New Poll. Most "Groundbreaking" Sci Fi Film.

[20to20K]

personally i would have Blade Runner on the list somewhere as SCI-FI. Star Wars is basically Cowboys and Indians in Space.

I figured if I kept reading these posts I'd find one by RGA that I agree with!

[Hawkeye]

Have you all forgotten "Dark Star" ?? - John Carpenter's feature debut starring a cast of relative unknowns. Where else can you see an alien beachball? Groundbreaking? Well, maybe not. Side-splitting? Possibly!!

[MomurdA]

I always thought it was Americans vs British IN SPACE

[JoeE SP9]

Perhaps because I saw it first run on the big screen years ago I voted for Forbidden Planet. How could you go wrong with "The Tempest" in space. Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielson and Ann Francis. Throw in monsters from the Id and you have it all. Unlike most Sci Fi movie watchers I actually read SciFi novels and short stories. Therefore I know that Blade Runner was Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick and Total recall was I Can Get It For You Wholesale by the same author. The real problem is haveing read the novel or short story I know how inadaquate the transfer to film is when comparing it to the printed version. Battlefield Earth may be one of the worst movies ever but the book is extremely good. Starship Troopers and other Heinlein books had a lot to do with my life attitudes. Unfortunately only The Puppet Masters came out well as a movie. The real problem is that Hollywood writers for the most part have no idea what good science fiction is. The Star Wars movies are not particularly good science fiction. WWII in space with the force as the spirit of good is kind of juvenile. All in all the movies on the selection list were a good choice. All of them are in my collection. Those that were first published in print are also in my personal library which numbers about 3K plus books.

[Worf101]

Perhaps because I saw it first run on the big screen years ago I voted for Forbidden Planet. How could you go wrong with "The Tempest" in space. Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielson and Ann Francis. Throw in monsters from the Id and you have it all. Unlike most Sci Fi movie watchers I actually read SciFi novels and short stories. Therefore I know that Blade Runner was Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick and Total recall was I Can Get It For You Wholesale by the same author. The real problem is haveing read the novel or short story I know how inadaquate the transfer to film is when comparing it to the printed version. Battlefield Earth may be one of the worst movies ever but the book is extremely good. Starship Troopers and other Heinlein books had a lot to do with my life attitudes. Unfortunately only The Puppet Masters came out well as a movie. The real problem is that Hollywood writers for the most part have no idea what good science fiction is. The Star Wars movies are not particularly good science fiction. WWII in space with the force as the spirit of good is kind of juvenile. All in all the movies on the selection list were a good choice. All of them are in my collection. Those that were first published in print are also in my personal library which numbers about 3K plus books.

I've read Heinlein, Asimov, EE Doc Smith, LeQuin, Bradbury, Delaney and scores more that I could mention and you're right, Hollywood doesn't know how to make literate Science or Speculative Fiction. Doesn't keep them from trying though. I've read Starship Troopers many times and wish that some of the authors ideas about "citizenship" and how it's earned, were in use today...

Da Worfster

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

I voted for Star Wars just to make our resident klingon mad(Da first one damnit!). Chose Star Wars for several reason. It changed the way movies were made, It combined several styles of story telling together(western, SciFi, serial), sound became more important, and therefore theaters hade to upgrade their sound system.

The use of matte blocking, minatures, stop action motion techniques, puppets, and live action were used extensively as was early uses of blue screen technology.

Star Wars IMO was a breakthrough film.

[JoeE SP9]

I've read Heinlein, Asimov, EE Doc Smith, LeQuin, Bradbury, Delaney and scores more that I could mention and you're right, Hollywood doesn't know how to make literate Science or Speculative Fiction. Doesn't keep them from trying though. I've read Starship Troopers many times and wish that some of the authors ideas about "citizenship" and how it's earned, were in use today...

Da Worfster

I have performed my "service" and I vote regularly. I couldn't agree more about Heinlein's ideas concerning citizenship. I also like his ideas about crime and punishment.

[eisforelectronic]

Perhaps because I saw it first run on the big screen years ago I voted for Forbidden Planet. How could you go wrong with "The Tempest" in space. Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielson and Ann Francis. Throw in monsters from the Id and you have it all. Unlike most Sci Fi movie watchers I actually read SciFi novels and short stories. Therefore I know that Blade Runner was Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick and Total recall was I Can Get It For You Wholesale by the same author. The real problem is haveing read the novel or short story I know how inadaquate the transfer to film is when comparing it to the printed version. Battlefield Earth may be one of the worst movies ever but the book is extremely good. Starship Troopers and other Heinlein books had a lot to do with my life attitudes. Unfortunately only The Puppet Masters came out well as a movie. The real problem is that Hollywood writers for the most part have no idea what good science fiction is. The Star Wars movies are not particularly good science fiction. WWII in space with the force as the spirit of good is kind of juvenile. All in all the movies on the selection list were a good choice. All of them are in my collection. Those that were first published in print are also in my personal library which numbers about 3K plus books.

I too am a reader of SF books, although admittedly not much as of late. I for one believe movies and books do not translate well and should not be expected to. They are simply too different. A book takes one skilled indiviual to create it, a movie takes hundreds, sometimes thousands. You may take several hours or days to read a book, a movie is viewed in 90-300 minutes. A writer may spend his entire life on a single book or he may write hundreds, a movie has very specific time and money constraints. If a writer takes too long or the publisher decides to shelf a book, thousands of dollars may be lost. If the same happens to a studio, millions are lost.

Starship Troopers is really one of the best examples out there. I for one loved the book as a child and also enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Part of the reason I was able to enjoy the movie was lack of specific expectation. I do expect the basic events to be the same, but the details I expect to change to fit time, money and even artistic decision. So I expected Rico to join up right out of school and to eventually take over the Roughnecks, I could care less if Flores was male or female. I think the rare occasions when we do get a very accurate book to film adaption it is more attibuted to the original writing of the book rather than the screenwriting or directing. I think Tom Clancy's style of writing more closely resembles a movie, so less needs to be done to change it. A great deal of what's scary in a stephen King book ends up looking very silly on the big screen. But then again Tom Clancy writes about a lot of existing hardware and situations, Stephen King writes about the strange and supernatural.

Star Wars was never meant to be anything more than Juvenile, nobody calls Harry Potter that.

[shokhead]

Thats a joke right ,HP not juvenile.

[eisforelectronic]

Thats a joke right ,HP not juvenile.

Not that it's not, but that it's expected.

[Kam]

Not that it's not, but that it's expected.

Woh... woh woh woh WOH! Hold on....What??? Harry Potter is NOT juvenile?

[eisforelectronic]

Woh... woh woh woh WOH! Hold on....What??? Harry Potter is NOT juvenile?

uh oh, Did I just start something?

[Worf101]

I have performed my "service" and I vote regularly. I couldn't agree more about Heinlein's ideas concerning citizenship. I also like his ideas about crime and punishment.

I also did three years Regular Army and I've voted since 18. I agree with much of Heinlein's political and social premises as laid down in this book but I doubt if many others do. I got into a spirited debate in this forum about "service" after 911 when many an "armchair hussar" was calling for war everywhere on all fronts but neither they nor their children were ready to go themselves...

Da Worfster

[Worf101]

uh oh, Did I just start something?

SW was meant to be juvenile and most folks with a little bit of sense would call it anything BUT juvenile... HP on the other hand has never pretended to be anything BUT a juvenile exercise soooo no arguement.

Da Worfster

[eqm]

Technically, this is Juvenile.

[Kam]

SW was meant to be juvenile and most folks with a little bit of sense would call it anything BUT juvenile... HP on the other hand has never pretended to be anything BUT a juvenile exercise soooo no arguement.

Da Worfster

Woh woh woh woh woh! WOH! Worfster... c'mon... HP was juvenile? you mean... all that angst and tears i've shed over those movies... all the heartache and sleepless nights they have caused... all the pain... all the suffering... ok.. can't keep a straight face anymore... hehehe.
Lucas has always said he just wanted SW to excite the imagination, to not be anything but good rousing fun, although he did make allusions to the original coming out after a time of war, and ROTS coming out after/during a time of war.
Oh, and Starship Stroopers had inspired two friends of mine to join ROTC way back in college, they single handedly pointed to that book as why they wanted to join the military. And now another of Phillip K. Dick's novels is being turned into a movie, this time by Richard Linklater - "A Scanner Darkly" using his technology from Waking Life, the trailer at least looks rather amazing.