Sunday, March 25, 2007

the Great Science Fiction Movie Poll

Update, April 23: We're into the final round of voting.

Update, April 1: Voting is now closed on this first round. Go here for the second round of voting.

Update: After I posted this, I realized that the format was unwieldy. It was a big hassle to vote in 16 separate polls to come up with favorite movies. Furthermore, there were some really tough choices to be made between some of the movies in several of the individual polls in this first round of voting. So, I have reworked the poll. Now, instead of picking one movie out of a group of 8, you just put a checkmark beside the titles of up to 25 of your favorite science fiction movies, and only have to hit the Submit button once. The new poll closes at 5pm MDT on Sunday, April 1st (2300 GMT). Sorry to those few people who took the time to vote in my unwieldy first attempt at this poll. The scores have all been reset, and you can all vote again.

I kept on thinking of great science fiction movies that I should have put in the list the other day, lots of them. And, Dan Schrimpsher asked me if I was on crack, for not putting Serenity at the top of the list (I'm not). Well, I figure that this is the sort of thing that calls for a poll. I searched through the Science Fiction category on the Internet Movie Database, and out of the thousands of titles there I selected 134 movies. Out of the list below, click on as many as 25 of your favorite science fiction movies.

The polling software allows only one vote per poll per IP address, so if you really really want a particular movie to make it to the next round, then tell your friends about this poll so that they can vote too. The more people who vote, the better the results will be.

Next week, I will make up a new set of polls, with only the top-scoring 16 or 32 movies (I haven't decided yet) from this poll. I'm leaning towards making this a playoff format starting next week. So, by the end of April or so, we should have the top science fiction movie, as voted by you, the Robot Guy readers.

Sci-Fi Movies, Round 1
Pick Up To 25 Favorites From The List
20000 Leagues Under the Sea
2001: A Space Odyssey
28 Days Later…
A Clockwork Orange
Alien
Alien 3
Alien Nation
Aliens
Altered States
Armageddon
Back to the Future
Back to the Future II
Back to the Future III
Barbarella
Battlefield Earth
Battlestar Galactica (miniseries)
Bicentennial Man
Blade Runner
Brazil
Bride of Frankenstein
Capricorn One
Children of Men
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Coneheads
Cyborg
Dark Star
Deep Impact
Delicatessen
Demolition Man
Destination Moon
Donnie Darko
Earth Girls Are Easy
Enemy Mine
Escape from New York
ET the Extra-Terrestrial
Fail-Safe
Fantastic Four
Forbidden Planet
Frankenstein
Gattaca
Hackers
I, Robot
Independence Day
Innerspace
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Johnny Mnemonic
Jurassic Park
King Kong
K-PAX
Logan's Run
Mad Max
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Mars Attacks!
Men In Black
Men in Black II
Metropolis
Minority Report
Moonraker
My Stepmother Is An Alien
Night of the Living Dead
Nineteen Eighty Four
Outland
Planet of the Apes
Predator
Robocop
Rollerball
Scanners
Serenity
Short Circuit
Silent Running
Slaughterhouse-Five
Sleeper
Sneakers
Solyaris
Spaceballs
SpaceCamp
Species
Spiderman
Spiderman 2
Stalker
Star Trek the motion picture
Star Trek II - the Wrath of Khan
Star Trek III - the Search for Spock
Star Trek IV - the Voyage Home
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek: Generations
Star Trek: Insurrection
Star Trek: Nemesis
Star Wars I - The Phantom Menace
Star Wars II - Attack of the Clones
Star Wars III - Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars IV - A New Hope
Star Wars V - The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars VI - Return of the Jedi
Stargate
Starman
Starship Troopers
Superman
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
The Abyss
The Andromeda Strain
The Blob
The Boys from Brazil
The Day of the Triffids
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Fifth Element
The Fly
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Holy Mountain
The Incredibles
The Invisible Man
The Iron Giant
The Last Starfighter
The Matrix
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
The Road Warrior
The Running Man
The Terminator
The Thing
The Truman Show
Total Recall
Treasure Planet
Tremors
Tron
Twelve Monkeys
V for Vendetta
War Games
War of the Worlds
X2
X-men
Young Frankenstein

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

No Galaxy Quest. That movie was a hoot.

Anonymous said...

What's this Solyaris movie? I've heard of Solaris, but Solyaris?

And is Fail Safe a science fiction film? It seems more like a fictional war film to me.

PJ said...

Mark I noted "no GalaxyQuest"; I'd like to note the absence of Colossus: the Forbin project, the 1970 human-versus-computer story directed by Joseph Sargent, starring Eric Braeden and Susan Clarke. And how about Fantastic Voyage?

For certain titles, the specific version matters. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is great in either version, but with a film like King Kong, it matters whether I'm voting for 1933, 1976, or 2005.

Of course, when you go from a cast of thousands to a "short list" of some ten dozen, certainly some films will be left out. I'm glad I found your site, and I'm looking forward to the next rounds of the poll.

Anonymous said...

Fantastic Voyage? You know, the one with Raquel Welch, based on the Arthur C. Clarke story?

And what about Omega Man? The one with Charlton Heston that was so ably parodied by the Simpsons?

Anonymous said...

I know that you wanted to keep the list down to a manageable size, but I think there are some great animated movies that got missed:
Titan AE
Ghost in the Shell
Appleseed
Macross Plus

and more...

Maybe you need a separate poll for great animated movies???

Ed said...

I knew there was bound to be movies that I missed. I looked through thousands of titles on the IMDb, and on the first pass I even missed one of my favorite scifi movies, Tron. So, no Galaxy Quest, no Fantastic Voyage, no Omega Man, etc, and sorry.

As far as films that have been remade, like King Kong or Frankenstein or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, assume that the version on the list is the one that you liked the most.

And I know that I didn't put a lot of animated movies on the list, but there are a few, like the Iron Giant and the Incredibles. If I was to do this list again I probably would have included Titan AE and Cowboy Bebop.

Solyaris is spelled the way it is listed in the IMDb.

Anonymous said...

number or top 25 rating would be more fun. i liked many of these but to include them with blade runner or close encounters or star wars IV… seems rather a strain