Support NeoGAF

[Hawking Radiation]

Only movie to depict how a black hole would really appear like in real life. Well maybe it was like 80% accurate because we should have gotten this:

However the soundtrack, time dilation and story was all worth it in the end.

I do however prefer the initial draft of the script which can be found here and would have made the movie x10 better for me:

Interstellar: the 2008 script & its wildly different ending

 

[nkarafo]

I thought it was one of the lamest. They reduced the black hole awe into a sappy family/love situation. I know Contact gets hate for a similar feel ending but this was far worse.

I just wanted the science.

 

[Neolombax]

Its one of my favourites, not even sure what my favourite is. I enjoyed the plot, the acting was great too, had me teary at some scenes. Arrival is another great sci fi movie, enjoyed it very much. A lot of gaffers seem to suggest 2001 and Contact, I've never seen them before so I'm gonna give those a go. Cheers.

 

[ForAcademicPurposes]

I like the first half of the movie better than the second.

 

[ForAcademicPurposes]

Here's my hot take. Gattaca is a better Nolan sci-fi film that is not made by Nolan.

 

[Superkewl]

It's a good film but, as with most of Nolan's films, I could hardly hear half the dialogue. It's such a pretentious, self-indulgent way to make films. I know you think you're being artistic but I do need to actually follow the plot.

Pretty much. Where it lost me was with all that "love" bullshit.

 

[pramod]

BTW I was thinking of a movie the other day and was reminded of this thread.

I just want to say what a huge crime it is that no one mentioned The Fifth Element.

Sure it's not considered a "great" movie, but I think it ranks up there with Alien and Bladerunner in terms of depicting futuristic worlds and art direction.
In fact looking back I can't believe it didn't win an Oscar for visual effects. There hasn't been anything made since that comes close.

 

[gaming_again]

BTW I was thinking of a movie the other day and was reminded of this thread.

I just want to say what a huge crime it is that no one mentioned The Fifth Element.

Sure it's not considered a "great" movie, but I think it ranks up there with Alien and Bladerunner in terms of depicting futuristic worlds/art design.
In fact looking back I can't believe it didn't win an Oscar for visual effects. There hasn't been anything made since that comes close.

It basically predicted TikTok influencer style.

 

[Rentahamster]

It's the whole turning love into a magic power that just doesn't fit in the movie well

It's not supposed to be a literal magic power. It's an emotional metaphor to describe the human drive. You get the scientific explanation in the private conversation between Cooper and Mann.

 

[yet_another_alt]

I was going to drive by post about Contact being the best but at this point I think everyone's got the message already.

 

[Catphish]

Coherence is an incredibly underrated sci fi film.

I just watched it. Loved it.

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

Not sure about greatest and I don't think it matters but it sure was an incredibly affecting movie. I've seen it several times and the score combined with scenes of constant movement and the personal investment create a level of drama, in the good way I mean, that feels insanely engaging. I don't really know much about any of the science being discussed so I couldn't care less if it's accurate, it just looks and feels incredible imo.

And I still listen to the score on Spotify, the church organs just fucking rule.

 

[Any Questions]

I really enjoyed it. Watching gravity however in 3D when Sandra Bullock lands.... I felt the weight of it all. Amazing

 

[Thaedolus]

The fact they have little shuttles that can land and take off from planets without boosters kinda breaks the whole premise of the movie, but it’s still very entertaining and the soundtrack is GOAT tier

 

[Wildebeest]

Here's my hot take. Gattaca is a better Nolan sci-fi film that is not made by Nolan.

It isn't like a Nolan film at all because it is actually intelligent and deliberately makes sense.

 

[Corpsepyre]

Stalker, Solaris, Alien, 2001, Contact, The Incident, Gattaca, Moon, Event Horizon, The Man From Earth are some of my favourite sci-fi films, but Interstellar is a good honourable mention. If it wasn't for the needless exposition, it would have been up there.

 

[GMCamaro]

I rewatch Event Horizon from time to time. I only watched Interstellar once.

 

[nemiroff]

It's not my favorite but it's mostly pretty damn solid.

 

[kruis]

I think Spielberg's "Minority Report" and "Artificial Intelligence" are vastly underrated SF movies. I'd rate both of them much higher than Interstellar which I never considered a masterpiece (except for the soundtrack which is magnificent). And yes, I think Contact is better than Interstellar, too. Such a shame that Robert Zemeckis wasted the latter part of his directing career with crappy CGI movies.

 

[TerribleAtThisGame]

This thread reminded me to rewatch Arrival. I remember loving it but thinking "okay, I absolutely need to see this again now that I have the what happens out of the way".

 

[Cinco de Mayo]

check out this website: https://awesome-movies.life/?rank=sim&ix=2153

It scraped the plot of all films after 1976 from Wikipedia and recommends films based on plot similarities.

 

[bender]

I've tried to watch it a few times but always end up falling asleep. It joins Blade Runner in the list of great movies I can't make it through.

 

[mclaren777]

Interstellar wouldn't even make my top five sci-fi list.

I would easily put Edge of Tomorrow, Arrival, and Oblivion above it.

 

[Ecotic]

Its nonsensical plot ruins it for me. That's really the hallmark of Christopher Nolan movies, his movies don't make any coherent sense, but you assume it does, and you blame yourself for not being smart enough to understand it.

 

[Gamerfan81]

The movie was okay, but forgettable for me.

Excellent sci-fi films:

Robocop
Terminator 1&2
Matrix
Original Starwars Trilogy
Back to the Future 1&2
Gattaca
Starship Troopers
5th Element
12 Monkeys
Minority Report
2001 ASO
Alien
Aliens

 

[Days like these...]

Even High Life is better than Interstellar

 

[gaming_again]

Some of the latter takes in thread have me legit raging. I’m furious.

 

[West Texas CEO]

Interstellar wouldn't even make my top five sci-fi list.

I would easily put Edge of Tomorrow, Arrival, and Oblivion above it.

This has to be a troll post.

 

[mclaren777]

Are you not a fan of Tom Cruise?

I thoroughly enjoyed both of those movies.

 

[UltimaKilo]

Everything on earth was lame.

Whoa, reading through this thread and saw you posting. Welcome back to GAF?

 

[RJMacready73]

Dune takes a massive Sandworm sized dump all over it tbf, it's a decent warchable movie but it ain't no sci-fi classic

 

[What A Shame...]

I don't believe this movie would be held in such high esteem if it had another director's name attached to it. The Nolan fanbase will slap a 10 on anything he releases these days.

 

[Ulysses 31]

Not even close and I hope some day Mauler will make that multi-hour breakdown video why he thinks it's one of the worst(high budget) Sci-fi movies out there.

 

[Josemayuste]

It is, it's BSO alone is astounding, it's one of my favourite movies, no doubt, I love to come back every now and then and rewatch it. The central theme, a father and daughter's love for each other, it's simply beautiful and lovely depicted. There are many scenes that I will never forget. but that ending.. oh man..

 

[Hawking Radiation]

Here's my hot take. Gattaca is a better Nolan sci-fi film that is not made by Nolan.

I've yet to see this. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[Roronoa Zoro]

It has a couple good scenes and is more interesting than thrilling to me other than the docking and crying scenes

 

[Hawking Radiation]

The fact they have little shuttles that can land and take off from planets without boosters kinda breaks the whole premise of the movie, but it’s still very entertaining and the soundtrack is GOAT tier

Hmm interesting, I didn't think about that since one of the characters say that 'the gravity is punishing' on Millers planet and they take off in that tiny little space shuttle like you say to escape an oncoming wave. They took a few creative liberties in this movie. The mutli-dimensional tesseract inside the black hole being another.

 

[Coconutt]

Go watch Children of Men you'll thank me later

 

[diffusionx]

the best sci fi movie is 2001

 

[Thaedolus]

Hmm interesting, I didn't think about that since one of the characters say that 'the gravity is punishing' on Millers planet and they take off in that tiny little space shuttle like you say to escape an oncoming wave. They took a few creative liberties in this movie. The mutli-dimensional tesseract inside the black hole being another.

Yeah, I don’t mind a few creative liberties, I still think it’s a top tier movie despite what I’d say are some narrative breaking bugs.

That Hans Zimmer soundtrack on a nice sound system…few things match the kind of emotional response I get from it

 

[Nonehxc]

It's up there. Great acting, great writing, great cinematography, great score. And the science holds up very well relative to other science fiction out there.

wat

Not to push down both Nolanses work on the movie, which is all sorts of amazing and one of my fav sci- fi of all time, but Interstellar came, despite 'common knowledge', not from Nolan&Co, but from Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist, and Linda Obst, producer, which also collaborated 'Contact' and funnily were introduced by none other than Carl Sagan( one of Kip's bros together with Hawkins) way back on a blind date. It's based on Kip Thorne's body of work.

Kip Thorne fought with Nolan because Nolan stubbornly wanted peeps to go FTL. Kip Thorne said 'No, fuck you, that can't happen, REALLY CAN'T' for weeks until Nolan couldn't stand the Überchad gravity of his Supermassive Brain

He even wrote the theoretical equations for light traveling in a black hole around which the CGI software developers built the program that could interpret them and VOILÁ: you have the black hole, the gravitational lensing and the accretion disc CGI

Kip Thorne was awarded the Nobel of Physics a few years after Interstellar released for his work on LIGO and gravitational waves, which gave humanity the first direct observation of gravitational waves.

It's not just 'very well relative to others', it's THE BEST, period.

All others measure to Interstellar because it's the benchmark.

 

[Rentahamster]

wat

wat?

 

[NecrosaroIII]

Go watch Children of Men you'll thank me later

Everyone should see Children of Men.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

wat

Not to push down both Nolanses work on the movie, which is all sorts of amazing and one of my fav sci- fi of all time, but Interstellar came, despite 'common knowledge', not from Nolan&Co, but from Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist, and Linda Obst, producer, which also collaborated 'Contact' and funnily were introduced by none other than Carl Sagan( one of Kip's bros together with Hawkins) way back on a blind date. It's based on Kip Thorne's body of work.

Kip Thorne fought with Nolan because Nolan stubbornly wanted peeps to go FTL. Kip Thorne said 'No, fuck you, that can't happen, REALLY CAN'T' for weeks until Nolan couldn't stand the Überchad gravity of his Supermassive Brain

He even wrote the theoretical equations for light traveling in a black hole around which the CGI software developers built the program that could interpret them and VOILÁ: you have the black hole, the gravitational lensing and the accretion disc CGI

Kip Thorne was awarded the Nobel of Physics a few years after Interstellar released for his work on LIGO and gravitational waves, which gave humanity the first direct observation of gravitational waves.

It's not just 'very well relative to others', it's THE BEST, period.

All others measure to Interstellar because it's the benchmark.

Yeah Nolan changed a lot of what Interstellar was meant to be right down to how the black hole would actually appear on screen. I was most pissed off with that change. Nolan felt the look would be too confusing to the audience lol.

 

[Nonehxc]

Yeah Nolan changed a lot of what Interstellar was meant to be right down to how the black hole would actually appear on screen. I was most pissed off with that change. Nolan felt the look would be too confusing to the audience lol.

That was pretty good on his part, truth be told. He even told Kip he was up for any kind of science as long as it didn't collide with cinematography. You can't fault the man for converting the deep science of theoretical physics of Kip Thorne into something us jam brains could comprehend.

In the end, we got the best from both worlds.

 

[Days like these...]

Hardly

 

[FunkMiller]

Star Wars is still the best sci-fi movie ever made, and this is coming from someone who's never been that big a fan of the franchise.

Despite how terrible the whole thing is these days, the original film was a masterpiece of storytelling (the best example of the hero's journey there is, probably), the FX were incredibly good for their time, and the world building was as brilliant as it was economical.

 

[Days like these...]

Even that Robert Pattinson movie that was basically boning in outer space was better. I forget the name of it though

 

[Thaedolus]

Star Wars is still the best sci-fi movie ever made, and this is coming from someone who's never been that big a fan of the franchise.

Despite how terrible the whole thing is these days, the original film was a masterpiece of storytelling (the best example of the hero's journey there is, probably), the FX were incredibly good for their time, and the world building was as brilliant as it was economical.

Star Wars is better described as fantasy tho…

2001 is still probably the best actual sci-fi movie ever made tbh

 

[FunkMiller]

Star Wars is better described as fantasy tho…

2001 is still probably the best actual sci-fi movie ever made tbh

Nah. It's sci-fi... just very heavy on the 'fi' bit. It's too damned full of sci-fi tropes to not be considered part of that genre. In many ways it defined what 'sci-fi' is the culture and audience. It's fashionable to try and distance it, because of how awful the whole thing has become, and because it steers away from 'hard' sci-fi as much as possible. But it's as much sci-fi as any other movie of the genre. The term is very broad. You're right to say that it includes many fantasy tropes as well, but that was kind of Lucas's brilliance. He took those tropes and applied them in a fresh, exciting new way.

Personally for me the best sci-fi movie is a toss up between Blade Runner (noir detective story) and Alien (ghost house horror), but I can't deny that Star Wars is culturally at the top of the heap.