Skip to main content

Best Science Fiction Movies Part 4 and summary


This is the final installment of my list of favorite science fiction films:

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan. Some of you will be saying: Wait a minute. What about all that stuff he said against sequels? A fair point, but I would argue that even though it has a “2” in the title, this is not a proper sequel. Is it a sequel of Star Trek: The Motion Picture? I don’t think so. Star Trek: the Motion Picture was a cinematic retelling of the TV show as were all the films that followed. The first film did such a poor job with story and character that it almost doesn’t qualify as Star Trek at all. I don’t think Robert Wise, the director really got it. By contrast Nicholas Meyer, the director of the second film, did get it. The characters were recognizable. The story arc was nicely constructed and led to a satisfying and nail-biting finale. And yes the story was more important than the special effects (not that the special effects were bad).  New characters like the Marcus’s and Mr. Savak dovetailed nicely into the story. Again, the story may not have the best science fiction ideas, but it is a well-executed movie. Speaking as a Trekkie who had been smarting ever since the original series was cancelled, this was the one we had been waiting for.




Jurassic Park. Another movie based on a Michael Crichton novel. Was this guy brilliant or what? The very idea that we could rebuild dinosaurs from DNA recovered from mosquitoes trapped in amber was mind blowing. It seemed so technically feasible (at least until scientists later reported that DNA trapped in amber would degrade after a few hundred thousand years, but still . . .). Not only was it a great idea, but the CGI effects were taken to a level that we had never seen before. Prior to this, dinosaurs in movies were either puppets, or stop motion animation (which tended to be jerky), or film of small lizards with spikes glued onto their backs. The movie basically turns into a horror flick, but it is so expertly done, I didn’t mind. In the end we are left with another reminder that it is not a good idea to screw around with nature. Stephen Spielberg and Michael Crichton, and new CGI proved a spectacular combination (alas, not so much in the sequel).

Okay, this is my final list. There are a lot of movies that could have been on my list, but I had to end it somewhere. I might have come up with a different list at a different point in my life (older and more cynical, or younger and more innocent) but this is the list as it stands today. I look forward to your comments, but please don’t write to me that I screwed up by not including this movie or that movie because this is my list, not yours. Below is the summary of all the movies on my list, and these really are in no particular order:

2001: A Space Odyssey
The Martian
The Andromeda Strain
Interstellar
Star Wars
Alien
The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original)
Blade Runner
The Matrix
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan
Jurassic Park


(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an ebook through Copypastapublishing.com, Amazon, or the other usual online sources. For those who like to turn physical pages, the paperback will be out soon).

Star Liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Retired

  I retired this week. So, big lifestyle changes for me? Not so much. I retired on Thursday. My office had an amazing party for me on Wednesday, lots of food, lots of cards, lots of personal connections. Gifts too, I wish I had told them, no gifts. I really don’t need anything. But all this does make one feel appreciated. It also makes me feel appreciated that they want me to come back on a contractual basis every now and then to impart my institutional knowledge. It is always the case when someone retires, knowledge is lost to the organization. Things have to be relearned by the next generation. This is somewhat offset by the fact that the world is changing through advancing technology etc. So, the knowledge that the retiring person has might eventually become obsolete anyway. Better to go out while you are still on top. We have all seen professional athletes who stayed on well beyond their prime. It would have been better to go out while still on top. But it is a hard thing to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

My first experience with cyberpunk as a genre of science fiction was Neuromancer by William Gibson. Neuromancer was one of the early works that defined the cyberpunk genre. It was insanely influential. It won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award. But for me, it just did not resonate. I had a hard time visualizing the concepts. It left a bad taste in my mouth for cyberpunk. I mostly avoided the genre. Then a couple of years ago I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson which is cyberpunk (although some people say it is a parody of cyberpunk). Whatever, I liked it. I recently picked up All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu and it immediately became apparent to me that this was cyberpunk. Julia Z is the main character, and I think this is going to be the start of a series following her. She is a hacker (hence cyberpunk). She has got herself in trouble and so she lives on the margins, barely making it. Then a lawyer asks her for her help. His wife has been kidnapped. The ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Darkness

  There was a moment when I discovered that l liked dark music. I do like dark music. I like minor keys and a haunting theme. I like other kinds of music too, but that darkness speaks to me in a special way. What does that say about me? Am I messed up? I don’t think so. Maybe I am just built that way that haunting tunes or lyrics imparts some inner truth to me. It resonates. I know precisely when I discovered this about myself. It was Summer of 1971. I was 12 years old. I was on a plane with my family heading to Illinois. Airplanes back then did not have much in the way of entertainment, but what they did have were headphones and music channels you could listen to. I was listening to a channel of popular current hits, and a song came on called “That’s the Way I Always Heard it Should Be” by Carly Simon. I had never heard of Carly Simon. This was before “Anticipation” and “You’re so Vain.” She was not yet famous. But this song came on and, I don’t know, it did something to me. It...
Post a Comment
Read more