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December book club canceled. Short stories instead!
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Their list:
15 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
14 Interstellar (2014)
13 Gattaca (1997)
12 Solaris (1972)
11 Ex Machina (2015)
10 Coherence (2013)
9 Sunshine (2007)
8 Primer (2004)
7 Stalker (1979)
6 Gravity (2013)
5 THX 1138 (1971)
4 Ad Astra (2019)
3 Contact (1997)
2 The Martian (2015)
1 Blade Runner (1982)
doesn't contain Arrival (2016) wtf.
Doesn’t contain Moon, 12 Monkeys, The Arrival, Alien, District 9… there are quite a few movies I would out ahead of Ad Astra and Sunshine at the very least. And possibly Gravity and Solaris too. Also, listing 2001 in 15th place???
doesn’t contain Arrival (2016) wtf
I agree, that was one of the most thought provoking scifi films I’ve seen in a long time.
Great movie, but I'm not sure it's considered "hard SF." There's no real basis to anchor much of the science in it.
I'd say the same thing about "Sunshine" and "Interstellar".
Some movies I might consider including, in no particular order:
Both the book and the screenwriting required the invention of a form of alien linguistics which recurs in the plot. The film uses a script designed by the artist Martine Bertrand (wife of the production designer Patrice Vermette), based on scriptwriter Heisserer's original concept. Computer scientists Stephen and Christopher Wolfram analyzed it to provide the basis for Banks's work in the film.[32][33] Their works are summarized in a GitHub repository.[34] Three linguists from McGill University were consulted. The sound files for the alien language were created with consultation from Morgan Sonderegger, a phonetics expert. Lisa Travis was consulted for set design during the construction of the scientist's workplaces. Jessica Coon, a Canada Research Chair in Syntax and Indigenous Languages, was consulted for her linguistics expertise during the review of the script.[35]
If you're trying to say that the fact that they invented a realistic language for the film makes it hard SF, I think that's quite a stretch. What's the basis for
?spoiler
a language changing a human's concept of time and allowing them to remember the future
Sure, good point, I think of the movie Arrival as two parts:
For most of the movie, a scientist is struggling with a novel interesting scientific problem with guidance from subject matter experts who have established environmental knowledge but not theoretical insight, with a great deal of interference from funders, with inter-team rivalries and a collaborator / competitor tension with similar teams around the world. The problem in question is based on linguistics with the type of thoroughness that is never shown on screen and rarely in print SF. (Compare it to the "Shaka when the walls fell" episode of TNG. I like that episode! But it's cartoony by comparison.) So both the practice and the principle of the research shown has a scientific basis, and if the movie had ended with the lead scientist solving the problem then I think we'd all agree it's Hard SF. However, we also have the last part of the film.
You question the scientific plausibility of the last part of the film. Regarding the story the film is based on, apparently:
In the "Story Notes" section of Stories of Your Life and Others, Chiang writes that inspiration for "Story of Your Life" came from his fascination in the variational principle in physics. -source
but I don't know enough to judge that and though it was kind of uplifting, the last part of the film was qualitatively different from the first, and I agree seems a lot less "Hard SF".
To recap, I argue that at least the first part (a majority?) of the movie is Hard SF. Now the question is: does the last part disqualify it from a) being on this list and b) being Hard SF? Regarding a), the authors of the list say "Contact is hard sci-fi by association because it's not a very realistic film" so they are taking a very forgiving definition of Hard SF. Therefore I stand by my assertion that Arrival is qualified to be on that list. By virtue of the quality with which the first part of the movie proceeds, I argue that it also deserves to be on that list. Regarding b) whether Arrival is Hard SF beyond the definition used by that list I am less certain.
I'm with you on the first part, but the fact that the whole conclusion to the story - the solution to the mystery - ends up being as close to fantasy as to SF to me makes it not a hard SF film. But we're talking about terms for things that exist on a spectrum, not crisply defined black and white. I don't begrudge your take on it, I just feel differently.
I think there is a large gap between Contact and Arrival. Contact involves creating a giant machine that allows ftl communication. Arrival involves the idea that we are born with our neurons already physically imprinted with every memory we will ever save. This is already known to be wrong because we have observed change in neurons.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, though decades old & sounding like it’s from Star Trek, is the basis, from actual linguists. Highly implausible for humans & long outdated, but as the film’s linguist consultant quips, “for aliens, all bets are off.”
Doesn't contain The Arrival either. Or Moon, or Alien or Twelve Monkeys… Basically there are a lot of more deserving candidates then Gravity, Ad Astra and Sunshine.
Conspicuous in its absence: anything animated, like Ghost in the Shell (1995), which I'd argue is harder than quite a few things on this list.
Haven't heard of half of them. And no Alien? What silliness.
Strongly agree! A sci fi movie list with no “Arrival” is … DOA.
Gravity is on this list? That movie had the most ridiculous physics.
And a ghost
Gravity and Ad Astra don't belong on this list. Also they suck.
I hate Ad Astra so much. I was so hyped for it and then almost left the theater when we were watching it.
Gravity is not too terrible. Rewatched it recently. It’s a fun watch the first time but it’s too shallow for subsequent views.
Gravity is not bad IMHO, but it lost its hard sci fi cred ::: spoiler with the Sixth Sense shenanigans ::: .
That site is awful. Has a nice little "Accept all" button for its popup, but you gotta go through thousand partners it sells your data to in order to even try to reject.
This is some serious malicious intent shit.
1506 partners. Insane.
I enjoyed Big Hero 6 but one of the top defining “hard” sci fi movies of all time, in the same list as Metropolis?? All because of its supposed sophistication in portraying AI? “AI is good for once!” Uhhh it’s totally a case of green light means good robot and red light means evil robot. Cute movie but this list is hot garbage.
I know Internet lists and opinions and all that, but I'm sorry but any list that puts 2001 behind Interstellar is one to ignore, at least the rankings.
All good movies on the list, though.
2001 is so hard to watch. I've started so many times but keep getting distracted. Interstellar, while not perfect, kept my interest better.
The long, slow scenes in 2001 are fairly unique. Unlike long scenes filled with action like you get in, say, Children of Men, the long slow scenes in 2001 - the space shuttle dockong, the moon landing, the scene at TMA-1 excavation sites, not much is happening, or if it is, you understand whats happening fairly quickly. I like them personally, and I compare them to being on an airplane waiting to taxi - inherently boring with nothing to do, but unique and exciting for some and being exposed to all sorts of interesting things out the window like luggage carts, pushback tractors, other jets milling around. Boring, but fascinating. Its a very different style from modern fast-paced films though.
This is just a SciFi Movie list rather than a hard SciFi one.
I agree that The Martian is hard SciFi tho.
Solid first few, then it went to kid’s films? Really not impressed by the list at all, like the furthest they reached back was Blade Runner and only mentioned it because it’s popular, not because it was a genre defining film.
Blade Runner absolutely brought cyberpunk to the big screen, it was absolutely genre defining for a lot of people. Prior it was just Neuromancer that imagined it.
Plus they had "Metropolis" from 1927, did you read the whole list? Lol
District 9? Thoughts welcome
Yeah that's a good add
Really excited to see Coherence on a list with so many other greats. It’s a great thriller movie and one of my favorites to watch with others. Provokes fun conversation about “what would you do in that situation?”
I liked its portrayal of “how would I outsmart myself, an identical me that’s also trying to outsmart me back?”
Watching 7 people all try to do that together makes for a lot of interesting drama, and shakes out much that they’d hoped to hide about themselves. In fact that’s exactly how some of the characters try to outsmart themselves: by going for that jugular vein of deep dark secrets no one knows. Fucking brutal.
And all that would be impossible to portray without sci-fi. This movie’s vehicle for the sci-fi elements is dumb as rocks: a comet passes overhead and fractures quantum spacetime. Wut? It’s not an important point but damn, at least make it sound like you tried.
No Europa Report, probably the hardest of sci-fi movies ever (~9.5 on Mohs scale)? Most movies on that list are somewhere around 5...6 on the Mohs scale, with some (GATTACA, 2001, Ex Machina) around 7...8 and only Martian at 9. Sunshine, Stalker and Coherence are not hard scifi at all, ~2...3.
Sweet, I added Solaris and Stalker to my list of movies to watch. Still need to see Primer at some point too.
Thanks for sharing this.
What an interesting list. I am very surprised at how many of these I've never heard of and how good those look.
I own some of these but I think I'll try to buy the rest.
I had the same reaction: the ones I've seen are excellent, but some I've never heard of, so I've got some things to watch!