Top 10 Sci Fi Flicks for the Thinking Person (beerandscifi version)
Rotten Tomatoes released a list of “10 Sci Fi Flicks For the Thinking Man (or Woman)” and I have created an alternative which I believe to be much better. To see my list and how I compare it to the Rotten Tomatoes list go to my blog.
Both lists are less about fighting aliens and outer space battles than they are a list that contains “more thoughtful movies as to what it means to be human.” I usually can count on Rotten Tomatoes, but for this list I think they got a good portion of it wrong AND I think many of the movies they have picked are movies that are just recycled into most science fiction movie lists. Their list isn’t terrible, but it is typical. How many times do we need to see Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes in a top 10 list? My list will contain alternative options with movies that you may not have seen. Also, I’m taking the liberty to make my list a list not only about “what it means to be human” but also a list where “thinking people are allowed to think.”
Both lists are less about fighting aliens and outer space battles than they are a list that contains “more thoughtful movies as to what it means to be human.” I usually can count on Rotten Tomatoes, but for this list I think they got a good portion of it wrong AND I think many of the movies they have picked are movies that are just recycled into most science fiction movie lists. Their list isn’t terrible, but it is typical. How many times do we need to see Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes in a top 10 list? My list will contain alternative options with movies that you may not have seen. Also, I’m taking the liberty to make my list a list not only about “what it means to be human” but also a list where “thinking people are allowed to think.”
Tags: classic, cult, dvd, fi, fiction, movies, sale, sci, science, science-fiction
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Anton Phibes on -
Outstanding list. I definitely agree that there are movies that are on such lists due to popularity, or some particularly excellent special effect, or monster. That makes them either a spectacle or an adventure but doesn't require that it have a deeper underlying point. Aliens... Great monster, but other than the excellent creature and ship modeling it doesn't address anything but the visceral. I like monster movies, but the best monsters are human or inhuman rather than alien. The monster or mystery within us, rather than the one that just finds us tasty.
I'd add to that list as a matter of personal taste.
The Puppetmasters: for the loss of self caused by a mind controlling parasite, and the way in which it isn't all that different from the loss of self that can be imposed by society even absent the parasite.
Contact: For the premise that while religion may be a simplistic and primitive explanation for the universe, that the universe itself may be a purposeful construction not in dogmatic theocentric terms but in the very nature of the features of our underlying physics.
Pi: for similar reasons given for Contact, but as a personal psychological quest for truth and identity.
12 Monkeys: For the paradox that the actions of a man sent back to prevent a disaster could enmesh him in that disaster, without recourse against fate, despite his own free will and personal sacrifice.
28 Days Later: A "be careful what you wish for" movie in which the best intentions of medical research, collide with the best intentions of animals right activists to unleash both a viral plague and a plague of a darker human nature upon the world.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (original and remake): for reasons similar to Puppetmasters.
Forbidden Planet: Because in spite of all their best intentions, mastery of technology that would grant their slightest wish, did not give the Krell mastery of themselves. Completely alien and yet so very human... and because Ann Francis was a smoken hotty.
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Permalink Reply by Baff on -
They are remaking Forbidden Planet, with J.M. Straczynski (Babylon 5) as the writer.
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Anton Phibes on
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That will have to be on my Must See list.
If anyone can do that movie justice in a remake, he can.
The Great Machine buried under the surface of Epsilon Erridani III had to have been taken from the Krell machine.
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Permalink Reply by Baff on
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Here was something he said on that subject about 15 years ago when someone asked:
"RE: the big bridge shot...the storyboard artist came up with 3 shots
we could use. One of them was a wide shot across a crystalline ground
like area, through which a path can be seen at ground level, but it
was narrow and still really didn't convey the scale of what I wanted. One
other was not much different. The third was a downshot designed to pull
back, and though I knew it would make folks say "Krell!", I knew that it
was the right shot for that scene, so chose that one and decided to live
with it."
He has said that Forbidden Planet has always been one of his favorite movies.
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Anton Phibes on
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Ouch... acording to ReelzChannel WB and JWS have axed further work on the feature...
Apparently someone within the inner circle leaked the scripts and they feel that there would be no audience anticipation of the feature if all the details are known.
sniff
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Permalink Reply by Baff on
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It isn't dead. They threw out the script and started over. JMS was pretty pissed. A couple months of writing, all for nothing. Here is a comment from him about a month after that article:
"Most of the projects to which I've committed over the last year are now winding up -- I've finished on WWZ, the second draft of Lensman goes in tonight, the script for Sunlight is finished, the script for the TNT pilot is in its last stages of revision -- so now it's a matter of selecting what projects go next into the hopper, a process that will be continuing for the next month or so. There are several very cool projects that have been offered, and one top-secret project that is still ongoing, so we'll see which of those land on my desk. I'm actually approaching a lull, which will give me time to work on Forbidden Planet now that the new story has been approved."
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Anton Phibes on
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Well that's good to know.
did a bit more reading. I wonder how much of this is real and how much of it is a clever manipulation.
Folks like JMS and Joss Whedon are a bit out of the box for the execs. I remember parts of an interview with JMS and he stated that B5 would have a defined beginning and end and not be dragged out into a shark jumping lingering death just to fill up seasons. That seemed to have been a surprise to a few people.
Imagine how hard the sell had to have been.
I'm wondering if JMS isn't using the social networks as a 2x4 to beat the studio execs about the head for a budget for the trilogy. The fact that a few thousand people who would camp the line for tickets regardless, know a few details in advance, can't possibly be a real reason, but the tempest it might generate in email, snail mail, and forum postings would generate a huge amount of leverage.
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