AFI Top Sci-fi Films

Television, Movies Games and Books Other Science Fiction
#1

As part of the AFI 100 Years series, it presents America’s 10 greatest films in 10 Classic genres.

Animation
Fantasy
Romantic Comedies
Sci-Fi
Western
Gangster
Sports
Courtroom Drama
Mystery
Epic

Usually with lists of this kind, they lump sci-fi and fantasy together. I was surprised that they gave them each an instance.

So I’ve listed the 50 nominated films and picked my top 10 (from the list anyway).

2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
A.I.
Alien
Altered States
Back to the Future
Blade Runner
Children of Men
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Cocoon
Contact
Destination Moon
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Escape from New York
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Fantastic Voyage
Forbidden Planet
Frankenstein
Independence Day
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
It Came from Outer Space
Jurassic Park
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Men In Black
Minority Report
Planet of the Apes
Repo Man
Robocop
Rollerball
Silent Running
Soylent Green
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars
Starman
Terminator 2
The Andromeda Strain
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Fly
The Incredible Shrinking Man
The Invisible Man
The Matrix
The Stepford Wives
The Thing from Another World
The Time Machine
The War of the Worlds
Them!
Total Recall
Tron
Westworld

#2

Here are my thoughts (besides…where the frak is Serenity!!!):

2001: A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
A.I.
Alien
Altered States
Back to the Future
Blade Runner
Children of Men
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Cocoon
Contact
Destination Moon
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Escape from New York
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Fantastic Voyage
Forbidden Planet
Frankenstein
Independence Day
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
It Came from Outer Space
Jurassic Park
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Men In Black
Minority Report
Planet of the Apes
Repo Man
Robocop
Rollerball
Silent Running
Soylent Green
Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars
Starman
Terminator 2
The Andromeda Strain
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Fly
The Incredible Shrinking Man
The Invisible Man
The Matrix
The Stepford Wives
The Thing from Another World
The Time Machine
The War of the Worlds
Them!
Total Recall
Tron
Westworld

#3

you know, I think serenity deserves a spot on the list.

I’m a bad person guys, I’m a really really bad person. I saw 2001 for the first time in five years…and I hatedit as much as I did five years ago. It takes nearly an hour to get to the plot, and when you do, I find a mop has more peronsility then Frank and Dave. HAL is a great villian, but the do not do him any justice. I was expecting osme war of wits between HAL and Dave. I get why people love i, this is a piece of art, yeah, I’ll give you that, its pretty,a nd the score is FANTASTIC but the story lacks…

Yeah, yeah its a movie that if you hate, you are obveiously messed up in the head, but I just got very frustrated with this piece. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry

#4

Don’t hate yourself for hating 2001 - while I like that movie (not love, as usual in this series and with a lot of works by that author, a lot of action/possibility/intrigue is given up for detailed points of minutiae), I happen to be one of the few people on the planet who dislikes The Princess Bride! Hate hate hate it and have from the first time I saw this. When I told my husband this, he said, thank god I didn’t know that before we were married. When I saw it listed as a possibility for a GWC rewatch my face contorted in horror and before I could explode I had to exit the thread…knowing full well I am the ONLY person who feels this way and I must keep it hidden from others lest I be made an outcast among my own people.

#5

It’s ok to hate. You’re not alone.

http://www.scifimoviepage.com/dvd/2001.html

“The movie you either love or hate. More people seem to hate it nowadays, maybe because 2001 is so unabashedly 'Sixties. Slow-paced, difficult, obscure, infuriating, 2001 is a movie people often appreciate at a more cerebral than emotional level: it is only good when you start thinking about it afterwards.”

http://www.parentpreviews.com/movie-reviews/2001-a-space-odyssey.shtml

“You either love it, or hate it. Those who hate it have probably never got themselves past the opening ape scenes. Those who love it have never quit debating about the mysterious monolith or its symbolic meaning. No matter which camp you belong to, one thing is certain–Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic version of Arthur C. Clarke’s monumental novel will always stand in film history as the first real space movie made.”

#6

Most of the times, I refuse to discuss 2001 cause my head will just explode. Not because of anger, not because I literally HATE the movie, although I probably will never want to watch it again, it’s more a lack of words… I have nothing to say, nothing to add about that movie, everybody knows it’s a classic, that it inspired a huge body of other works and so on and so forth… but it’s cool that you liked the soundtrack. I don’t know if Zarathustra was an original music piece for the movie, but the waltz is, of course, The Blue Danube by Strauss, one of the few Austrians about whom I can say that I really admire their work.

[/rambling]

Edit: I think what I actually wanted to say was that your in good company. It’s okay to have mixed feelings towards 2001.

#7

2001 is ok…

I FINALLY made it through once I decided to fast forward through through some of the scenes that you need to be on drugs to appreciate.

#8

You know, I used to hate, hate, hate 2001: a Space Odyssey. Used to think it was nothing more than Stanley Kubrick’s masturbatory ramblings or something like that. Then I decided to give it a chance about ten years ago or so, while visiting my folks on a break from grad school. It was late at night, I turned off all the lights, popped the movie into the laserdisc player (yeah, it was a while ago) and I was blown away. But…it is certainly not an easy movie to like, get into or even watch very often (I only just caught it again recently when it happened to be on TV and that was probably the first time in at least five years since I’d seen it). It’s a very tough nut to crack and requires far more from its audience than I’m able to give it these days, what with two kids and all. But it’s one of the great masterpieces of American film in any genre and Hal is, ironically, one of the most human characters in film (his death scene makes me choke up every time).

And yet, if I didn’t know what was going on because I’d read up on the screenplay (haven’t read the novel, though), etc. I would have no frakking idea what was going on at the end.

And the score? There’s actually a score, composed by Alex North, for 2001. Kubrick found it unsuccesful and replaced it with his original temp score but did not tell North about it, leaving him to find out at the film’s premiere. Having heard North’s score, I understand why Kubrick did it (it’s not a bad score, mind you, it just doesn’t really fit in the way that the classical pieces seem to have been written for this film, even though they weren’t), but it’s still a pretty rotten thing to do to someone after all that work.

On another note: why is “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” on that list? It’s a lovely film. Beautiful. Masterful. But how is it sci-fi? I think it has more in common with Magic Realism than Science Fiction. Or maybe it’s just me.

#9

gosh, I don’t remember where, but it was a pretty renowned website that had ESotSP listed as the number one or number two SciFi movie ever. Personally, I think it’s a great love story … is it SciFi? You tell me…

#10

About the only sci-fi element in it is the memory erasure clinic, and I think that’s a stretch. Like I said, it’s more like magic realism than sci fi, I think.

#11

Not that I would place ‘Eternal bla-di-bla Mind’ in sci-fi, I think it is placed there in ‘A Clorkwork Orange’ way. Y’know, hey this could happen.

I’ve always thought of it as a Romantic Fantasy with dark comedy tones. I find the romp through Carrey’s character’s mind uncomfortable and funny at the same time. Frodo’s sad character is funny in a pitiful perv way.

#12

So is Spock’s Brain.

#13

It is a romance with scifi elaments. I tstill say Serenity is a far surperier film

It took me three times to get through 2001. It’s not like I don’t get it…its one of those artcy films. This is 1968, the year before we go to the moon, we don’t know anything about space. The film indulges in the child like wander of space…but I want more. What little story it did have left a sour taste in my mouth…but hey the directing…the fact that the sets don’t look dated at all…that is the real victory of this film.

#14

well, we don’t know much more today about space. plus, in 1968 there had already been two seasons of Star Trek, so the film could have borrowed space opera elements. I’m not saying that it wasn’t a bad choice that it didn’t, I’m just saying it could have.

#15

For Stanley Kubrick, who had no interest in science fiction as he found the genre stale, to have borrowed elements of space opera (a term I thought was coined after Star Wars. Hmm…) would’ve been strange indeed. It really doesn’t seem to match his sensibilities as a director at all.

Now, I’m curious as to how Serenity, a perfectly passable film, to be sure, is a superior film to 2001 (or Eternal Sunshine, for that matter). I can understand how and why you would prefer it on any given day (I like artsy films but I also need to be in the mood for them, and as I get older I find I have precious little time to devote to them, alas), but superior? I don’t see it.

Different strokes, I guess! :slight_smile:

#16

The origin of the term “Space Opera.” There’s a home assignment. Anyone?

#17

Tell you what, you grade my 200 some odd pages of Beatles papers to grade, and I’ll research the term “space opera.” :wink:

#18

Done. Time?

#19

Beautiful. I haven’t smiled all day. That did it for me.

#20

Sometimes when I hear the word space opera, I think its a bad thing. Mainly because I hate soup operas…but now, I alwasy think of Babylon 5. While the first season was a bit melodramatic, I still think it was a great series so…I proved myself wrong.