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Best Sci-fi Tournament - Round 3, Group F
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WOW! I got first comment AGAIN! LOL! LOL! LOL! :D
This is just as easy:
Aliens
The Empire Strikes Back
Take that shit to the bank! LOL!
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Goodbye Mr. Carpenter :(
Aliens
Day The Earth Stood Still
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Oh fuck! Aliens and The Thing appearing in the same fucking round as Empire?!? Without Empire, it'd be easy to vote for both of them, but as it is...along with Empire, vote has to go for The Thing. JUST. Both films have claustrophobia and paranoia at certain parts, but The Thing has just a little bit more. Plus: the most disgusting alien life form ever shown on film. In so many interesting ways! :lol:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
DoctorDodge
Oh fuck! Aliens and The Thing appearing in the same fucking round as Empire?!? Without Empire, it'd be easy to vote for both of them, but as it is...along with Empire, vote has to go for The Thing. JUST. Both films have claustrophobia and paranoia at certain parts, but The Thing has just a little bit more. Plus: the most disgusting alien life form ever shown on film. In so many interesting ways! :lol:
But isn't claustrophobia and paranoia elements for a Horror film rather than Sci-fi?
As a Sci-fi film, Aliens wins by a mile.......
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Not necessarily, in fact, those are elements I enjoy in a lot of genres. This is the interesting thing about science fiction - it's very, very hard to truly define what is and what isn't great science fiction based on that particular label alone.
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The Thing is barely science fiction. It's an alien life form but in the end it's a monster movie. The most scientific they got in The Thing was using petrie dishes lol
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Set on present day Earth, says nothing about present day society. Whereas Aliens goes further than its first chapter with the concealed plan to exploit the aliens. Clearly shows how corrupt and ruthlesss that future is.
Sorry, DD, but "nobody understands sci-fi anyway" is a fallacious argument.
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The Abyss should move all the way to the Finals along with The Day the Earth Stood Still. Two of the best sci-fi films of all tine, no contest.
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Gosh, this is tough. Aliens is one of the best sci-fi films ever so it gets one of my votes.
I'm not a total Star Wars fanboy like a lot of my generation, but it's hard to pass over The Empire Strikes Back. And The Thing is one of my all-time favorite films period--but, yeah, it's more of a horror.
But The Abyss has just something more to it than battles in space and Yoda. So, yeah, The Abyss gets my second vote (even though I actually like The Thing better).
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How does The Abyss have only a third of the votes so far? Shocking!
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Originally Posted by
divemaster
I'm not a total Star Wars fanboy like a lot of my generation, but it's hard to pass over The Empire Strikes Back.
Yup. Ep. V is one of those sequels that just got everything right. A natural progression of the previous chapter, a darker tone, higher stakes, better duels (Vader vs Luke on Cloud City is my favorite fight of the entire series), a startling revelation - it's a complete science fiction film.
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But wait. Can you explain this? Luke leaves Hoth, flies to Dagobah, finds Yoda, studies the Force, has vision, and flies back. Meanwhile, Han and Leia fly through asteroids to Cloud City and spend one night there.
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I call it, narrative contrivance! However if we go down that route, we could tumble the very pillars of cinema itself lol.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
fernandito
if we go down that route, we could tumble the very pillars of cinema itself lol.
LOL - Very good!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
pathoftheturtle
Set on present day Earth, says nothing about present day society. Whereas Aliens goes further than its first chapter with the concealed plan to exploit the aliens. Clearly shows how corrupt and ruthlesss that future is.
Sorry, DD, but "nobody understands sci-fi anyway" is a fallacious argument.
I wasn't saying that. Just in my experience, what's generally termed as 'science fiction' has an incredibly broad label - some films or stories focus on telling something about our society, some focus on hard edged science ideas and exploring those ideas as realisticially as possible, and some focus on just being awesome! Wasn't trying to be patronising, just keeping in mind that my 4 favourite science fiction series are Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Doctor Who are all broadly labelled as science fiction, and every single one is a radically different take on the genre.
Good points raised about Aliens and The Thing, anyway.
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And I'm not saying The Thing is not science fiction. I just agree it would be nice to have sci-fi reasons to vote for it. Thanks for clarifying your point, anyway.
P.S. Does anyone have better criticism of The Abyss than mine for ESB? Cause I may have to vote that way.
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The only criticism - and I use the term loosely - regarding The Abyss is that it wasn't very memorable... however that may have more to do with my mindset and expectations at the time I watched it rather than any perceived short comings. I'll need to watch it again soon even though it appears its number may be up...
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
DoctorDodge
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pathoftheturtle
Set on present day Earth, says nothing about present day society. Whereas Aliens goes further than its first chapter with the concealed plan to exploit the aliens. Clearly shows how corrupt and ruthlesss that future is.
Sorry, DD, but "nobody understands sci-fi anyway" is a fallacious argument.
I wasn't saying that. Just in my experience, what's generally termed as 'science fiction' has an incredibly broad label - some films or stories focus on telling something about our society, some focus on hard edged science ideas and exploring those ideas as realisticially as possible, and some focus on just being awesome! Wasn't trying to be patronising, just keeping in mind that my 4 favourite science fiction series are Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Doctor Who are all broadly labelled as science fiction, and every single one is a radically different take on the genre.
Good points raised about Aliens and The Thing, anyway.
For the purposes of this tournament I choose what the film is trying to do most. The Thing is trying much harder to be scary than science fiction and even Aliens is trying harder to be action than science fiction and I won't be giving it my vote against more science fiction focused films.
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The Abyss should be right up there as a strong contender. I can't believe it's not doing better.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Heather19
The Abyss should be right up there as a strong contender. I can't believe it's not doing better.
Not against Aliens and The Empire Strikes Back, it shouldn't!
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Aliens is an action movie, I agree. But The Abyss is actual sci-fi. And it's one of my favorite movies if all-time, and it's certainly one of the best sci-fi movies of all time. How wasn't it memorable? It's got some of the first uses of CGI in history, it mostly takes place underwater (how many sci-fi movies do?), and the aliens are benevolent and unique. The scene of the descent into the abyss is exceptionally tense, even on rewatch after rewatch. It was recently restored in HD final and I watched it on Cinemax and had goosebumps same as back in '89. It's a tremendous film, easily Cameron's best, but since film is subjective I can understand that not everyone will have it impact them equally.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
T-Dogz_AK47
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Heather19
The Abyss should be right up there as a strong contender. I can't believe it's not doing better.
Not against
Aliens and
The Empire Strikes Back, it shouldn't!
Maybe not... but could I ask again how come you don't think so?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
T-Dogz_AK47
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Heather19
The Abyss should be right up there as a strong contender. I can't believe it's not doing better.
Not against
Aliens and
The Empire Strikes Back, it shouldn't!
I'd easily rank it above both of those films.
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This category has too many good films in it. I voted for Empire and Mad Max(in honesty, Aliens is probably the better sci fi film, but I just love the Mad Max movies too much), but it wasn't easy.
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The Thing is on every single "Best Sci-Fi Movies" list I could find online. It's also listed as Sci-Fi on every major movie website. The Thing is Sci-Fi.
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Sci-Fi in the loosest sense, because there is an alien in it. When I think of The Thing I think 'what a wicked horror movie' not 'what a wicked sci-fi film'. I'm not voting for the best movie to feature an alien or space or a robot when I vote, I'm voting for the best film that is first and foremost science fiction. If you were to have a checklist of all common things in a film to classify it as sci-fi The Thing would still only have 'alien' checked off. Love the thing but it's far more horror than sci-fi, not even close to a fifty-fifty split.
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Originally Posted by
Mattrick
Sci-Fi in the loosest sense, because there is an alien in it. When I think of The Thing I think 'what a wicked horror movie' not 'what a wicked sci-fi film'. I'm not voting for the best movie to feature an alien or space or a robot when I vote, I'm voting for the best film that is first and foremost science fiction. If you were to have a checklist of all common things in a film to classify it as sci-fi The Thing would still only have 'alien' checked off. Love the thing but it's far more horror than sci-fi, not even close to a fifty-fifty split.
Are you kidding me? The expedition force is scientists studying at a polar station and an alien and his craft are discovered. What more do you need?
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No, the alien and his craft are discovered at the Norwegian Base. The Plot of The Thing entails such little science considering it's a bunch of scientists in a remote outpost you wonder what they do out there at all. It's a monster movie that happens to have scientists and an Alien in it. While I don't think Mimic is too sci-fi heavy too, at least the monsters in the movie were generated by scientists trying to stop an epidemic that was killing the children of New York and deals with the hyper evolution of creatures they made and has more science fiction merit than The Thing does, but still is a monster movie above all else. Even Imdb has The Thing listed in this order: Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi...meaning they consider it more mystery than sci-fi; comparatively Alien is marked 'Horror, Sci-Fi' while Aliens is marked 'Action, Adventure, Sci-fi'. A mere sci-fi element is not enough for me to vote for them in this tournament, regardless how much I may love a film. I like The Thing more than Day The Earth Stood Stood but the latter is a better sci-fi movie so I voted for it.
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You're very difficult to please. Glad you aren't in my "Secret Santa"!! LOL
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Mike, could you at least cut&plaigarize some of the reasoning from those critics?
The Abyss is about scientists doing science, and the moral is we might find something wonderful.
If that is what The Thing is about, then the moral must be that we might find something awful.
BTW, I finally decided that I do believe that Gravity is sci-fi. It does not appear to say anything about the space program it features, but if you think about it, it really says that even if it is bad, it's better to go and try than to hide on Earth and never find out.
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If Alien, or Aliens win this contest outright, I am going to be so dissappointed.
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The quarter finals are going to be fucking nuts lol.
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Originally Posted by
pathoftheturtle
Mike, could you at least cut&plaigarize some of the reasoning from those critics?
I'm afraid I don't know what you're referring to.
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I think he's referring to your post up there^ about The Thing being on every sci fi list you could find.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
fernandito
I think he's referring to your post up there^ about The Thing being on every sci fi list you could find.
Oh, I'm not sure why he wrote "plagiarize" though. It makes me feel like he was implying that I plagiarize things I write. I'm probably taking it the wrong way.
Anyway, Path, I can't give you examples because many of the lists I speak of are lists I've read in the past. If you want to check for yourself, you can Google it just as easily as anybody else I would hope.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
Still Servant
Quote:
Originally Posted by
pathoftheturtle
Mike, could you at least cut&plaigarize some of the reasoning from those critics?
I'm afraid I don't know what you're referring to.
It's a play on words. The proper term is copy & paste. I'm saying it would be more informative to hear your thoughts on what that film contributes to the genre than accounting of experts who agree., and joking that sharing quotes some of them might have made on the subject could be easier.