The Top 100 Sci-Fi Films

The Saloon
1

…As voted for by “Leading sci-fi experts, filmmakers, science fiction writers, film critics and scientists”, apparently.

Courtesy of Time Out London (LINK[url]http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-100-best-sci-fi-movies-100-91[/url]):

  1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
  2. Blade Runner (Scott, 1982)
  3. Alien (Scott, 1979)
  4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977)
  5. Aliens (Cameron, 1986)
  6. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (Lucas, 1977)
  7. Brazil (Gilliam, 1985)
  8. Metropolis (Lang, 1927)
  9. The Terminator (Cameron, 1984)
  10. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
  11. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982)
  12. The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)
  13. The Matrix (Lana & Andy Wachowski, 1999)
  14. Moon (Jones, 2009)
  15. Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)
  16. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, 1991)
  17. Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972)
  18. Children of Men (Cuarón, 2006)
  19. The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)
  20. Forbidden Planet (Wilcox, 1956)
  21. Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985)
  22. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004)
  23. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg, 2001)
  24. Twelve Monkeys (Gilliam, 1995)
  25. RoboCop (Verhoeven, 1987)
  26. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956)
  27. A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971)
  28. La Jetée (Marker, 1962)
  29. Planet of the Apes (Schaffner, 1968)
  30. Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)
  31. The Day the Earth Stood Still (Wise, 1951)
  32. Gattaca (Niccol, 1997)
  33. Silent Running (Trumbull, 1972)
  34. Galaxy Quest (Parisot, 1999)
  35. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Roeg, 1976)
  36. Inception (Nolan, 2010)
  37. Primer (Carruth, 2004)
  38. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978)
  39. Dark Star (Carpenter, 1974)
  40. WALL-E (Stanton, 2008)
  41. They Live (Carpenter, 1988)
  42. The Fifth Element (Besson, 1997)
  43. Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990)
  44. Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (Meyer, 1982)
  45. District 9 (Blomkamp, 2009)
  46. Her (Jonze, 2013)
  47. Contact (Zemeckis, 1997)
  48. Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)
  49. Starship Troopers (Verhoeven, 1997)
  50. Under the Skin (Glazer, 2013)
  51. Fantastic Planet (Laloux, 1973)
  52. Predator (McTiernan, 1987)
  53. Akira (Otomo, 1988)
  54. Soylent Green (Fleischer, 1973)
  55. Repo Man (Cox, 1984)
  56. The Time Machine (Pal, 1960)
  57. Dune (Lynch, 1984)
  58. Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001)
  59. Gravity (Cuarón, 2013)
  60. Quatermass and the Pit (Baker, 1968)
  61. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981)
  62. Dark City (Proyas, 1998)
  63. Je t’aime, je t’aime (Resnais, 1968)
  64. Sleeper (Allen, 1973)
  65. The War of the Worlds (Haskin, 1953)
  66. The Abyss (Cameron, 1989)
  67. The Thing From Another World (Nyby, 1951)
  68. Westworld (Crichton, 1973)
  69. Logan’s Run (Anderson, 1976)
  70. Iron Man (Favreau, 2008)
  71. The Prestige (Nolan, 2006)
  72. Seconds (Frankenheimer, 1966)
  73. The American Astronaut (McAbee, 2001)
  74. Flash Gordon (Hodges, 1980)
  75. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)
  76. The Truman Show (Weir, 1998)
  77. Avatar (Cameron, 2009)
  78. World on a Wire (Fassbinder, 1973)
  79. Ghost in the Shell (Oshii, 1995)
  80. Star Trek (Abrams, 2009)
  81. The Iron Giant (Bird, 1999)
  82. Pacific Rim (del Toro, 2013)
  83. Things to Come (Menzies, 1936)
  84. Frankenstein (Whale, 1931)
  85. The Andromeda Strain (Wise, 1971)
  86. Barbarella (Vadim, 1968)
  87. The Damned (Losey, 1963)
  88. Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002)
  89. Fantastic Voyage (Fleischer, 1966)
  90. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Richter, 1984)
  91. Attack the Block (Cornish, 2011)
  92. Solaris (Soderbergh, 2002)
  93. THX 1138 (Lucas, 1971)
  94. Alphaville (Godard, 1965)
  95. Serenity (Whedon, 2005)
  96. Pitch Black (Twohy, 2000)
  97. Superman (Donner, 1978)
  98. 2010 (Hyams, 1984)
  99. Three Colours: Red (Kieslowski, 1994)
  100. Independence Day (Emmerich, 1996)
2

I think I’ve seen roughly half of them. But there’s many films I don’t consider sci-fi at all, what the hell is Three Colours: Red doing there for example?

3

According to the piece itself:

[i]It’s difficult to regard the film as properly sci-fi, notwithstanding some minor ‘double’ characters (notably a young law student whose life is echoing the judge’s past) which introduce the notion of slips in time, and the judge’s almost godlike interventions into other people’s lives. Rather, it’s a form of speculative fiction, insistently muttering to us ‘what if…?’.

In this meticulously structured study of the relationship between chance, destiny and free will, the judge appears to have some mysterious influence over the fate of his new friend – as of course does the director himself, whose remarkable final scene also extends a miraculous generosity to the lead characters from this film’s predecessors, ‘Blue’ and ‘White’.[/i]

So it doesn’t sound as though they know why it’s there either ;D . Some bugger voted for it though, so in it goes.

4

I haven’t seen almost half of them, so this makes a nice watchlist :slight_smile:

I guess I would agree with the top 3, only in different order, Blade Runner being my all-time favorite.

5

I saw 82 of them. Not bad …

6

Just seen over half of them and that surprises me as its not my favourite genre.

7

That’s bloody good! I’ve got 45 of them, and I’ve seen another twenty more on top of those.

Some glaring omissions IMHO:

The Fly (Neumann, 1958)
Return of the Fly (Bernds, 1959)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (Arnold, 1957)
Europa Report (Cordero, 2013)
Altered (Sánchez, 2006)
A Scanner Darkly (Linklater, 2006)
The Animatrix (Various, 2003)
Rollerball (Jewison, 1975)
and possibly even Event Horizon (Anderson, 1997)

I was discussing this on another forum and suggestions from other posters for films that should have made it included:

Zardoz (Boorman, 1974)
Them! (Douglas, 1954)
Strange Days (Bigelow, 1995)
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Allen, 1961)
Escape from New York (Carpenter, 1981)
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (De Bello, 1978)
X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes (Corman, 1963)
TRON (Lisberger, 1982)
Cypher (Natali, 2002)
The Running Man (Glaser, 1987)
Titan A.E. (Various, 2000)
K-PAX (Softley, 2001)
The Omega Man (Sagal, 1971)
Flight of the Navigator (Kleiser, 1986)
Sunshine (Boyle, 2007)
Blindness (Meirelles, 2008)
Casshern (Kazuaki, 2004)
Idiocracy (Judge, 2006)
Elysium (Blomkamp, 2013)
Prometheus (Scott, 2012)
WarGames (Badham, 1983)
Trancers (Band, 1984)
The Dead Zone (Cronenberg, 1983)
Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983)
Scanners (Cronenberg, 1981)
Naked Lunch (Cronenberg, 1991)

8

[quote=“last.caress, post:1, topic:3405”]…As voted for by “Leading sci-fi experts, filmmakers, science fiction writers, film critics and scientists”, apparently.

Courtesy of Time Out London (LINK[url]http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-100-best-sci-fi-movies-100-91[/url]):

  1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
  2. Blade Runner (Scott, 1982)
  3. Alien (Scott, 1979)
  4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg, 1977)
  5. Aliens (Cameron, 1986)
  6. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (Lucas, 1977)
  7. Metropolis (Lang, 1927)
  8. The Terminator (Cameron, 1984)
  9. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
  10. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982)
  11. The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)
  12. The Matrix (Lana & Andy Wachowski, 1999)
  13. Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)
  14. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, 1991)
  15. Solaris (Tarkovsky, 1972)
  16. Children of Men (Cuarón, 2006)
  17. The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986)
  18. Forbidden Planet (Wilcox, 1956)
  19. Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985)
  20. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg, 2001)
  21. Twelve Monkeys (Gilliam, 1995)
  22. RoboCop (Verhoeven, 1987)
  23. A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971)
  24. La Jetée (Marker, 1962)
  25. Planet of the Apes (Schaffner, 1968)
  26. Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)
  27. Silent Running (Trumbull, 1972)
  28. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Roeg, 1976)
  29. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978)
  30. Dark Star (Carpenter, 1974)
  31. They Live (Carpenter, 1988)
  32. The Fifth Element (Besson, 1997)
  33. Total Recall (Verhoeven, 1990)
  34. Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan (Meyer, 1982)
  35. District 9 (Blomkamp, 2009)
  36. Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)
  37. Starship Troopers (Verhoeven, 1997)
  38. Under the Skin (Glazer, 2013)
  39. Fantastic Planet (Laloux, 1973)
  40. Soylent Green (Fleischer, 1973)
  41. Repo Man (Cox, 1984)
  42. Dune (Lynch, 1984)
  43. Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001)
  44. Quatermass and the Pit (Baker, 1968)
  45. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981)
  46. Dark City (Proyas, 1998)
  47. Sleeper (Allen, 1973)
  48. The War of the Worlds (Haskin, 1953)
  49. The Abyss (Cameron, 1989)
  50. Westworld (Crichton, 1973)
  51. Logan’s Run (Anderson, 1976)
  52. Flash Gordon (Hodges, 1980)
  53. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)
  54. The Truman Show (Weir, 1998)
  55. World on a Wire (Fassbinder, 1973)
  56. Star Trek (Abrams, 2009)
  57. The Andromeda Strain (Wise, 1971)
  58. Barbarella (Vadim, 1968)
  59. The Damned (Losey, 1963)
  60. Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002)
  61. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (Richter, 1984)
  62. Solaris (Soderbergh, 2002)
  63. THX 1138 (Lucas, 1971)
  64. Alphaville (Godard, 1965)
  65. Pitch Black (Twohy, 2000)
  66. Superman (Donner, 1978)
  67. 2010 (Hyams, 1984)
  68. Three Colours: Red (Kieslowski, 1994)
  69. Independence Day (Emmerich, 1996)[/quote]

Those were the ones I’ve seen so far, I’ve also seen Seconds from John Frankenheimer, didn’t remember when I was checking the list, best Rock Hudson film for me. Never though of it as a Sci-fi film do.

My favourites would be both Tarkosvky films and La Jetee

9

@50.Under the Skin

Seen it recently!..So boring and meaningless. A good soundtrack and a naked Scarlett Johansson does not make it a film.

10

Not a bad list - I’ve seen 64 films here - a nice mixture of old and new, Hollywood and foreign. The top ten is actually very good - having not seen The Terminator (an amazing achievement is this day and age, I know), I would substitute in Tarkovsky’s Solaris.

11

Surprisingly good list! Good mix of old and new. I’ve seen slightly less than half.

Tron seems like a glaring omission to me.

12

I saw 54, few favorites on the list and lots of movies that I do not see as SciFi (not even Sleeper, even though it’s set in a distant future)

I like SciFi novels much better than Scifi movies; in the western genre it’s the other way round

13

Same with me. And I really like Panic in Year Zero!, The Day the Earth Caught Fire and Damnation Alley.

14

[quote=“scherpschutter, post:12, topic:3405”]I saw 54, few favorites on the list and lots of movies that I do not see as SciFi (not even Sleeper, even though it’s set in a distant future)

I like SciFi novels much better than Scifi movies; in the western genre it’s the other way round[/quote]
Agree about Western novels: although there are some exceptions (like Elmore Leonard), many of the Westerns I’ve read all seemed to be straining towards being a film, as though they a screenplay, rather than existing on their owns terms (mainly true about stuff written pre-1960s).

15

Yes, that’s true. Maybe we could come up with “pure SF” list. But that would be very difficult to do, not even Alien is pure SF, altough it’s cleary SF and one of the best.
Where to draw the line what is what isn’t? I like Back to the future and Predator, and they clearly are SF in their main premise, but I wouldn’t consider them among favorite SF. I think of them as one of the best comedies or action movies.

16

[quote=“titoli, post:15, topic:3405”]Yes, that’s true. Maybe we could come up with “pure SF” list. But that would be very difficult to do, not even Alien is pure SF, altough it’s cleary SF and one of the best.
Where to draw the line what is what isn’t? I like Back to the future and Predator, and they clearly are SF in their main premise, but I wouldn’t consider them among favorite SF. I think of them as one of the best comedies or action movies.[/quote]

It’s always difficult, there’s always a grey area but in this case the area seems a lot larger than in the case of westerns. Alien is SF-horror, but more horror than SF if you ask me, Predator ditto. Back to the Future is intelligent SF, but many of us will argue that it feels more like a comedy, etc. I’m not an expert on SF (just happen to like authors like Stanislav Lem, Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein, etc.), maybe there’s a workable definition of SF (movies), would be interesting to hear from real genre fans.

17

Everything set in the future is SF.

18

So Back to the Future (the first one) is NOT, although it has future in the name :slight_smile:

19

A film set in the future can be (pure) fantasy, and fantasy can be fascinating, but is often alien to science

20

I would say that, by and large, if the subject of a movie is either a fictional science or the consequences of a fictional science, or if the story is directly and definitively affected by a fictional science, then the film is science fiction. If the science fiction on display serves only as a backdrop (futuristic cities/vehicles/gadgets etc.) without having any bearing upon the nature of the story or the direction of the plot, and indeed the story could be supplanted to any other backdrop and still stay fundamentally the same, then it’s not science fiction, although of course it can be said to have a sci-fi setting (and the more completely that film is enveloped in it’s sci-fi setting, the easier it is to view as sci-fi even if it’s not, primarily). Romeo and Juliet has been successfully set in contemporary America, it could very easily be set word for word in the year 5000 on the planet Bumspasm-4. It would still fundamentally be a classic tragic love story. Of course, if Romeo teleports up to Julie’s balcony as soon as she Where For Art’s him, or programs a battery of ED-209s to terminate the Capulets, or Julie turns out at the tragic finale to have been a Hyperdyne Systems synthetic romance 'droid all along, then the science will have directly affected the story and become not only integral but central to the plot, and it will in that case be a sci-fi film.

There’ll always be shades of light and dark, though. Blurred lines. A film needn’t be strictly one thing or another, and if it’s a couple of things (say, a comedy AND a work of science fiction) it needn’t be each thing equally.