August 26th, 2004

Filed under:
Movies
5 Comments »

The Guardian’s Top Ten Sci-Fi Films

Via SWT, we find the Guardian’s list of the top ten science-fiction films of all time:

  1. Blade Runner (1982) Dir: Ridley Scott
  2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Dir: Stanley Kubrick
  3. Star Wars (1977)/Empire Strikes Back (1980)
  4. Alien (1979) Dir: Ridley Scott
  5. Solaris (1972) Dir: Andrei Tarkovsky
  6. Terminator (1984)/T2: Judgment day (1991) Dir: James Cameron
  7. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Dir: Robert Wise
  8. War of the Worlds (1953) Dir: Byron Haskin
  9. The Matrix (1999) Dir: Andy & Larry Wachowski
  10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Dir: Steven Spielberg

They apparently interviewed a whole schwack of scientists, so this list must be authoratative. My list would probably have Alien higher, and wouldn’t include Close Encounters, but that list is generally pretty strong.

Comments: 5 Responses so far

Olaf
August 26th, 2004
11:06 am

Yeah – I’m pretty dissappointed “Dune” didn’t even make it to the list.

Reply

Darren
August 26th, 2004
11:14 am

True, I’d include “Dune” instead of “Close Encounters”.

Reply

Derek
August 26th, 2004
12:11 pm

I think “2001″ should be #1—”Blade Runner” is far more flawed, especially in its original release, although indeed very evocative.

“2001″ remains a singular film, with nothing else quite like it. Vast uses of absolute silence, with dialogue meant more to show people speaking than to indicate what they’re saying, so much that (as Roger Ebert noted) it could be a silent film. A real feeling of how lonely, strange, and terrorizing empty space can be. Prehistoric protohuman makeup so good that the film didn’t win an Oscar — because no one noticed it was makeup.

Andrew O’Hehir in Salon nails it bestr: “a near-abstract art film disguised as a major Hollywood release.” Plus a computer as the most empathetic character in the whole show. It towers above anything else.

“Alien” is Scott’s better film, and I’d put it #2, but “Blade Runner” should still be there. I thought “Dune” was a mess, and would not include it at all. And what, no “Godzilla” or (more seriously) “Frankenstein”? Or “Planet of the Apes” (watch it again; it’s better than you remember), “Brazil,” “Metropolis,” “Forbidden Planet,” “Minority Report,” or “The Iron Giant”?

I guess we need a longer list.

Reply

gill
August 26th, 2004
12:27 pm

I saw the list in The Guardian yesterday, and thought it was rather biased towards space-age movies. What about “Fight Club”? “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”? “A Clockwork Orange”? (Just as examples.) These are definitely SF, they’re just not about aliens and spaceships and Wookies.

A better list of SF (of both books and movies) can be found at Seattle’s Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame’s “SFM Recommends”. No Top 10′s, but organized by SF subgenre.

Reply

Arcterex
August 26th, 2004
2:28 pm

I’d also almost put Aliens in there as well as or instead of Alien. Alien was fantastic, don’t get me wrong, but I think that Aliens was a fantastic movie as well, possibly better.

Reply

Add a comment