The Sci-fi Movie to Beat this Century?

@gaff: When you say "did you just go to Wikipedia and pick 30 titles", are you asking did I go to Wikipedia? No, I just googled sci-fi releases since 2001. Did I pick 30 randomly? No, I picked and condensed it to what I felt was a pretty strong list but I wish I made it shorter. Or are you also arguing about what constitutes as sci-fi? I see the genre more broadly. Some films deal with science more explicitly than others, some less so and that's ok. It's up to you how important that is in answering the topic.

@charlie_victor_bravo: Children of Men is widely considered sci-fi, I've seen it on countless "best sci-fi" lists. There are different types of sci-fi including dystopian sci-fi, so something like Children of Men, V for Vendetta, or Snowpiercer. The Twilight Zone often explored situations like that. Laser swords or cyborgs aren't necessarily needed to be sci-fi. Children of Men is a what if situation set in the future where their problem is science based (biology) there is also some advanced tech, it's just subtle.

Fury Road and Children of Men aren't sci fi. None of the others I've seen on that list are very good. So I'm gonna abstain.

I don't think Mad Max Fury Road is sci-fi at all, it's more of a straight up action/thriller with a post-apocalyptic theme and mutants. That said I would pick Fury Road as the best movie out of that list.

Y'all motherfuckers who didn't vote Primer or Upstream Color need to get the fuck out!

Looper was fantastic. I was pretty close to giving the nod to Inception.

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
2. Hard to Be a God
3. 2046
4. The Girl Who Leapt Through Tme
5. Primer

@drbroel: wow Hard to be a God? That is some “movie” or rather an art piece stretched out beyond two hours. Conceptually fascinating.

Nah. Post apocalypse.

I've always thought of post apocalyptic as a sub-genre of sci-fi.

I think of it as there are top level genre's like, Thrillers, Horror, Romance, Action, Fantasy, Sci-fi, Comedy, etc.

And then sub-genres in those: Slasher Horror (Halloween) vs. Paranormal Horror (The Exorcist).

Post Apocalyptic Sci Fi (Mad Max) vs. Time Travel Sci Fi (Primer)

The best movie on the list is far and away Eternal Sunshine, but I don't find it a sci-fi movie *to beat*, rather a great innovative film in general. Children of Men is probably the best choice I could think of in terms of being well rounded in impact spectacle and meaningfulness, but I like the more Hollywood answers better. I think I'll stick with Inception, not my favorite movie of the list but the first movie I think of when I think of "modern sci-fi." Minority Report's close in that same regard.

Midnight Special's a cool movie not mentioned on this list. Maybe not one to beat, but just a shout-out.

Also, no Star Wars??

@humanity said:

Super happy to see someone else throw it into this mix!

Having not seen Bladerunner yet, I'd probably go with Interstellar and/or The Martian, both of which are oddly not on the list, and some choices are not sci-fi imo. BTW, just got season two of The Expanse on Blu-ray. Never was able to catch it on the sci-fi channel.

@drbroel: thing is, Primer is literally based in science, the movie is about science. Mad Max is set in the future but it has nothing to do with science; it’s post-apocalyptic action. True science fiction needs some element of science as it’s basis, not just being placed in the future. So if Mad Max included a bunch of crazy future tech, that would make it science fiction.

Inception, but Interstellar is the really glaring omission

Some of my favorite films are on this list, so that makes it tough. Eternal Sunshine and Her are on my all-time top 5-- I voted for the former. I wouldn't have classified those as sci-fi beforehand, though.

They are absolutely sci-fi, just not in the traditional sense. They both center around fictionalized tech, which fits the genre. They're romances first, but they hinge upon the tech.

That being said, some of the stuff mentioned in this thread is stuff that I wouldn't classify as sci-fi. Unless you count giant milk farms, Mad Max doesn't play here. I also don't recall anything too science fiction-y about V for Vendetta (though I tuned out very early in the film). Dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction is not inherently sci-fi. That's its own thing. A Clockwork Orange is dystopian, hell it even has some weird psychology/tech going on, but I don't know that anyone would classify it as sci-fi.

Predestination

I don't think sci-fi needs "science", it just needs to be meta-physically grounded in a reality bound by science. Contrasting with the fantasy genre which has no such restriction. There is no science to the "flux compactor" but in the movie's reality, it is explained as science. If it was explained as being powered by some magic amulet, then it would cease to be sci-fi.

I think people are confusing the broader genre of sci-fi with the more specific "hard science fiction" which does require a foundation of actual science.

Dystopian fiction meets the broader sci-fi genre as long as it is version of the world or society that is not our own. And the meta-physics of this reality is still bound by science. Mad max meets this criteria. As does I think every other movie on this list.

By this same logic Star Wars isn't sci-fi. The meta-physics of Star Wars aren't bound by science.

I voted for Paprika since it's the only movie on the list I want to watch again.
Also it's really, really good.

I voted Inception I find dreams fascinating and this movie really did a great job making you feel like you where actually watching one also that soundtrack so good.

Side note: This was the last movie I ever rented at Blockbuster. :(

Well I fucked up, I voted for Paprika because of all the movies listed I had the most positive thoughts come to mind when I saw it, also I still have that soundtrack on my phone ready to go whenever. But then after voting I looked over the list again and saw the girl who kept through time, would have voted for that if I had seen it first time round.