Amph Greatest Science Fiction Films of the 21st Century

I liked Oblivion, but it's not nearly as good as Moon.

 

Oh no it wasn't.

 

I want to say Titan AE but quite frankly I can't remember it well enough to know if it was good or bad.

 

Good concept and in places gorgeous animation, but lacking in the story department, IMHO.

 

Well, guys, I've been told Titan AE has a good idea and looks beautiful but was not well executed story wise. So please disregard.

 

Also, it came out in 2000 so including it would invite horrendous levels of pedantry.

 

Oh, you're not one of those ordinal curs, are you?

 

Me personally? No. But you know they'd swarm.

 

Well, let's keep Titan AE in the 20th century where it belongs.

 

Sunshine was 2/3rds of a good sci-fi movie, but that serial-killer third act...

 

I like the description of the third act as it "turning into Event Horizon."

 

I really wanted to like that movie.

 

How could you not include GOTG in your superheroes list when it's Marvel's one and only space film(although YMMV)? It's definitely more of a sci-fi film than Spider-Man 2.

 

I would say The Martian is the purest example of sci-fi. It stands for "science fiction" after all. It's a story that is almost entirely taken up with scientists of one kind or another using the principles and methods of science to achieve their ends. It's literally a piece of fiction about science.

As to Gravity, I think it fits most comfortably in the little genre I like to call 'mostly garbage.' The Martian was everything Gravity wanted to be and should have been.

 

No it isn't. Spider-Man 2 has some kind of attempt to explore "science" and at the very least uses "science" as the main plot device. GotG is an adventure movie.

 

No Timecrimes, Primer or even Looper? What do you have against time travel, you monster?

 

Well....no. When we think of science fiction, our tendency is to think of this, stories set at minimum, hundreds of years in the future and full of handwavium magic.

Gravity, The Martian and, to an extent, Interstellar are all trying to skew more to this, with varying degrees of success.


The Martian does the best job and gets the closest to that real world feeling, but I really don't think its at all accurate to call, Gravity, The Martian or Interstellar science fiction. They really should be categorized as space fiction. as opposed to sci-fi.

 

Well, does it matter what "we think about when we think about sci-fi?" I mean, I'm just talking straight definition of the term: science fiction. There's no real necessity for it to be fantastic or anything. I mean, I might say that I'd flip your terms. To what degree is Star Trek really about the science? Maybe it should be "space fiction" whereas something that really engages with the science on the kind of granular level that The Martian does should be "science fiction." But I'm mainly just being contrarian. Though I would certainly call the Martian science fiction.

Looper was a fun experience, but the longer I lived with it in my head, the less I liked it. At this point, I kind of hate it. End of the day, I'm not sure the Paul Dano stuff wasn't the best thing in it. Though I do like that incredible shot the first time the kid takes out the bad guy, when he's got the guy up in the air inside the house.

I'd like to be the pretentious indie guy and bring up The One I Love, one of those super obscure arthouse movies with Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss. But it was absolutely dreadful. Sometimes "indie cred" really blows up in your face.

 

I like Looper until it suddenly becomes Carrie.

 

Regression. That's the time travel movie to end all time travel movies.

 

Hm. Between Regression and Timecrimes, I'm starting to think my home country produces some really good time travel movies. I had never stopped to think of that.

 

Now if only the bread could be improved.

 

On what planet is Interstellar not science fiction? It's a movie set in the future about mankind leaving Earth because of a climate apocalypse and engaging in space exploration through wormholes, with relativity constantly affecting it, and then everything ends with an interdimensional time-space nexus thing.

But it's not science fiction because the spacesuits look too realistic?

 

Guys....just because a particular movie isn't mentioned it doesn't mean that people think it's not sci-fi.

 

Night at the Museum is NOT science fiction.