Oh he wrote Rosemary's Baby too

 

[agricola]

Star Wars for me, but only because Firefly isnt on the list.

 

[fubert]

Out of the list I'm torn between Blade Runner and Alien.

 

[DotCommunist]

Star Wars for me, but only because Firefly isnt on the list.

further proof that coppers have skewed judgement on everything

 

[mentalchik]

Star Wars for me, but only because Firefly isnt on the list.

don't start on the Serenity/Firefly........we'll be here a long time !


@dotty

 

[ericjarvis]

Solaris, the Tarkovsky version, and Zardoz, both beat anything on the list IMO. As does The Matrix, much as it pains me to admit it. I'd also expected to see Logan's Run in the options.

As far as I'm concerned there are four sf films that stand head and shoulders above anything else. The Quiet Earth, Soylent Green, Sleeper, and Dark Star. If I had to pick one it would be the last.

 

[DotCommunist]

Soylent Green and Logans Run are very much era pieces. They stand today for a sci fi geek as good pieces. But for the passing trade they aint nuttin

 

[MikeMcc]

An imposible question because it's such a wide ranging subject. Do you assess a film on emotional content, images, technical compliance, script or compliance with the original story?

Alien and Event Horizon are excellent horror films with a sci-fi background.

Aliens, Pitch Black, Predator, and Starship Troopers are excellent action movies.

2001 is one of the most amazingly technically correct and graphically brilliant films. The scene in the airlock is amazing.

Story-wise I love Outland and Total Recall espite the obviously technical screw ups.

 

[danny la rouge]

Forbidden Planet

Great film.

But of the ones in the poll, clearly Metropolis, by light years.

 

[Philip Pomper]

Soylent Green and Logans Run are very much era pieces. They stand today for a sci fi geek as good pieces. But for the passing trade they aint nuttin

I enjoy both. Same with Westworld.

 

[strung out]

i voted alien out of that list. bladerunner sends me to sleep every single time.

 

[Philip Pomper]

Outland

Yes, especially the build up, waiting for those assassins to arrive from earth.

 

[BigTom]

I voted for bladerunner becuase I enjoy it the most, but metropolis, 2001, alien and fifth element are all equally good and in some ways better than bladerunner..
total recall, solaris, dark star and pitch black having already been mentioned, I'd like to add Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Silent Running as sci-fi films of true greatness.

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

I enjoy both. Same with Westworld.

West World is ace.

Oh, that reminds me, not one word yet for Demon Seed...

 

[mentalchik]

Oh, that reminds me, not one word yet for Demon Seed...

dodgy metal penis

 

[Echo Base]

The fountain
children of men
primer