…or, “I’d like to have an argument,” since lists like these always tend to start one. Months in the making, one of my more sizable projects for MSN Movies and its coeval Parallel Universe, a survey of the “50 Greatest Science Fiction Movies of All Time.” You may not agree with the order of the rankings (hell, I myself might not entirely agree with the order of the rankings—actually, for the most part I kind of do, but still—and that’s show biz) but I believe you will find the selection solid and the write-ups at least entertaining. Complaints will be accepted below.
Science-Fiction Fiftyplex...
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Yeah, it’s the kind of list that anyone with strong opinions about SF can (and will) argue about, but it is indeed solid and definitely entertaining – only two films on there I can’t stand (MARS ATTACKS and THE OMEGA MAN) and a handful of others that I don’t like, but understand why others do – but all outweighed by the love given some deserving and often-forgot faves.
Maybe you could get them to illustrate your writeup on INVADERS FROM MARS with a shot from the one you’re talking about and not the remake. Not your fault, I know.
I bow to no man in my love of David Foster Wallace’s work (our host excepted), but his critique of T2 in “FX Porn” is probably the least convincing argument he ever made (and I don’t even like the film that much). A significant chunk of his argument is about how Arnold didn’t want to play a bad guy, and how that resulted in the kid-and-robot humor and ridiculous “thumbs up” ending. And I don’t think that he’s persuasive in pinning that decision on the FX budget–I think it’s much more a result of Arnold pandering to his increasingly family-friendly screen image.
Oh, and the list was a great read, and generally in line with my tastes. STARMAN being my only “really?” moment.
I think that T2 stuff is more a result of James Cameron sucking.
Rereading the essay for the first time in a couple of years, I see that Wallace did acknowledge the Arnold thing. Somehow I misremembered the argument. My bad.
My main complaint is about the mandatory slide show. Is there a way to read it without needing to click through 50 pages? I’d like to scan the list and only read about some of the films in detail.
I concur with Ian W. Hill’s observation: Omega Man and Mars Attacks stick out as bad movies in the bunch. How about substituting those for something mindbending from Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the shell or Avalon), some modern ‘hip’ stuff like Donnie Darko / Children of Men or stone cold classics like Eraserhead / Stalker? Otherwise enough stuff to keep me busy, and I love all the write-ups and food for thought you’ve crammed in there!
Good stuff!
I’d have put MAN FACING SOUTH-EAST in there somewhere, though.
How did the #1 film of all time wind up only the #2 sci-fi film?
If we can forgive Ozu an excruciatingly didactic and incongruous cameo by Chishu Ryu at the end of ‘The End of Summer’, we can certainly forgive Cameron Arnie’s thumbs-up at the end of what I regard as the ‘Godfather Part II’ of sci-fi blockbusters.
For fun and pure visual delight I liked Men in Black and The Fifth Element.
Didn’t like the forced 50 page march either. I was on a slow computer that got lost a half a dozen times and I had to backtrack 1 or 2 movies to be able to move ahead. Then at number 4 the thing locked up and I had to shut the browser down. Fortunately I could restore my last session and didn’t have to start over.
@Oliver – Even if I was willing to forgive the thumbs up, I wouldn’t be willing to forgive “why do you cry?”, and all the similar stuff that makes me double over in agony.
Besides which, “If we can forgive Ozu [blank] then certainly we can forgive James Cameron [blank]” is just a completely odd construction.
“So, yeah, to each his own.”
I had the same problems with the 50 page slideshow.
Otherwise great list. Loved to see the underrated Mars Attacks over there. And the great Starship Troopers so high on the list. I was only missing Children of Men and Robocop, you know, for a Verhoeven trifecta.
@Oliver – Touché’. Sorry if I sounded dickish.
Great list, and I understand why personal favorites like LOGAN’S RUN, MINORITY REPORT, or the ’78 BODY SNATCHERS didn’t make it. But please tell me you simply forgot to include the original PLANET OF THE APES. Or can you please explain your thinking behind leaving it out?
Can I also say, content is good, but the actual slide-show is a pain to navigate through.
Great fun reading this list! I also miss PLANET OF THE APES. And is this list only for feature length films? Otherwise I would have included Clair’s PARIS QUI DORT.
Yep. What about LA JETE? And for features: PRIMER, STALKER (Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS but not STALKER???), ROBOCOP, CHILDREN OF MEN, WORLD ON A WIRE/THE THIRTEEN FLOOR, THE HOST, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, eXistenZ.
If we’re at the naming omissions part of the show: ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.
Blade Runner is my favorite film of all time, so I’m glad (and a bit surprised) that you rated it number one.
My theory on the slide-show format is that it is used to generate more forced page clicks and boost ad revenue. And with a feature like “50 greatest sci-fi films of all time” it’s pretty much guaranteed to get a whole boat-load o’ clicks. That’s gotta be it, right?
That was a very enjoyable read, Glenn. Thanks! Was BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER considered? That’s a personal favorite.
Some comments:
(1) Strictly speaking, aren’t the Frankenstein movies science fiction? They are science fiction in the 1810s, but still science fiction.
(2) Are comedies disqualified from being science fiction? Because I would prefer “The Man with Two Brains” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” to many of the choices. Is that also why there’s no Joe Dante?
(3) In the category of post-apocalyptic world, I’d put “Delicatassen” first, but what about “The Quiet Earth,” “The Road Warrior,” or “The Last Battle”?
(4) I’d also like to second the absence of “Stalker,” “A Clockwork Orange,” “The Fifth Element,” and “A.I.” Also, no “Twelve Monkeys,” “Wall‑E” or “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”?
(5) Some comments on Ridley Scott. First off, unlike Kubrick, Scott’s two films combine a gorgeous visual style with a striking lack of common sense. I mean, I know the Company are a bunch of bastards, but you’d think that a ship the size of the Titanic could shell out for an escape pod that could hold six people. (You’d also think they’d put the ship self-destruct mechanism right by the pod.) As for the replicants, you’d think that if you created super strong beings who could snap like your neck like the proverbial twig, you’d find a safer and more reliable way of detecting them than having them submit to a half-hour questionnaire. Second, the “humanity” of the replicants strikes me as flawed. There are good reasons why the machines in “2001” and “A.I” develop feelings. In the first case, scientists are trained to be unimagainative bureaucrats, so they’re not paying attention to HAL until it’s too late. Inn the second Pr. Hobby realizes that thinking robots can make him rich. But there’s no reason why the Tyrell corporation should give Rutger Hauer a soul, while many of Dick’s musings on the subject show paranoia.
Third, I would say that Scott has a great cast in “Alien” and largely wastes it. I would say that not only does he do a poorer job than Sidney Lumet in “Murder on the Orient Express,” but also poorer than John Guillermin in “Death on the Nile.” Not only Finney and Ustinov make superb Poirots, but Widmark, Bacall, Gielguld, Connery, Roberts, Hiller and Bergman in the first film and Niven, Smith, Farrow and Lansbury are better. Fourth, has anyone noticed that “Blade Runner” has much the same plot as “Angel Heart,” which in turn has much the same plot as “Oldboy”?
Truffaut’s FAHRENHEIT 451. For years I’ve loved this despite its faults. Now I don’t think it has faults. Truffaut did some amazing things in a London film studio in 1966. A great film. Strangely this and his other supposed bomb MISSISSIPPI MERMAID have turned out to be only two that have really stood the test.
Glenn, now that I’m finally on a computer on which I can read this whole list, I have to say…this is one crazy list. I’m flat stunned that you didn’t include AI. I remember it was your review in Premier that convinced me to ignore the “it’s a disaster” contingent, and didn’t you say something along the lines of “This is the best-directed film of Spielberg’s career”? I think you may have. Tastes change, and all that, but boy I sure think you were right the first time. (But ET does, indeed, still work like a dream.) AI is also one of the few pure SF movies we’ve gotten in the last, I don’t know, 40 years, a distinction it shares with 2001 and BLADE RUNNER, which are both about true SF concepts – they’re films whose stories can’t be translated into some other genre. INDEPENDENCE DAY can replace the aliens with Commies, tweak a few story points, and Bob’s yer uncle. AI and BLADE RUNNER and 2001 are science fiction, or they’re nothing.
One of the pleasant surprises of this list was SERENITY. Very strong piece of entertainment.
Well, I knew you guys would set me straight on a lot of things. Truth to tell, you do enough of these lists (and we did a lot of them at Première) and you get kind of philosophical, so as to avoid going insane. If you’ve got room for 50, you need to have 100. If you have room for 100, you need room for 150. Eventually you realize that 50 is 50 and that’s that. I wish I could pinpoint the moment in the process when I knew that “A.I.” was going to have to make room for something else, and the precise logic that led to that; I do remember it was relatively early in the project. I still love it, but what are you going to do?
A lot of the other omissions involved trade-offs. I love both “Stalker” and “Solaris,” but couldn’t have both, so I went with the outer-space one. Fassbinder’s “World on Wire” is great, magnificent, but it does seem a wee bit perverse to put it on a list that’s going out to a very mainstream American audience which, at this particular point in time, has very little way of actually SEEING it. And so on.
The other thing about lists like these is, no matter how many times you go over them, no matter how many back-and-forths you have with knowledgeable people so you can cover your ass and make sure you’re not forgetting some movie that’s actually VITALLY IMPORTANT, you WILL in fact just plain forget AT LEAST one movie that’s VITALLY IMPORTANT. And yes, here that would be “Planet of the Apes.” To which I can only say, “D’oh!”
The lack of foreign films (only Solaris, and over the superior Stalker?), especially animé, is disheartening.
Miyazaki’s Nausicaa is one of his best, and better than most on that list. Someone else mentioned Oshii but also there’s Otomo and then from France you have Rene Laloux, who should have been represented with Gandahar or Fantastic Planet.
Nice to see Soderbergh’s great Solaris, but I doubt I’m alone in missing Gattaca as well when it comes ot the modern stuff. Or what about Dark City? Forgive me if I sound like a snob, this list sure had a lot of old-school shlock that seem more like guilty pleasures than serious intelligent works in the genre.
“Forgive me if I sound like a snob…” OK, you’re forgiven.
But seriously…I actually have to say, I’m a long-time, on-the-record non-believer in the “guilty pleasure,” and genuinely like and have no problem standing up for a lot of the “old-school schlock.” Furthermore, when it comes to genre material, I sometimes tend to consider “intelligence,” such as it is, to be frequently overrated. I’ve never had a problem with purely sensationalistic cinema, and if the sensations are good enough, I don’t really mind dumb all that much, as long as it’s not overtly messing with me. Which is one reason I continue to enjoy Lang’s “Metropolis,” in spite of its being one of the most overtly dopey films of ANY genre. And while I wouldn’t call myself an anti-intellectual, as it happens, I WOULD take “Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers” over the portentous, self-conscious slog of Significance “Gattaca” any day. “Dark City” is a bit of another matter. And I love the Laloux films and have written about them elsewhere. And again, to include them I would have had to have gotten rid of something else. And then I’d have somebody complaining, with as good if not better reason, about the absence of, say, “Quatermass and the Pit.”
“Which is one reason I continue to enjoy Lang’s “Metropolis,” in spite of its being one of the most overtly dopey films of ANY genre.”
I have to admit that, while the restoration has added a little more coherence/follow-ability to the plot, a few entertaining scenes (anything with the Thin Man is gold), and perhaps a little balance to the whole messy structure, my main reaction, when I went to see it, was that the thing had become unbearably long. I guess I’ve never been able to take action films (I’ve never even seen more than ten minutes of a Terminator, Die Hard, or Michael Bay movie), and that’s what it really is. As crazy as I’m sure it will sound, I actually prefer WOMAN ON THE MOON. I wouldn’t make any great claims for it, but the way people talk about that film you’d think the only worthwhile part was the rocket launch. It’s more like an inessential but frequently quite effective variation on ideas from SPIES and the Mabuse films (the pre-launch part), followed by the launch itself, which is pretty stunning, followed by a paranoid, claustrophobic variation on the classic “several people who hate each other trapped together on a long trip” theme. Visually it’s up there with any of his German films.
What I’m missing most in the big list is low-tech low-fi sci-fi–the minimalist “hard” science fiction of ideas. Just about the only one that qualifies is ALPHAVILLE, which I was happy to see made it. For me, science fiction as a genre in literature and film is first and foremost about ideas. So that when I come across a book or a film that manages to foreground the ideas with a minimum of special effects or spectacle, something like LA JETEE or STALKER or PRIMER, I’m even more impressed by it than by a scaled-up masterpiece like 2001. NEVER LET ME GO, shortcomings and all, kind of did it for me this year.
Boy, “Alphaville,” there’s another one. Of course “Alphaville” is more ABOUT genre than OF genre, its most pertinent statement being that DIck Tracy is dead and all, but yeah, there’s another one. I’d say of all the pictures cited so far as shoulda-beens, “La Jetee” really sticks out. As does, come to think of it, “Twelve Monkeys.”
‘Brazil’ might still be a better film than ‘Twelve Monkeys’, but ‘Twelve Monkeys’ is better sci-fi – even if Gilliam did try tooth and nail NOT to include what has to be the most fascinating shot in the film, the penultimate scene, where the virus carrier unknowingly sits down alongside, we realise, one of the scientists from the future.
Among those that haven’t been cited so far Alien 3 and Abel Ferrara’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers would have been nice, but ah well.
@Oliver – That’s quite bizarre about the airplane shot in Twelve Monkeys because I agree completely that it’s a fascinating moment. The scientist’s quip to David Morse – something about being in insurance – leads me to think it could have been muscled in by Universal but I have no clue. (In his review of Children of Men in the Voice J. Hoberman opened by comparing it to Twelve Monkeys as another Universal sci-fi movie that was wholly inappropriate for its Christmas release and that the studio was probably happy to see it go quietly. Something to that effect.) Where does Gilliam talk about his resistance to it?
“Where does Gilliam talk about his resistance to it?”
On the laserdisc / DVD director’s commentary. As entertaining as Gilliam commentary tracks are, it’s actually been a couple of years since I listened to the ’12 Monkeys’ one – definitely SOMEBODY, as I recall Gilliam (but perhaps the producer), insisted against the airplane scene.
And yes, I love how the scientist’s line – “I’m in insurance” – is obviously a play on, “I’m *AN* insurance”, and spoken as she forces a handshake upon the reluctant Morse, presumably to ensure she will be infected with his virus.
I was suffering from a heavy cold when I went to watch ’12 Monkeys’ in London’s crowded Leicester Square. Needless to say, my illness in the proximity of so many people only increased the movie’s impact!
I remember that moment being discussed in the 12 MONKEYS making-of documentary THE HAMSTER FACTOR. I don’t think the scene was forced in after the fact – I think it was always part of the script, and all that – but there was question about whether it worked, and whether it was clear that the woman had travelled back in time, as opposed to it just being her younger self, coincidentally on the plane with Morse but perfectly unaware of the future, etc.
Glenn, I hope you enjoyed making your list as much I enjoyed reading it!
I’d agree with other readers here that I would’ve preferred A.I., Minority Report, Children of Men, A Clockwork Orange, and Planet of the Apes over a few of the other films (especially Independence Day; not one of my favorites), but that’s what makes these lists fun.
I definitely agree with your take on seeing Aliens with a crowd. I saw it with a bunch of friends in a crowded theater at a midnight showing on the day it was released, and the audience’s excitement during the film was palpable. It was a blast; I had a similar experience at a midnight showing of Dawn of the Dead when it first came out. Which brings me to a minor quibble…The Omega Man was obviously released after Night of the Living Dead, so the former couldn’t really inform the latter. Were you actually thinking of The Last Man on Earth (also based on Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend)?
Mr. Ziffel, I think Glenn says the plotline of OMEGA MAN influenced NOTLD, which I took to mean the plotline of the original Matheson story – but, yeah, I stumbled over that, too.
To hear Matheson tell it, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was a rip-off/unlicensed adaptation of I AM LEGEND. I think that’s stretching it a little.
Not to speak for Glenn, Mr. Ziffel but that sounds right. BTW, George Romero admits to that inspiration/homage/ripoff for “Night of the Living Dead,” although he traces it back to the original Richard Matheson novel, “I Am Legend.”
Years later, he says, he ran into Matheson as a fan convention. He got as far as “I’m sorry that…” before Matheson waved him off.
“It’s OK,” the writer said. “You didn’t make any money off it either.”
And Glenn, love the list although, yes, I’m one of those cranks who didn’t click through 50 times for the entire thing. It’d be nice if sites were occasionally designed with actual “reading” in mind, instead of just numbers. Nonetheless I’m sure curiousity will get the better of me soon.
What I’ve heard second-hand of your choices certainly sounds interesting to me. And I’m glad to hear “Mars Attacks” given some love, as I always thought the design of that film – right from the opening credits – was just delirious fun. (But then, I’m used to being the odd man out in these sort of lists – I’m still sticking up for the terminally, bizarrely alienating “Creation of the Humanoids”).
Stephen – jbryant is right. Looking back, I misread Glenn’s comment on The Omega Man. He does indeed write that the basic story line informed NOTLD.
Apologies, Glenn!
My absolute favorite moment in When Worlds Collide is (spoiler alert) at the end of the movie when John Hoyt stands up from his wheelchair, immediately suggesting that he’s been pretending to be crippled for decades. It’s kind of amazing.
Oh, and…
I’ve never understood the cult of Blade Runner. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a sluggish movie with an incoherent plot and a protagonist who seems to be on tranquilizers. Yeah, it has great cinematography and production design, but so does Transformers. And yeah, I get it has a statement or two, but still…it’s not a movie I’ve ever enjoyed or felt enlightened watching. It’s always been a slog for me. Anyone else?
One more:
Skyline is a piece of shit.
Is this the right room for an argument?
It’s one pound for a five minute argument, but only eight pounds for a course of ten.
“Yeah, it has great cinematography and production design, but so does Transformers.”
Transformers has great cinematography? Really, Jeff? Are we placing “composition” under the Art of Cinematography?
I think Blade Runner’s main value is in its design–really lovely visual metaphors (the half-naked replicant crashing through a series of plate glass windows, that eye at the beginning, etc.), and some very striking montage. Though I do agree it’s at times way too eager to be dour and sluggish and (perhaps unintentionally) obscure. Ridley Scott is basically the anti-Lubitsch.
As the numbers ticked down, I did feel my hopes dwindle for the exquisite eccentric mess that is Zardoz, but then that’s kind of a perverse complaint to direct at a list that shows such sympathy for the less respectable side of this fine genre.
As for Blade Runner, since the bait has been set, it’s just about the only Ridley Scott film that has grown on me since that first adolescent viewing. The contrast between Harrison Ford’s somewhat impassive performance and Daryl Hannah’s outlandish vitality always struck me as part of the point. Meanwhile, though, Alien looks more and more strained to me with each viewing, in that its wonderfully suggestive production design has virtually no conceptual attachment to its sturdy B‑movie plotting. Of course, if it were actually all that bad, I probably wouldn’t be popping out sentences about “each viewing,” but the self-seriousness there distracts me far more than the thematically appropriate self-seriousness of Blade Runner.
The titles I missed from your list the most: X‑THE MAN WITH THE X‑RAY EYES; Resnais’s JE T’AIME, JE T’AIME; FAHRENHEIT 451, VIDEODROME. Both 12 MONKEYS and its inspiration, LA JETEE, would have been welcome, but with respect to the latter you probably had a rule against short films.
Just a few words about this … overall I really liked it.
I liked the top 5, all those are great and very close together in quality. Blade Runner has for years been one of my 2 favorite films.
Honestly, I would switch the rankings of ‘Terminator’ and T2; before I saw The Terminator, I don’t think I’d ever seen a movie sustain such energy and tension from start to finish. I think the original had effects on how later movies were made much more than T2.
Very happy to see ‘The Thing from Another World’ where it is. I’ve always preferred it to the Carpenter remake, though both movies have much to recommend.
I’d have dropped Independence Day … it was just a formulaic effects show with nothing pioneering in story or effects. Mostly I feel the same about Starship Troopers.
I was sorta sad to see Forbidden Planet ranked so low. This was a film that explored the ultimate ends of technology and its implications for man. It might seem cheesy now, but those brief attempts at humor are blown away by the ultimate depth of the concept. This film could be remade any time and be completely contemporary. This is my only real complaint.
Good to see Total Recall included. Ahnold made a lot of SciFi/Action films, and a lot of them were really pretty good; I wouldn’t have argued with Predator being on this list. TR was pretty good in both concept and execution; even at the end, you didn’t know if this was just the end of his Recall vacation.
I’m actually fairly happy that Robinson Crusoe on Mars got a mention; this is a strangely entertaining movie that had a lot of interesting ideas.
Of the older films you mention, the one that comes to mind that you didn’t mention is ‘This Island Earth’. I still want to build an Interositor.
Thanks for your work on this; well thought out and I liked it.
@John: “the half-naked replicant crashing through a series of plate glass windows”
Who unfortunately looks like a stunt woman wearing a wig and not the actress playing the replicant. For movie that takes such care over details that always bugs me.
I’m sort of with Jeff on ‘Blade Runner’, obviously I like it enough to remember details like the above but things like the cliched script keep it from being really top drawer for me.
My main beef with the list is The Man Who Fell To Earth and War of The Worlds (both versions) being so low.
No ‘A.I.’, yet ‘Independence Day’ and Spielberg’s ‘War of the Worlds’ are included? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised from a website that publishes an article called ‘The Genius of JJ Abrams’…
We won’t let you forget your long-promised article on here about Spielberg’s A.I./Minority Report/Catch Me If You Can troika of the early ’00s Glenn… someday soon please?
Just perused the list a second time and noticed you didn’t include a single time travel story (unless you count the two TERMINATOR films, and I don’t – a story about robots from the future is not the same thing as a story in which the hero travels in time). George Pal’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ THE TIME MACHINE is the gold standard for this sort of thing, but you might have also included SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE, the aforementioned JE T’AIME, JE T’AIME and 12 MONKEYS, or even Tony Scott’s DEJA VU (which, like Gilliam’s film, was inspired to a large degree by LA JETEE).
And speaking of H.G. Wells, isn’t James Whale’s INVISIBLE MAN a sci-fi film, and is it not great?
I like your list a great deal for the most part, especially the bottom 25. Among the competing sci-fi films that star Charlton Heston, I think the clear winner is SOYLENT GREEN, one of the most prescient films ever made with respect to the way things are going these days.