10) The Thing (1982)
To say The Thing (or John Carpenter’s The Thing) is a horror film is perfectly adequate, but if you really want to nail the macabre maestro’s masterpiece down, to say it’s an exercise in tension would be much more appropriate. You can take The Thing as it comes, shovelling popcorn into your face as you watch its small roster of superbly cast researchers fall one-by-one to an ancient and unqualified extradimensional terror, or you can follow its characters into madness by picking apart each and every scene and tracing the pattern of infection with the barest of clues Carpenter leaves behind.
A film that rewards repeat viewings after the initial deep-gut thrill has subsided, The Thing has since spawned a quasi-sequel that doubles as a pointless and frankly vain remake of Carpenter’s own remake, which at least highlights the level of reverence in which this movie is held by a generation of filmgoers since its release. The frequently unbearable tension is aided by beautiful photography (check its snowy sights in HD if you haven’t already) and Ennio Morricone’s score, what little there is, is tremendously effective. Kurt Russell also sports a fantastically full beard and is surrounded by tremendous players, but if the only thing you take away from The Thing are its still-hideous creature FX, I’m sure monster guru Rob Bottin won’t mind.
9) Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
With those iconic words “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” followed by John Williams’ surging, triumphant score and the film title shooting back into the abyss of space, Star Wars changed the destiny of blockbuster cinema. A joyous and enthralling adventure into a galaxy filled with good and evil, humor and wisdom, adventure and drama, George Lucas’ space opera remains a milestone in moviemaking.
It was a film made by a big dreamer with bold visual ideas and brilliant characters that will forever stand the test of time in one of cinema’s essential adventures. Lucas ushered in the noble Luke Skywalker, cocky space cowboy Han Solo, the resilient Princess Leia, the impenetrable dark heart of Darth Vader, as well as many characters and terms forever in the cultural lexicon: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi, Chewbacca, the Death Star, Lightsabers… the list goes on.
Would science-fiction cinema be as audacious today without this transporting adventure? Likely not, as this frenzy of imagination inspired a generation of genre-loving filmmakers and sci-fi visionaries like Edgar Wright and J.J. Abrams (who will test his mettle when he delivers a seventh Star Wars installment in 2015). Star Wars is an awesome slice of blockbuster entertainment that will continue to thrill moviegoers for eternity. Simply put, the Force will be with this film, always.
Star Wars marked the beginning of one of the biggest pop culture franchises of all time, and launched the “hero with a thousand faces” as the go-to formula for blockbuster filmmaking. A New Hope would be an easy #1 on this list if not for one little technicality: there’s really not much actual science in it. To even call it a “science fiction movie” almost gives the impression that your understanding of the term is as mistaken as Han’s use of “parsec.” That George Lucas heavily based the movie off of a Kurosawa film set in feudal Japan makes it abundantly clear how little of Star Wars’ actual identity has to do with the quantifiable and realistic elements you usually associate with hard sci-fi.
But it’s the “fiction” half of the equation that Star Wars does better than almost any movie, as A New Hope sets up not just a world, but a whole galaxy of possibilities. Even if it technically takes place in the past, A New Hope, along with the other Star Wars films, provides a necessary counterbalance to science fiction that sees a future where what it means to be an individual, or even human, is threatened. Hope, love, friendship –the things that drive our aspirations, and willingness to adventure into the unknown is all there in A New Hope –not to mention some of cinema’s most memorable characters and special effects. Is it simplistic? Absolutely. But that’s what makes it timeless, and a pure distillation of the imagination that creates science fiction.
8) Meteropolis
You want sci-fi? You want the dystopian narrative on which all other cinematic dystopian narratives are based? You want political commentary? Look no further, my children, than Fritz Lang’s mind-boggling 1927 epic Metropolis.
The film begins in a dystopian world where the upper classes live in the gorgeous urban city Metropolis, and the workers live beneath the ground, keeping the machines of the city running, suffering and dying without seeing the sun. The Master of Metropolis is Joh Frederson, a ruthless industrialist. His son Freder wiles away the hours in the pleasure gardens of the city, until one day he meets Maria, who comes to the surface to show the workers’ children how the wealthy live.
Freder descends to the underground, discovering the horrific lives of the workers, and decides that he wants to work with Maria to bridge the gaps between the haves and have-nots. There is the further complication of Joh’s relationship with mad scientist Rotwang and his automaton creation, which he builds to resemble the woman they both once loved.
Metropolis is a sprawling film, with numerous subplots and minor characters. It has shades of Frankenstein and German romanticism, not to mention a hefty and complex dose of worker politics. Lang’s style would go on to influence films from 1932’s Frankenstein to Blade Runner and Brazil. In its recently refurbished and almost complete form, it’s a breathtaking film and one of the original science fictions.
7) The Matrix
Hate of, and for, The Matrix sequels is understandable, even if it is overblown, but even after almost 15 years, it’s hard to deny the impact and influence of this creation of the Siblings Wachowski. Think back to the spring of 1999 and ask yourself what was everyone talking about? Yes, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was on the horizon, eclipsing just about everything else being released in the weeks leading up to, and proceeding from, its mid-May release. But by the time the millennium turned, everyone agreed: Star Wars was the past and The Matrix was the future.
Like a lot of seminal films, The Matrix came together like a perfect storm. It was produced at a time when studio Warner Bros. was keeping a tight rein on budgets after a series of high-priced blunders, it was made in Australia because of tax incentives there and even re-used sets from Alex Proyas’ Dark City to save money.
Interestingly, amongst the original casting ideas were Will Smith and Sean Connery as Neo and Morpheus respectively, but fortunately, the right cast fell into place, with Laurence Fishburne’s authoritative tone welcoming Neo to “the desert of the real,” as Keanu Reeves’ consistently mind-blown expression was perfectly suited for Neo, a character who was a total of 80 lines of dialogue in the first 45 minutes of the movie, with 44 of those lines being questions.
But really, who watched The Matrix to see Keanu Reeves “act?” Two things drew viewers to the film: its heady blend of socio-technological philosophizing and “bullet-time.” The debate on who created the “Bullet-time” filmming method is academic, but The Matrix popularized it and in just a few years it was parodied in about two-dozen other movies.
The film’s extensive martial arts action sequences ushered in a new focus on the art of fighting in Hollywood action movies, and helped popularize wire-fu. But more importantly, The Matrix was a thinking man’s action picture that asked questions like, ‘Who are you?’ ‘What is reality?’ ‘Can you define or defy your destiny?’….Oh nevermind, Neo’s about to shoot up the lobby in slo-mo!
6) Inception
Some of you may balk at us putting such a recent movie so high on a list of the greatest sci-fi films ever made, but my reply would be, “Have you seen Inception?”
I have the utmost confidence that Christopher Nolan’s groundbreaking, stunningly imaginative brain-bender will be remain as wholly absorbing, breathtaking, infuriating, and unabashedly ambitious fifty years from now as it appears today. Few films demand repeat viewings like Inception, which boasts a heady Möbius strip of a plot, visually magnificent set pieces (see video below), terrific performances, and razor-sharp dialogue.
It’s startling original, unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, and it’s also fresh in that it doesn’t provide any easy answers for its weighty questions of reality, consciousness, and what it means to be truly awake. Inception is an intellectual exercise as much as it is a thrilling sci-fi adventure, and few films have ever succeeded in balancing the two.
Let’s look at the sheer ingenuity of the film’s plot, if anyone needs more convincing. Leonardo DiCaprio, never better, stars as Dom Cobb, a thief who infiltrates the minds of his targets in order to steal their ideas for competing corporations. In order to reclaim the life he was forced to leave behind years ago, Cobb must perform the most difficult task of all – inception, or the planting a new idea in a target’s mind. Cue Hans Zimmer’s earth-shattering score. There has never been a movie like this, and there likely never will be again.
Inception is a gorgeous labyrinth of a film that takes science-fiction to the next level, dazzling its audience even as it confounds them. It’s filmmaking that proves blockbuster and art can be one and the same, and challenges Hollywood to “dream a little bigger, darling.”
5) Terminator 2: Judgment Day
James Cameron’s cyborg follow-up, Terminator 2: Judgment Day crushes the rule clung to by film fans everywhere; that no sequel shall ever better its predecessor. The Canadian director’s second venture into the dystopian landscape of a post-apocalyptic world unites that which made the original smash box office records, with a big, beating human heart beneath all that unpronounceable alloy. Because, really, who gives a hoot if you haven’t got heart? T2 builds upon the groundwork laid by the original and layers further mythology of the Skynet takeover together with a cautionary tale of what the human race is destined for.
A handy time travel plot quirk allows for Schwarzenegger to reprise his role as one of the titular Terminators. This time around he’s sent back by John Connor, the leader of the resistance, to prevent a more advanced Terminator sent back by the machines from killing him as a boy.
While one of the film’s one liners (“Hasta la vista, baby”) has cemented T2 into the annals of popular culture, its true permanence into cinema is evidenced by its focus. Every shot, every cut, every utterance of dialogue, music cue, they’re all tightly slotted together by Cameron to create a solid genre work, which at times betrays its lo-fi sci-fi roots and embraces part of a wider filmic canon.
Structuring a film solely around set pieces could surely be considered erroneous but that’s where Terminator 2 shines. The first moment where the Terminators meet in a mall corridor spirals into a giant freeway chase down an abandoned viaduct, and does so with a freshness that’s still captivating today. The spectacular scene breaking out John’s mother, Sarah Connor, from the mental institution simmers quietly before her own breakout and the rescue mission by her son slam together, a heartwrenching reunion out of the question with a cybernetic shapeshifter hot on their butts. The action never tires and never gets boring or predictable.
Tying together the action and pathos is Brad Fiedel’s endlessly haunting score, punctuating the film’s crucial moments with a melodrama usually reserved for lighter fare, that’ll have anyone with an ounce of empathy bawling like a candyless baby by the epic conclusion.
4) 2001: A Space Odyssey
What can possibly be said about 2001: A Space Odyssey that has not already been said? Even almost 50 years after its release 2001 remains the bar against which all other artistically minded sci-fi films are measured. Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece may be divisive, it may even raise questions of whether it’s less a film and more an installation piece, but once you have witnessed it, you can never go back.
2001: A Space Odyssey has little central plot. It is a film of imagery and aural cues, not a work of linear continuity. A bone transforms into a spiraling spacecraft; an astronaut spins into space; a star child is born against the backdrop of the universe. The most cohesive narrative that 2001 can lay claim to is that of astronaut Dave and HAL 9000, the ship’s computer. Due to an error that HAL is not supposed capable of making, the computer turns psychopathic, murdering one astronaut and then attempting to kill Dave as well, rather than be disconnected. Yet even here it is imagery, not plot, that’s emphasized. HAL’s sinister red eye, his murder of Frank, and his painful regression into infancy are among the few moments of pathos in the entire film.
The actual meaning behind 2001 remains open for debate. The monolith seems to provide both a jump forward in technology, but a step backward in terms of humanity. Tools transform into weapons of war; HAL, an unthinking computer, is more human in his desperate self-preservation than the cold and calculating Dave. The ending itself – a journey to Jupiter culminating in Dave witnessing his own death and the birth of the ‘star child’– was a mystery even to 2001’s director, who claimed he really had no idea what it all meant.
Whatever you want to make of its loose and confusing narrative, there is no doubt that director Stanley Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clark produced a fascinating work, emotionally resonant and lyrically complex. It’s even more remarkable that they did it without the benefit of modern CGI. The journey to Jupiter is a light show, images of outer space are created using front projection, and the bipedal apes are men in monkey suits. The filmmakers set the whole epic to a classical score (I dare you to listen to The Blue Danube and not think of 2001), which contributes to the film’s combination of wry commentary and austere majesty.
For all its iconic moments, 2001: A Space Odyssey is more than the sum of its parts. It is a work of art; a confusing, maddening, and divisive work of art that will continue to confound and amaze us even as we pass far beyond the year 2001. You may find it boring or you may be awed by it, but you can never ignore it.