Sci Fi Movies

You know, the sci-fi/fantasy film has really come of age and has moved on from being followed by young pale guys with duffel coats and personal hygiene issues - Star Wars is now considered an all time classic (in a recent Channel 4 poll it was voted the best film of all time), Lord of the Rings is likely to be the last fantasy trilogy - where can you go from Lord of the Rings?

2001

This is the big one. Before Star Wars, before Industrial Light and Magic, before George Lucas, before CGI there was 2001. Filmed entirely in the UK, mainly without dialogue (the narration was dropped in order to make it even more confusing), on massive sets (critics called it the biggest home movie ever made), to a massive budget (by late 1960's standards). This is Kubrick's masterpiece - to my mind better than Star Wars (but you try and get some kids to watch it on X-Mas Day - so on some levels it does fail), influential (it is difficult to imagine Star Wars ever happening without it) and spawner of a thousand spoofs (Anthony Hopkins based his voice for Lecter on that of HAL - the ship's computer - also this film has been referenced in Deep Space 9, Dark Star, Airplane 2 and - rather obscure - by Bill Hicks in his Cavemen Discovering Mushrooms Sketch on stage on his final tour). Magnificent and possibly the greatest science fiction film ever.

Basically - mission to Jupiter, paranoid computer, black monolith

Best Bit - switching HAL off

Star Wars Trilogy

The other big one! If you need me to type anything about this film then you should stay in more! The utter brilliance of this film is in just how unoriginal it is - Lucas raided his fave film collection - elements of just about all of his fave stuff is in here; Westerns, Wizard of Oz, Classic Republic Serials such as Flash Gordon (just check out the sideways-swipe scene changes if you don't believe me! Also - the synopsis at the start of each film is pure Republic Serial).

Basically - lightsabers, blasters, wookies and spaceships.

Best Bit - the intro

Lord of the Rings

For years this was thought to be the true unfilmable trilogy. Here, Peter Jackson has shown how you should raid the archives of brilliant books; you should leave out the stuff you don't need (the opening summarises many, many pages), modify the stuff you don't like and add the stuff that you need. Now that it is all over, what do we look forward to every December?

Basically - Hobbits, Rings and Liv Tyler

Best Bit - the opening - a short history of the ring -

Time After Time

If you went to see Time Machine in summer 2002 then this is the film you should have seen. Way back in 1980, there was another take on the HG Wells time travel tale (that has spawned so many films that it should have a sub genre of its own) - but this one has a nice twist in the tale that makes it the best time travel tale of all (especially better than bloody Timecop!). No mega budget, no mega stars (british guys take all the best roles), no mega marketing campaign - Hollywood wake up for God's sake!

Basically - HG Wells (Malcolm McDowell) has his time machine borrowed by a certain Jack the Ripper (played by David Warner - the bloke who has his head cut off by a sheet of glass in Omen!) and has to follow him through time to stop him from buggering up the future

Best Bit - HG Wells visit to McDonalds.....

Rollerball

OK - so this is not strictly speaking a Sci-Fi movie. But, it is set in the future, deals with a common Sci-Fi story (totalitarian government)... and this is my website so I will categorise stuff the way I want to. I first saw this film when I was about 11 and have loved it ever since. The whole world is run by companies who use the pointless game of Rollerball (apparently designed for Roy Keane and Vinnie Jones) to placate the masses. This film has a fantastic 1970's feel and the imaginative use of locations (mainly parts of the Olympic Village in Munich and BMW HQ) make it a great film to look at. The 1970's was full of distopian science fiction, but this is the best by a mile.

Basically - The corporations try to persuade Jonathan E (James Caan) to give up the game as no one man can be bigger than the game

Best Bit - The final frozen shot, set to Toccata by Bach

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