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In Reply to: Rico, I share your opinion that Forbidden Planet is an excellent film, but... posted by Audiophilander on January 23, 2004 at 08:55:53:
I love the genre too. I have to say Forbiden Planet is definitely one of my personal favorites. I enjoy Leslie Nielson when he played it straight. The fact that the story is a sci-fi re-write of The Tempest give the story weight and gravity. It had a spectacular post-war modern look and I used to work for the guy that did Robby the Robot's voice. Saw a juicy new print at a revival theater just a couple of years ago and it was wonderfully fresh and relevant.I still love the contemplative nature of 2001. Every time I watch it, I end up dwelling on it for many days afterward. Clockwork was sci-fi in its day, but as the world caught up to it's ugly vision of the future, it plays as pure social commentary today. Fascinating to watch It's genre evolve. Great film and I grant you, a much more entertaining watch than 2001, but 2001 just has that heady and surreal mystery about it unlike any other film ever made.
Blade Runner is definitely a classic as well. Syd Mead's production design was absolutely spectacular and the Scott's noirish lighting created a mood that closely paralleled Philip Dick's sad and alienating book. Sean Young, before her breakdown, just melts my heart in this movie.
I'd definitely add Brazil to the list too. The director's cut is a must with this one.
The original Alien flick is a classic as well. Not sure how sci-fi it is. It really plays as more of a horror film.
I prefer "The Shape of theings to Come" over "Metropolis", though I haven't seen either in decades.
"Starship Troopers", "Shrinking Man" and "The Thing" are really just grotesque and tacky entertainment. Matinee fare. I'd have to move "The 5th Element" to the top of my mindless entertainment sci-fi movies. I grin all the way through it every time I watch it. It slaughters every space opera and sci-fi cliche with a certain sweet reverence. I loved "28 Days Later" that came out last year too. It was an update of the "Omega Man" and it had a great modern feel.
The sci-fi genre is overflowing with good kinda bad movies. Other guilty pleasures include Carpenter's "They Live", "Escape from NY" and "Starman". "Soylent Green" is a pure velveeta creamy smooth cheesefest. "Logans Run", "A Boy and his Dog" oh man . . . I could go on for hours.
Follow Ups:
While mostly a matter of personal preferences there are some places where we are more closely in agreement: movies like Blade Runner, Alien, Brazil and perhaps The Shape of Things to Come (i.e., except for the latter's overly pompous dialogue and speeches, which is stiffling in it's sincerity). There are others where I definitely see more THERE there (i.e., Metropolis, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Thing and Starship Troopers), but in some cases you have to understand the source material and the Director's intentions to fully appreciate the material. This is especially true of both The Thing and Starship Troopers.In The Thing, based on John W. Campbell's short story, Director John Carpenter was trying to envision the most ALIEN alien being conceivable while playing off of the paranoid distrust of isolated researchers; in so doing this version manages to remain truer to Campbell's original concept than the film noirish "carrot man" more in keeping with it's cold-war allegory.
In respect to Starship Troopers, this much maligned "bug" movie deserves every bit as much credit for Director Paul Verhooven's successful capturing of the original story's subtext of a "future-perfect" fascist society as it does criticism for his straying from Heinlein's more cerebral vision.
While I will agree that John Carpenter's low budget Escape from New York and big budget Starman are good films that sequentially bracket The Thing, the former (Escape from New York) suffers from the comic book simplicity of it's two dimensional anti-hero Snake Pliskin and the latter (Starman) from it's forced sentimentality. BTW, I do tend to think of John Carpenter's Starman as a better film than Stephen Spielberg's more popular E.T., if only because Starman takes a more thoughtful adult approach to an almost identical theme. Of these three sequential Carpenter films (i.e., Escape from New York, The Thing & Starman), I'm of the opinion that The Thing is far and away the best.
AuPh
Yes, I recall "Shapes" being on the preachy side. I loved the art direction of both "Shapes" and "Metropolis", but enjoy the scope of the Shapes story more.I'm familiar with the original Campbell story for "The Thing". I thought the whole cold war/ red scare aspect of the first was much more to the point with the original move, even if the creature was laughable. Carpenter's relied too much on the gratuitous gore and grotesquerie. He should have taken a page from "Alien" where you don't see the creature all that much, but build tension and paranoia by NOT showing it. The original "Bodysnatchers" flick was better because of the social climate of the times too.
Yeah, I read Starship Troopers several times as a teenjager and this movie version also suffers from too much blood and guts and not enough on the fascist , but idylic culture (which was the meat of the book). Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed ST very much (and even got to work on some toy products for it), but I think another much more thoughtful and provocative film could be made from that book. This, coming from a guy that digs "They Live", "The Road Warrior" and "Escape from NY"! Like anyone should listen to me.
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