Sci Fi Film Geekdom

[filkertom]

A couple of threads ago, moquif asks the musical question: What movies do you have to see to be considered a sci-fi geek?

It's slightly tricky. As s/he indicates, we're not talking fantasy films here, so that rules out not only the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series, but to my mind a number -- not all -- of superhero films. And what do we mean in this case by "sci-fi geek"? I think it's the basics, the foundational films you need to really understand the cinematic language of Sci Fi. The films that you would recommend to someone who asked, "Y'know, I've never seen a sci fi movie. Know any really good and influential ones?"

I also thought that a list of ten was too restrictive, and a list of twenty too easy. So I settled on fifteen.

My own first effort at such a list would look something like this (in no particular order):

• Metropolis
• King Kong (1933)
• Forbidden Planet
• The Day The Earth Stood Still
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Star Wars
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
• Planet of the Apes (1968)
• The Thing (1951)
• A Clockwork Orange
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers
• The Road Warrior
• Fahrenheit 451
• War of the Worlds (1953)
• Journey to the Center of the Earth
• Godzilla

How about yours?

Comments

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

I've seen a grand total of...two of those. Does that mean I have to hand in my SF card? :(

(I mean, I know *of* them, and can tell you the gist of most, save the Thing and Close Encounters...but I've not seen them.)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

The Thing is the real prototype for sci-fi horror, in my book. Alien, and a whole bunch of other movies, wouldn't have been possible without it.

Close Encounters... look, they just re-released it on DVD. Just get it. You will not be sorry. That's on my Top Fifteen Best Films Of All Time list. (So are Metropolis and 2001, and Kong keeps trying to get up there....)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Well, then, please do. :) I thought about Day of the Triffids, and I ended up going with War of the Worlds as my likely pick for quintessential "invasion from space" movie. And, honestly, one of my criteria was that the movie had to be, y'know, watchable. Which, at this point in time, rules out Destination Moon and On The Beach. I have not seen Level Seven.

[marcgunn.livejournal.com]

Don't forget Blade Runner!

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I did, which was a mistake. :) Excellent film.

[singlemaltsilk.livejournal.com]

Andromeda Strain.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I did think of that one. That's the challenge of having 15 on the list. I may expand it to 20....

[madrona.livejournal.com]

Honestly dude?

Gattica.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I've heard both good and bad about that one. Haven't seen it yet. Neither have I seen The Fifth Element. Don't ask me why I'm lumping those together -- I'm not sure myself.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

I've seen all those on the list except Clockwork Orange (never wanted to, unlikely I ever will). But I think you may be misunderstanding. If you've seen any or all of those films you are a normal, well-adjusted human being with a good cultural grounding. To be a "sci-fi geek" (if we must)...hmmm:

The Gamma People
Village of the Damned (the original, of course, and sequel)
It! The Terror From Beyond Space
The Quatermass Xperiment (and sequels)
The Blob

...you get the idea. You don't get to be a geek by doing the easy stuff. Kids today, I don't know, etc etc...

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Which was the one with the radioactive dinosaur ravaging London? I still remember the fleeing crowds kicking the ashes of the solders that had tried to stop it...

[hvideo.livejournal.com]

"Good" will vary from person to person, and "influencial" may be a reason to note something on some lists - but I wouldn't recommend A CLOCKWORK ORANGE to anybody unless I knew them very well. That movie is repugnant to many people and if that was to be the "first, representative movie" on the genre they might never look at another one.

It may belong on lists of important SF movies - but IMHO it should not be on lists of "Let's introduce outsiders to our genre" movies. If you want to say "Here's a list of 15 movies, see them in order" and put A CLOCKWORK ORANGE in the last 5 so they've already seen others, that would not be so bad. But I would not put it where anybody might see it first by random selection.

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

I'd like to add the following to the list of films

Flash Gordon (the movie with the soundtrack by Queen)-It's a fun, and often silly movie but it does manage to capture the spirit of Flash Gordon pretty well I think.

The Incredible Shrinking Man
The Invibisle Man (the original with Claude Raines)

BTW Tom, many thanks for the nod to the 1951 Thing. That's actually one of my favorite movies.

[jannyblue.livejournal.com]

Does reading the book count?

[moquif.livejournal.com]

IMHO if you read the book not only should it count, you can take a movie you didn't see off the list. I'd rather READ Starship Troopers than see the movie any day of the week.

[foenix.livejournal.com]

I'd maybe slip in Terminator or Alien, maybe Back to the Future...sure, they may not be strictly Scifi, but sometimes having something that straddles a genre or two can be more appealing to people to sucker them in, and they're still classics. =)

Oh! Brazil!

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Oh, they're absolutely sci-fi, but I put The Thing on there because both The Terminator and Alien are rooted in that one. Same thing with Brazil, which grows out of A Clockwork Orange and 1984. Back To The Future... you could make a case for that.

[fractalwolf.livejournal.com]

You said "good", "influential", and "sci-fi" and my first throught was Enemy Mine. Of course that's more influential on a personal level than on the genre so it might not be what you're looking for.

[madamruppy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've seen all but one!

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

Seen most of those. I would consider Back to the Future and some of the serialized stuff (Flash Gordon) as possiblities for the list. Depending on whether you'd put it into fantasy or science fiction, Planete Sauvage (Fantastic Planet) works for me, too. Some of the bad films that were influential anyway might need consideration (e.g., Donovan's Brain and whole bunches of radioactive-giant-animal flicks).

[jacob-day.livejournal.com]

Dude. Your list of 15 movies has 16 entries on it. :)

[rook543.livejournal.com]

My list would also include
- Blade Runner - Silent Running - This Island Earth - The Time Machine (1960)

Oh yeah, and Point Break (It's 100% pure adrenaline! Woo Hoo!)

Okay...maybe not Point Break

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>>My list would also include
- Blade Runner - Silent Running - This Island Earth - The Time Machine (1960)<<

Those would be the only ones I would add to Tom's list. And does "Star Wars" refer to Episode IV: A New Hope or the whole original trilogy?

A few of my own

[varseth.livejournal.com]

-Fantasic Voyage (The orginal film of gross anatomy when a crew is miniturized to remove scar tissue from within the brain of an official!)

-Star Trek (Even though the series came first and this was just another one of these grand cliche plots, the presentation was there and this was one of the pivotal moments of my childhood seeing this on the big sceen. The Teleporter malfunction gave me nightmares!!!)

Demon Seed (based on the book by Dean Koontz the story of a computer becoming sentient and trying to procreate with it's creator's wife before it is destroyed)

Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles (Even though it may be drawn out at time, this was an event to me. Had to watch it every time)

Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (James Mason as Nemo! This was a classic and I think it deserves to be mentioned!)

-Night of the Living Dead ( I know this one skirts the line with horror, but the basis with a recently returned space probe gets it's foot in the door.)

Imported
-Parasite Eve (Japanese. While it may be a more recent film, I really enjoyed this on the basis of science fact behind this plot about a threat to the human race from wtihin our own cells. This spawned two video games!

Re: A few of my own

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

It was a tough call between 20,000 Leagues and Journey to the Center for cool SF exploration films starring James Mason. (I love that there's a genre for that.) Both sit proudly on my DVD rack.

[joshuwain.livejournal.com]

There were a few of those I've not seen. Embarrassingly enough, one of them is "Clockwork Orange". I've just never gotten around to it. However, another film which took me forever to see was "Brazil" and that's the sort of thing I think belongs on that list, despite it being more of a dystopian, future, dark-fantasy than Science Fiction.

But, definitely, "the Andromeda Strain", "Westworld", and "the Truman Show" belong on the "film geek-cred" list.

What do you think? I've always said "Truman Show" is science fiction...

Westworld

[varseth.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there a sequel to this one?

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

Oh ghods...the list is enormous...I could get it _down_ to 17 but not 15.

In no particular order:

Star Wars (4, 5, 6 in "classic" form _then_ 1, 2, 3 - maybe.)

Andromeda Strain
Blade Runner
Silent Running (1972 - Bruce Dern.)
Forbidden Planet
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Tank Girl
Brazil
A Clockwork Orange
Star Trek II, III, and IV. (If only to understand Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! jokes.)
War of the Worlds (1953)
When Worlds Collide
The Time Machine (1960)
The Last Starfighter
Aliens, Aliens2 (Should be watched in the dark in a silent room.)
Et (The un-politically-correct version.)
Close Encounters

[ifics.livejournal.com]

How about Enemy Mine, The Shape of Things to Come, or Five Million Years to Earth.

[nimitzbrood.livejournal.com]

I had completely forgotten Enemy Mine...

I actually saw that in the theater and was blown away when I saw it. Supposedly the book is much more in depth but the movie was still excellent.

[cadhla.livejournal.com]

See, I'm not a sci-fi geek. I'm just not. I don't like the tropes well enough, and the things that are 'science fiction' that I adore, cinematically, are almost always the deeply silly ones.

I am a horror geek, and our foundational movies are both a) totally different, and b) sub-genre sensitive.

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

Fahrenheit 451 is movie? I've read the book 3524532 times... does that count. (Yes, I know the movie exists, I just refuse to see it.)

What about Tron?

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

I'd definitely add Tron as the seminal CGI flick. Everything Pixar, DreamWorks Animation and the rest have done in CGI animation grew out of that one.

[jcw-da-dmg.livejournal.com]

I would not include King Kong, A Clockwork Orange, or The Road Warrior, as I don't think of them as being sci-fi. I would include Them, Logan's Run, and THX-1138.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

No Zardoz?

;)

[aiyume.livejournal.com]

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

[briansiano.livejournal.com]

Looks like we've got several standards at work here. We could list the 15 Greatest SF Films, the severe classics, the films that are great films in addition to being great SF. Like _2001_ or _Forbidden Planet_ or _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_.

Or, we could list films that exemplify "geek SF," films that are popular and widely quoted, but not necessarily _great_. I'd throw the _Back to the Future_ movies here: they're fun, and good, but I wouldn't call them classics.

Or, we could have a list of films that one must have seen to be considered a real SF film geek: films that are more obscure, maybe not even good, but part of SF geek film culture. Like _Dark Star_ or _A Boy and his Dog_ or _Videodrome_. Or, to mention bad ones, _Zardoz_ or _Plan Nine from Outer Space_.

These aren't exclusive to one another, but we are overlapping our ideas of what should be on the list.

Christmas

[varseth.livejournal.com]

With the holiday I would say we Should add Santa Claus Conquers the Martians to the obscure list?

[his-spiffyness.livejournal.com]

Seems like the list needs to be expanded to top 100 sci-fi geek movies....