It’s a new week and so Scalzi has a new book out (I kid because I love, it’s not like he’s caught up with the award-winning Scott or anything), The Rough Guide to Science Fiction Movies. Therein lies a list of movies referred to reverentially as The Canon. Bold the ones you’ve seen, etc. List after the cut. I should confess that I took a science fiction film genre course in The College Days.
Also, I wish Them! had made it. I love me some giant ants.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! (And I won’t even count the times I’ve read on the couch while Mr. Rowe watched this fine film.)
Akira
Alien
Aliens
Alphaville (On the netflix list)
Back to the Future
Blade Runner
Brazil
Bride of Frankenstein
Brother From Another Planet
A Clockwork Orange
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Contact
The Damned
Destination Moon
The Day The Earth Stood Still
Delicatessen
Escape From New York (I heart Snake Pliskin.)
ET: The Extraterrestrial
Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (serial)
The Fly (1985 version)
Forbidden Planet
Ghost in the Shell
Gojira/Godzilla (Honestly, I’m not sure, so I’m not claiming this one. Seen a lot of them though. TBS after school, holla!)
The Incredibles
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 version)
Jurassic Park
Mad Max 2/The Road Warrior
The Matrix
Metropolis (Extended version rawk!)
On the Beach
Planet of the Apes (1968 version)
Robocop
Sleeper
Solaris (1972 version)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (I don’t really have the ST love, but they did show us this movie in fourth grade as a treat. Yeah, I’m still puzzling over that one.)
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (George Lucas: Not a novelist.)
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
The Stepford Wives
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Thing From Another World
Things to Come
Tron
12 Monkeys
28 Days Later
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey
La Voyage Dans la Lune
War of the Worlds (1953 version)
I thought I saw Gataca named the best sci-fi movie EVER a few years ago. Not even on this list… #1 being debatable, I think you could safely swap out Robocop for it, though….
Jude Law is a damn fine actor
Whoa. You never saw the original Star Wars? For real?
Whoopsie — I have seen it (and will go in and edit thus confusing future visitors to these comments). It was late and I thought this was some sort of a bone to the later/earlier movies, which I can’t claim to have seen except for about twenty minutes of the first one before I fell asleep. And hey, I actually read the terrible “novel” of New Hope and wrote a comparison paper about how George Lucas is Not A Novelist on it for my class.
There’s definitely some of my own faves not on here, Tito, but I think it’s a solid list in terms of most influential or representative SF films.
I figured it was title confusion.
I still want to be a Blue Blazer Regular. Where the heck do I sign up?
Great list. Thanks!