The Last Good Sci-fi Film Ever Made

[Blenton]

Yup. Matrix lost me during the prologue. "With the skies blackened, the machines had no power..."

The machines ran on solar power believe it or not. When they blackened the skies to try and cut their power off the machines turned to people for power. And yes it sounds like a silly idea, the infrastructure required for the matrix, housing of people and maintenance just to extract 1.5 volts from the brain but without it there is no movie.

 

[JaredJames]

What's stupid is that the Earth system can interface with the alien system.

Now that I agree with!

 

[JaredJames]

Honestly I think the new BSG is the most realistic show on television. Of any genre. Despite being a physicist I'm not the type who obsesses or feels that a show/movie is ruined by scientific inaccuracies but the world of BSG is so realistic on a human level. You've got leaders who actually make some really bad mistakes. You've got the death of democracy in the face of adversity and politicians exploiting people's superstition to stay in power. Self-absorbed "revolutionaries", a military that's really bad at policing, a panicky reactionary public. Water shortages, labour strikes, cover-ups, military coups, a sensationalist press, etc. I think it's a fantastic show on both a production level (excellent cinematography) and an intellectual level (I mean in the first episode a massive attack eliminates most of the leadership and like the 30th person in line, the minister of education, assumes the presidency but the military resists and attempts to assume command. The second I saw that I knew I was watching what most TV shows should be).

I agree, BSG reimagined series was a brilliant show, the most realistic I've seen in terms of everything you listed above. As I said in another thread, it's the noises you hear during battles that I like (as if you are only hearing the guns firing through the hull of the ship).

 

[JaredJames]

Amen to that, the matrix was a fantastic movie (can't say the same for the sequels). Unfortunately, if you're going to let scientific inaccuracy ruin a movie for you then there just really aren't ANY movies out there that are both good and accurate. Movies like Sunshine and Solaris that try to be accurate, IMHO, are both really lame. Now I certainly think it is very possible to make a sci-fi movie that is both good AND accurate however, I can't really think of any examples where it's actually been done.

You got to agree though, the OST to sunshine was awesome. Some good soundtracks to bad movies.

Transformers, Armageddon, Sunshine, Last Samurai, all in my opinion good films with superb soundtracks.

 

[octelcogopod]

I just want to say about realism in scifi..
I don't think there's any difference in types of realism.
I think that walking in space without a suit is the same type of realism as loading your consciousness into a matrix or AI.

I think it all comes down to how much the audience knows about the science behind it, and how much they are willing to drop their beliefs.
A human in space without a suit will die, this is something most people KNOW as a FACT.
Loading your consciousness into a matrix is just as unrealistic, because we have no technology whatsoever to do this or any kind of sign that we will.
We simply believe it might be true because it's not taken as a solid fact yet.

 

[Blenton]

Putting man on the moon didn't seem realistic for a long time...

 

[JaredJames]

I just want to say about realism in scifi..
I don't think there's any difference in types of realism.
I think that walking in space without a suit is the same type of realism as loading your consciousness into a matrix or AI.

I think it all comes down to how much the audience knows about the science behind it, and how much they are willing to drop their beliefs.
A human in space without a suit will die, this is something most people KNOW as a FACT.
Loading your consciousness into a matrix is just as unrealistic, because we have no technology whatsoever to do this or any kind of sign that we will.
We simply believe it might be true because it's not taken as a solid fact yet.

I totally agree and it's basically what I was trying to say in a previous post with the whole "to the layman it's plausible" thing.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yup. Matrix lost me during the prologue. "With the skies blackened, the machines had no power..."

But it got me back. Premise aside, it really was a good movie.

I didn't like The Matrix. It was just two hours of special effects. Bleh!

I liked it better the first time when Descartes did it.

 

[leroyjenkens]

I just want to say about realism in scifi..
I don't think there's any difference in types of realism.
I think that walking in space without a suit is the same type of realism as loading your consciousness into a matrix or AI.

I think it all comes down to how much the audience knows about the science behind it, and how much they are willing to drop their beliefs.
A human in space without a suit will die, this is something most people KNOW as a FACT.
Loading your consciousness into a matrix is just as unrealistic, because we have no technology whatsoever to do this or any kind of sign that we will.
We simply believe it might be true because it's not taken as a solid fact yet.

The difference is one day we may be able to do something like that. However, walking in space, just as you are, without any apparatus, without dying, is something that's never going to change.

 

[Topher925]

I didn't like The Matrix. It was just two hours of special effects. Bleh!

I liked it better the first time when Descartes did it.

There was a lot more to the Matrix than just special effects. True, Kiano Reeves and his lame kung-fu did dull the movie a bit but the theme is still there. It introduced the concept of reality and infinite recursion to a lot people who weren't ..."open minded" enough to be able to discover these things on their own or understand the philosophy of Descartes. This is a big deal when you consider that over 90% of the people in the US are religious. There were a lot of movies like Dark City that have tried to do this before but just didn't seem to capture peoples attention. The Matrix had a plot and cast that did.

And as mentioned before, the Matrix didn't steal anything from Ghost in the Shell. I believe some of the creators of Ghost in the Shell played in a big roll in the making of The Matrix.

 

[DaveC426913]

There were a lot of movies like Dark City that have tried to do this before

Truman's World - run by The Borg.