Your top 5 sci-fi movies (and why)

[Paul Farquhar]

The point is that doing something as a job is massively different from doing something as a hobby

No, it isn't. A hobby is just a job that you do to please yourself. And you don't need to be particularly "wealthy" to choose your job, and find something that is rewarding and satisfying. I was a teacher, that's not exactly a well paid job, and often it wasn't pleasurable, but I did it for the satisfaction of making a contribution to society, not for the (negligible) money. And now I'm retired, finding ways to usefully contribute is the challenge I face. Of course, being grindingly poor restricts your choices, as does a lack of education, place of birth, and many other situations. But you don't need to be one of the super rich in order to do a job that you find satisfying, and/or enjoyable.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think this applies to an awful lot of internet theories about movies or books, they rarely survive contact with whatever they're about. I'm having a hard time imagining a person watching Wall-E, looking at the humans, and going 'yeah that looks like paradise to me'.

The humans in Wall-E have nothing to do apart from sit around and wait to die. Which we can assume won't take long since they are all massively overweight. Of course, they might be like the Eloi in the Time Machine, and they are overweight because they are going to become food. But without Morlocks, and in a closed system with out access to additional biomatter, the Wall-E humans are clearly cattle who are eating themselves.

Of course, the whole point of the Time Machine is that a divided society is bad for everyone. The healthy place to be is in the middle.

 

[Ryujin]

No, it isn't. A hobby is just a job that you do to please yourself. And you don't need to be particularly "wealthy" to choose your job, and find something that is rewarding and satisfying. I was a teacher, that's not exactly a well paid job, and often it wasn't pleasurable, but I did it for the satisfaction of making a contribution to society, not for the (negligible) money. And now I'm retired, finding ways to usefully contribute is the challenge I face. Of course, being grindingly poor restricts your choices, as does a lack of education, place of birth, and many other situations. But you don't need to be one of the super rich in order to do a job that you find satisfying, and/or enjoyable.

I'm going to disagree here, but from a slightly different angle. I have several hobbies that I do for pleasure, that would be at least partially spoiled by doing them for income, but people keep telling me to set up an Etsy shop and take commissions. I've done a couple of commission jobs for chainmail jewelry and leatherwork, but I'm very selective about who I do them for. When you do something for pay you're introducing time pressure and the tastes of someone else into the equation. The wrong person can detract quite heavily from the enjoyment you get from doing that work. Spend any time in customer service and you learn that lesson, hard.

 

[Bohandas]

The humans in Wall-E have nothing to do apart from sit around and wait to die.

They've got activities there. "let's hover over to the driving range and hit a few virtual balls into space"

And to me the conversation that follows trying to decide on an alternative could easily imply too many things to choose from to do

 

[Paul Farquhar]

They've got activities there. "let's hover over to the driving range and hit a few virtual balls into space"

And to me the conversation that follows trying to decide on an alternative could easily imply too many things to choose from to do

What is being depicted is apathy. No one cares what they do, because it has no meaning. So they choose to do nothing.

 

[Bohandas]

that's a false dichotomy. they wouldn't care if they were working either. at least not in a positive way. at least not if you consider stress a form of caring about things. Which I guess it could be, but never in the sense that you're implying. and that in turn is a false equivalence; apples to oranges

 

[TheHand]

I found this question hard to answer, but in this moment of time here’s what I have:

1 - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This has everything I want from a science fiction movie. I will watch this anytime it’s on. Even though Spock’s sacrifice is undone in the next movie, the final scene of him and Kirk is just full of pathos.

2 - Terminator 2. I love movies with 2 “monsters” clashing, and T2 is hands down my favorite action movie of all time. Arnie being lowered into the steel gets me every time.

3 - Star Wars (the original). I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, it’s kind of a mixed bag for me, but I do love Star Wars when it’s done well. While I think Empire is the best movie, I’m listing “Star Wars” since it was the one that kicked off the franchise.

4 - 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s slow, ponderous, and at times surreal, but I love it. To me it’s elevated above a standard film into art.

5 - Godzilla Minus One. I’m a life long Godzilla fan, having fallen in love with the Kaiju genre at a very young age. For me, G-1 is the best movie in the entire line by a long shot, and the only one where I rooted for the humans over the monster.

 

[Ryujin]

5 - Godzilla Minus One. I’m a life long Godzilla fan, having fallen in love with the Kaiju genre at a very young age. For me, G-1 is the best movie in the entire line by a long shot, and the only one where I rooted for the humans over the monster.

Same. I was introduced to Kaiju, in 1969, by a friend who was a recent immigrant from Japan. We watched "Ultraman" on a US VHF station. He showed me his hundreds of magazines, that I couldn't read, while he translated the articles for me. He showed me the toys he had, the likes of which simply didn't exist here at the time. It stated a lifelong love of the monsters.