Top 25 Sci-Fi movies/tv (1982-present)

[ColonelHardisson]

No. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is pure science fiction. In many ways it's more sci-fi than most of the rest of the list.

It just isn't set in space with lasers.

Exactly. Scifi is a genre of ideas, pure and simple, not just spaceships and aliens.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Gattaca definitely left an impression on me as well. It's an excellent science fiction film, as opposed to being a "sci-fi" movie.

Eternal Sunshine, another favorite movie of mine, treads a fine line between science fiction and being primarily an allegory with science fiction trappings.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

12. Back to the Future (1985) not sci-fi

It's absolutely scifi. Again, it's a genre of ideas, and the classic paradox idea of scifi, along with the notion of alternate parallel universes created by such paradoxes (and not the dystopia of the later films; the universe Marty leaves and the one he returns to in the first film may very well not be the same), is scifi at its best.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Part of me thinks Spielberg's "A.I." should be up there as well, even though it was overly long, a grand failed experiment, a beautiful disaster.

 

[Tewligan]

T
Iron Giant (not great but could find a spot)

Star Wars isn't scifi, but Iron Giant is? I'm not sure that a lovable cartoon robot with a heart of gold who befriends children and eats cars is really harder scifi than spaceships and blasters...

 

[Thanee]

It just isn't set in space with lasers.

That's it, probably it. Most folks expect space travel and such when thinking about sci-fi.

Bye
Thanee

 

[TheLe]

I'd also put Space: Above and Beyond on the list well above Battlestar Galactica.

`Le

 

[WayneLigon]

It's absolutely scifi. Again, it's a genre of ideas, and the classic paradox idea of scifi, along with the notion of alternate parallel universes created by such paradoxes (and not the dystopia of the later films; the universe Marty leaves and the one he returns to in the first film may very well not be the same), is scifi at its best.

Indeed, that was one of the big things I liked about Back to the Future. He leaves the present in the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall and knocks over one of the two trees when he exits in the '50's. When he goes back to the present, it's to the parking lot of Lone Pine Mall.

 

[WayneLigon]

Part of me thinks Spielberg's "A.I." should be up there as well, even though it was overly long, a grand failed experiment, a beautiful disaster.

That's why it shouldn't be up there It did fail, though the central premise is a wonderful one. They just have to ruin it with the mystical epilogue.

 

[Umbran]

Star Wars isn't scifi, but Iron Giant is? I'm not sure that a lovable cartoon robot with a heart of gold who befriends children and eats cars is really harder scifi than spaceships and blasters...

Iron Giant is, at its root, a tale about how people react to change in the form of a technology they don't understand or control.

Star Wars, at its root, is a tale about wizards vying for supremacy.