It is true, or at least arguable, that Star Wars had a sort of dumbing-down effect on the sci fi genre; though that's not to say that the original trilogy itself was dumbed down sci fi (if that makes sense). Prior to the original film, we had more 'hard' sci fi such as Soylent Green, Logan's Run, 1984 and the like. Star Wars did so well at the box office that producers - and more specifically studios - decided they wanted a piece of it themselves so begetting a whole slew of space operas. It's well known that the pilot script for what would have been a new Star Trek series was reworked into The Motion Picture as a result of someone at Paramount deciding they needed their own Star Wars, essentially saying "well, what have we got that we can use?"
I don't think I could choose which are my own favourite sci fi films, there have been so many of them and my tastes have changed over the years such that a film over which I raved at the time would probably not rate five minutes of time now. I do have a soft spot for some of the black and white classics of the fifties, particularly ones such as The Day The Earth Stood Still*, Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World, any of the Quatermass series (Quatermass and the Pit most notably and memorably), even the two Doctor Who adaptations starring Peter Cushing although I prefer their TV counterparts if given the choice.
2001 (and to a lesser extent its sequel 2010, though for personal reasons I've gone off it more than somewhat), the original Planet of the Apes, all the Star Treks up to and including The Undiscovered Country, John Carpenter's The Thing, Alien and the film which spawned it called Dark Star (also by John Carpenter) - so many to choose from. Modern classics, if the word can properly be applied? I saw the new Tron and was only mildly impressed. In my opinion the original was much better and much more believable as an electronic world, even if it was a snailpaced retelling of The Wizard Of Oz. I've read an earlier draft of the Tron: Legacy script which was not only a different story, in my opinion it would have made a much better film. Similarly, I've read a few earlier drafts of what became Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and believe me, we got off lightly; it could have been a lot worse (in one, Indy spends almost the first hour, after accusations of being a communist sympathiser, getting drunk, smashing up his own museum and stealing the artifacts. Later he gets eaten by a snake about the size of a bus.)
Anyway, this is just a sample of my favourite sci fi films and views of same. There's bound to be tons more that I've missed.
*Apparently, the director Robert Wise (I believe) said that a more appropriate title would have been The Day The Electricity Went Off For Half An Hour.
I don't think I could choose which are my own favourite sci fi films, there have been so many of them and my tastes have changed over the years such that a film over which I raved at the time would probably not rate five minutes of time now. I do have a soft spot for some of the black and white classics of the fifties, particularly ones such as The Day The Earth Stood Still*, Howard Hawks' The Thing From Another World, any of the Quatermass series (Quatermass and the Pit most notably and memorably), even the two Doctor Who adaptations starring Peter Cushing although I prefer their TV counterparts if given the choice.
2001 (and to a lesser extent its sequel 2010, though for personal reasons I've gone off it more than somewhat), the original Planet of the Apes, all the Star Treks up to and including The Undiscovered Country, John Carpenter's The Thing, Alien and the film which spawned it called Dark Star (also by John Carpenter) - so many to choose from. Modern classics, if the word can properly be applied? I saw the new Tron and was only mildly impressed. In my opinion the original was much better and much more believable as an electronic world, even if it was a snailpaced retelling of The Wizard Of Oz. I've read an earlier draft of the Tron: Legacy script which was not only a different story, in my opinion it would have made a much better film. Similarly, I've read a few earlier drafts of what became Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and believe me, we got off lightly; it could have been a lot worse (in one, Indy spends almost the first hour, after accusations of being a communist sympathiser, getting drunk, smashing up his own museum and stealing the artifacts. Later he gets eaten by a snake about the size of a bus.)
Anyway, this is just a sample of my favourite sci fi films and views of same. There's bound to be tons more that I've missed.
*Apparently, the director Robert Wise (I believe) said that a more appropriate title would have been The Day The Electricity Went Off For Half An Hour.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
