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I have seen ghost in the shell mentioned. while the movie was well animated as a fan of the comics i found it atrociously bad. the stand alone complex and successive TV series more accurately captured the feel of the setting. it is the difference between having Oshi's super phycological drama take on everything he does, compared to Shiro's direct involvement in his own universe (stand alone complex).

Difficult one to choose I think. I'm going to stay away from Superhero stuff because I feel like it's really a separate genre. And I'm tempted to put some Studio Ghibli animated films in there, like Laputa and Valley of the Wind, but I'll leave them off.

And these aren't in any order in particular.
1. Alien
2. Moon
3. Empire Strikes Back
4. Jurassic Park
5. Starship Troopers

Are we talking 'top 5' as in 'these are my personal five favorites', or 'top 5' as in 'I think these were the best and/or most influential sci-fi movies ever'?

For the former (and in no particular order)
Star Wars
The Wrath of Khan
Godzilla (the original)
Spaceballs
and (of all things...) Lilo and Stitch

But there is a LONG list of stuff only slightly behind those five.


For the latter (in chronological order)...
1) The Day The Earth Stood Still (the original)
2) 2001
3) Star Wars
4) The Matrix
5) Iron Man

All five of these were masterpieces of their time, and had a major impact on movies in general, and sci-fi in particular, moving forward. If I had one more spot, it would got to Akira, for bringing sci-fi Anime to America - as well as being a masterpiece in it's own right.

And again, a long list of stuff very nearly as good.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Special mention for Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Like Robocop absolutely works as Just A Dumb Action Film, Bill & Ted works as a stoner comedy type movie.

But underneath it is a really brilliant tale. Not least because whilst the Time Machine helps them complete their essay? Not even Rufus is writing it for them.

Not only that, the time travel plot itself is one of the cleanest time-loops ever committed to film.

I considered putting the film on my list or at least an honorable mention just for that.

The general love for Aliens blows my mind.
Alien is great.
Aliens is completely reliant on everyone other than Ripley being an incompetent idiot that enjoys passing the idiot ball around. Make no mistake, it looks good, the acting is fine, and it is extremely quotable, but the plot is absurd.

It is pretty easy-pacing, world building, acting, setting. Cameron basically said he was making a Vietnam movie in space. the point was that nobody believes Ripley. they were full or arrogance, confidence and reliance on their superior tech, how could a bunch of dumb "bugs" possible beat them.

He is also a master of action and drama in confined spaces.

trexmeyer wrote:
I would have listed TESB, but Star Wars isn't science fiction.

You're calling out Star Wars alone as not being Sci-Fi, but not... *checks posts prior to the one being quoted* ...any of the following:
- I Am Legend
- Book of Eli
- Anything Star Trek or Babylon 5
- Dredd
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The MCU as a whole
- Children of Men

I'd love to hear your justification here, though it does link in to what Henry said about it being tricky to define "sci-fi" - I'd lean towards "dystopian action" and "comic-book movie" as being their own thing, for example, and that none of the ones for the former category listed above (IAL, BoE, MM:FR, CoM) are really sci-fi in my opinion. Dredd manages to fall into both of my exception categories, for instance.

Aliens
Terminator 2
Blade Runner
Fury Road
Avatar

 aphyon wrote:
It is pretty easy-pacing, world building, acting, setting. Cameron basically said he was making a Vietnam movie in space. the point was that nobody believes Ripley. they were full or arrogance, confidence and reliance on their superior tech, how could a bunch of dumb "bugs" possible beat them.

He is also a master of action and drama in confined spaces.

Lets face it the only person who does believe her wants to keep it a secret so much that he does daft things to protect that secret.

Everyone else is going in assuming its going to be a run of the mill issue with some disgruntled and disorganised terraformers who want a raise or something; or a group of "space pirates" who likely raided and already left. Basically they aren't expecting any real threat and chances are whilst the unit might be highly trained and experienced, they most likely haven't had a real challenge in a very long time.

So they have some crazy woman who is talking about monster with acid blood (lol how stupid is that!) being humoured by some company executive; who if I recall right downplays Ripley's info as well (because he's trying to keep it secret). The Marines are along for the ride and will shoot some holes in things and take home another easy victory. Don't forget even the company wasn't willing to send a ship until the base stopped sending regular messages.

They also very quickly lose effective command and machine support so their superiority advantage is quickly lost and with no other settlements and the planets atmosphere they are very restricted on where they can or can't go.

The dialogue also strongly suggests the Marines have fought alien life forms before. Hence “just another bug hunt”.

Which is akin to naively thinking that just because you were able to take out a bunch of squirrels, you’re therefore completely prepared and fully experienced in taking on say, a Pride of Lions.

Burke also had cause to carefully select A Not Very Good squad. Perhaps one with disciplinary issues, history of insubordination. Because he needed plausible deniability that they all got horribly murdered/implanted with Aliens.

We must also keep in mind Ripley was the closest thing to an expert. She’d fought one. She and they had no reason to believe they might display hive mentality and tactics. In Alien, it was all strike and fade, an ambush hunter. That requires a very different approach and tactical considerations.

Add in that during their initial visit to the Hive they couldn’t risk using their Pulse Rifles (later proven highly effective at popping bugs), and is it really incompetence, or just everything going FUBAR well outside their immediate control?

Had the drop ship crew remained seated, and kept the ship sealed? They’d have dusted off with likely minimal problems, nuked it from orbit and role credits. But no. Bloke had to go take a wee.

We never really, in the films, get a confirmation of what a "Bug hunt" really means

It could mean hunting actual alien creatures that are enough of a threat that marines are needed, but not actually highly intelligent and most likely something akin to a real world "bear gets into populated area" type situation. A threat, but fairly easily resolved.

It could mean a "bug hunt" as in some miner on some world reports aliens and they go and it turns out to be a Scooby Doo situation. Someone pretending to scare people away to do things (eg smugglers or the like) or people being daft and jumping at nothing. Ergo you turn up; look all big and tough; maybe resolve a local smuggling ring and head on home.


Both are also potentially true at the same time and it could be the latter that's far more common than the former.


You also make a good point about the shift from single to hive mentality and threat. Also don't forget not only couldn't they use their rifles against the Aliens, but two of the troopers DO use their guns and that results in even more chaos and complications.

The Fifth Element
Terminator 2
Aliens
The Road Warrior
Oblivion

Also: Complete Top 5 Garbage
Star Wars The Last Jedi
Star Wars The Force Awakens
Star Wars the Rise of Skywalker
Marvel Eternals
Marvel The Marvels

 Dysartes wrote:

trexmeyer wrote:
I would have listed TESB, but Star Wars isn't science fiction.

You're calling out Star Wars alone as not being Sci-Fi, but not... *checks posts prior to the one being quoted* ...any of the following:
- I Am Legend
- Book of Eli
- Anything Star Trek or Babylon 5
- Dredd
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The MCU as a whole
- Children of Men

Are you trolling right now? I genuinely can't tell.

While I agree some of them straddle or outright cross the line (IAL, MCU) most of those do qualify as SF.

Alien vs Aliens - both great movies, but I think I just prefer the horror of Alien to the action of Aliens, and I didn't want to put both movies in my top five list!

trexmeyer wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

trexmeyer wrote:
I would have listed TESB, but Star Wars isn't science fiction.

You're calling out Star Wars alone as not being Sci-Fi, but not... *checks posts prior to the one being quoted* ...any of the following:
- I Am Legend
- Book of Eli
- Anything Star Trek or Babylon 5
- Dredd
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The MCU as a whole
- Children of Men

Are you trolling right now? I genuinely can't tell.

Trolling? No, not at all. Heck, I even gave you an additional paragraph - unquoted above - as to why I would question six of the seven.

The only one I didn't qualify in that post was Star Trek and/or Babylon 5. Given Star Wars is generally seen as "space opera" - a sub-genre of science fiction - it's in the same broad group as Babylon 5 (though B5 gets bonus points for it's space fighters actually paying attention to physics - the StarFurys, at least). Star Trek is generally seen less as space opera and more as science fiction, but I generally don't think there's as much difference between Star Trek and Star Wars in that regard as the Trekkies want people to believe - Star Wars just avoids most of the techno-babble justifications.

I don’t think it’s so much about the amount of hand-wavium (although that is a factor), but what are you trying to do with it. Star Wars is just trying to tell a cool adventure story, it just happens to be set in a space setting. Star Trek, on the other hand, is often trying to explore real world issues through the lens of a possible future.

B5 and BSG sit somewhere in between; they’re driven by their overarching story, but they have individual episodes or arcs that dig into ideas. (Interestingly B5 did that much more in the early seasons, and tailed off as the plot developed, whereas BSG is the other way around, starting heavily plot driven, but then exploring “what would it be like trying to build a new society in this post-apocalyptic setting” more as the show developed.)

Sorry, I have to disagree with you there. The difference between Trek and Wars goes deeper than technobabble vs "the Force did it" (aka magic).
It's themes, tropes, character archetypes and other narrative structures that puts one squarely in science fiction and the other blurring the lines.

I want to point out Q
And the Original series which has several Q like characters, though most are restricted to a single world/region. Even TNG has a few crop up such as the creature that destroyed an entire race because they killed his wife on another world.

Q is basically "The Force" of Startrek right down to the hand waving magical thingies. Heck the first time we see Q we even get hand-wavium from Guinan, though I note that its not something that's ever fully explored and even her race is largely left alone barring one timetravel episode. She gets the most ground covered in the Picard series which in a way raises more questions than answers.



Yes Star Trek sometimes leans into its own technobabble to explain things, but in the end both Star Trek and Star Wars are set in futuristic science fiction settings. They are both sci-fi they are just different flavours of sci-fi. Plus neither actually aims for realistic science - ships in both always meet each other on the same flat plane (Starwas gets a little more creative on this front, but Star Trek is almost to a fault a flat plane like playing Homeworld).

Both have pewpew lasers; no display of real newtonian physics in space and a bunch of other things.

In fact if we are going to restrict our sci-fi to realistic then we are down to Firefly, The Expanse and a slew of Apollo films.

I see sci-fi as predicting, extrapolating, guessing what can happen in the future based on our understanding of science right now. Any science, really - for example dystopian sci-fi extrapolates our knowledge of sociology and politics.

It can have ideas like technologies that may or may not exist in the future. But as soon as it breaks laws of science that exist already it becomes just fantasy in space.

Charaters disrespecting said science or logic behind it is a red flag as well, like, for example Star Trek ships going into combat without pumping out oxygen and crew wearing space suits, as if they wanted to announce "just kill everybody on board with fires and decompression".

I can agree that the line between fantasy and sci-fi can sometimes be incredibly blurry, but I think there's more than enough room for lots of sci-fi that doesn't obey our laws of physics and isn't specifically set in the future of humanity on Earth.

You have loads of sci-fi that's based on alternate histories for a start.

Plus a lot of the time there's some new science or alien or resource that allows crazy things to happen that wouldn't be possible in reality. Heck far as we know today FTL travel is impossible and yet its a staple of a great amount of sci-fi.

In fact if we restrict ourselves to just real world physics and science than the amount of sci-fi become very very tiny compared to what it currently is.

As I said, hypothetical is perfectly ok for sci-fi, it is supposed to be half-fiction after all!

Nonsensical is not - that's where I draw the line. There's a difference between a hypothesis and a fairy tale.

But FTL is basically a fairy tale right now. You are very much in the realm of the scientifically nonsensical. Sure everyone WANTS it to happen so we keep researching it, but its very much in the realm of fantasy right now.


Same as shrink rays


Now cryogenics that's potentially possible, you're within the realm of possibility there as we at least know it does happen in the animal kingdom. Though not hundreds and hundreds to thousands of years that we'd need for space travel.

Hard sci-fi is a sub genre of science fiction, but i don’t think you can use it’s rules to define the whole spectrum.

I defiantly prefer mine to be internally consistent. It’s OK to change the laws of physics to have fun toys or enable the setting to tell you story. FTL, hyperspace, anti-grav, laser swords, the Force, etc. But once you establish the rules, stick with them. If you go all fuzzy and wibbly-wobbly with the rules, then you are firmly into space fantasy.

That’s where I’d draw the line.

 Nevelon wrote:
Hard sci-fi is a sub genre of science fiction, but i don’t think you can use it’s rules to define the whole spectrum.

Exactly. In the end sci-fi and fantasy are very broad terms that have a decent amount of stories and media that overlap each other. They are generalist terms and that's where they work best. Trying to make those terms fit a very carefully and specifically defined niche is never going to work. That's where you bring out other terms and sub classifications. Hard Scifi is a niche of sci-fi and there you can get much more specific on the nature of the sci-fi. Heck I suspect true hard-sci-fi fans will have further subclassifications of their own. From predictive future to alternate history and more.

Classification is like an onion and is built of many layers. The more specific you want the more layers you add too it.



And that's before you get to stories that openly mess with the readers. Dragonriders of Pern is a fantastic example of a story that is, at its core, a sci-fi story. However a large amount of its actual story that the reader engages with (esp in early books) is very distinctly what we'd consider fantasy.

It's not just the rules of the setting; Star Wars has all the tropes of a fantasy story; prophecy, wizards, princesses, magic swords, and Evil Wizard King and his Evil Empire. That's why people sometimes classify it as fantasy in space.

And yes, sci-fi can get away with breaking the laws of physics as we understand them and still count as sci-fi. Sure it doesn't work according our understanding of physics, but for starters, our understanding of physics is imperfect.

For another, exploring the consequences of a given new discovery, whether technological or scientific is pretty much what the genre is intended to do. That includes things previously (or currently) thought to be impossible, like FTL.

 Overread wrote:
But FTL is basically a fairy tale right now. You are very much in the realm of the scientifically nonsensical. Sure everyone WANTS it to happen so we keep researching it, but its very much in the realm of fantasy right now.


Same as shrink rays


Now cryogenics that's potentially possible, you're within the realm of possibility there as we at least know it does happen in the animal kingdom. Though not hundreds and hundreds to thousands of years that we'd need for space travel.

Let me explain how I see it. So, we have 2 components of a sci-fi story: a fictional hypothesis and its logical (scientific?) extrapolation and development.

For example our totally fictional hypothesis is that humanity invented/discovered FTL. Are there consequences of that, for example characters need to deal with relativity- related time-space issues? Or at least an explanation how they are worked around? Or are these things waved off, because they are inconvenient for the author and problematic for the plot so characters just magically drive from star system to star system like we do between cities?

If our hypothesis is that medicine finally allowed some people to be immortal, do we have social, political, economical, religious consequences of that or is it just so that the author can write longer sagas?

Obviously, hardly any authors are actual scientists, so expectations need to be rational, but I definitely also draw another line between them making an effort here and not even trying (like with SW/ST "aliens" that are hardly alien - culturally or biologically - at all).

 Dysartes wrote:

trexmeyer wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

trexmeyer wrote:
I would have listed TESB, but Star Wars isn't science fiction.

You're calling out Star Wars alone as not being Sci-Fi, but not... *checks posts prior to the one being quoted* ...any of the following:
- I Am Legend
- Book of Eli
- Anything Star Trek or Babylon 5
- Dredd
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The MCU as a whole
- Children of Men

Are you trolling right now? I genuinely can't tell.

Trolling? No, not at all. Heck, I even gave you an additional paragraph - unquoted above - as to why I would question six of the seven.

I know you're old enough to know that this debate has been done to death and you've already read it elsewhere.
I'm not here for your entertainment.

It’s kinda hard to take you seriously when the rest of those films get labeled as sci-fi, but you don’t give Star Wars that label.
There is a perfectly cogent definition of sci-fi that excludes Star Wars, but it’d also exclude a lot of the other films too.

Other not-quite-top-five? This time movies with a special meaning to me due to circumstance.

Flight of the Navigator. Pretty rad film in its own right. But on a purely personal level, the first movie I remember seeing at my own request. Must’ve been given a slot on Wide Awake Club or Wacaday, during school holidays. Enthused, I asked Mum if we could go see it, and so my love of cinema properly began at the Odeon on Lothian Road, Edinburgh.

The Last Starfighter. Probably an early VHS rental experience. Either at a birthday party, or when over at Granny and Grandad’s of school holiday.

Cube. Definitely a rental. Saw it reviewed on a Channel 4 show called “Vids”. Was the summer I spent living with a friend in his Dad’s flat on the Pantiles. Terrific bit of cinema.

Dune Another I first saw for sure at a birthday party, but I wouldn’t come to appreciate for a few years. One could say it took a while for the sleeper to awaken. But boy, did it have a tangible impact on everything sci-fi I’d come to love.

Short Circuit 2 The first VHS I ever bought myself. Still not a bad film. Just a shame about the brown face.