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183 Comments
- PistolSO, on 11/07/2007, -14/+75Gattaca at #1? Who wrote this, Ethan Hawke? And leaving 2001 off the 5 best list is a disgrace
- swordedge, on 11/07/2007, -1/+42Science and Hollywood do not mix. Check your brain at the door for movies made by Hollywood.
When I heard Bruce Willis say that the science in "Armageddon" was accurate, I almost fell of my chair laughing. - tehWyman, on 08/19/2009, -0/+30What about Weird Science? It has 'science' in the title so it has to be one of the best.
- doctechnical, on 11/07/2007, -1/+30As bad as "The Core" was, "The Day After Tomorrow" was worse.
See! Human beings freeze solid in mere seconds! - qwame, on 11/07/2007, -0/+28What, no mention of the Andromeda Strain?
- tehbored, on 11/07/2007, -2/+30Dugg for acknowledging the fact that The Core was a complete atrocity as far as science fiction (and movies in general for that matter).
- zenerdiode, on 11/07/2007, -0/+27Why not? It's a beautiful acted film with a fantastic story. Dysotopian future where an Orwellian government uses genetic engineering to cull the cream of the crop of humanity while at the same time creating a sub class/society of "imperfect" humans...and one man who manages to defeat the system through sheer will power. Tagline...humanity overcomes institution.
Just because it isn't a space opera or doesn't have killer robots makes it unworthy of being a great science-based/science fiction movie. The best ones are the ones that explore the human condition as it's being challenged by the rise of technology. - quigles3000, on 11/06/2007, -1/+27You're absolutely right. Good thing this article isn't just about "science fiction" then, huh?
- cybermort, on 11/07/2007, -1/+23 What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? was definitely worst science movie ever.... is like the intelligent design of physics. Primer could've been placed as #5 in best.. the movie wasn't based on hard science (super conductors aren't going to loop time) but the overall concept was flawless
- bbrigg1, on 11/07/2007, -1/+20Two words:
Real Genius - murf43143, on 11/07/2007, -2/+18Title says "science based" not science fiction.......................................................................................................................
- headcase, on 11/07/2007, -1/+15Where's Jurassic Park?!
- justburnin, on 11/06/2007, -0/+14many of you are missing the point. science based movies, meaning that the root of movie is based on some actual scientific information and/or principle, IE. a beautiful mind, core, gattaca.
science fiction is a movie based on fake/inaccurate created mythos, ie star wars, back to the future[who several people mention, as far as i know there are no proven facts or theories that support that you could go back in time using garbage, correct me if im wrong], aliens, blade runner, etc are science fiction movies, meaning that sure they would like to have something that resembles possible future ideas but not based on current factual evidence.
that said i dont think thats a very good list of good movies. but who am i to talk. - caerwyn, on 11/06/2007, -0/+13Science based, not sci fi. As entertaining as the matrix was, the science behind it was ridiculous at best, so your own list for best is hardly in line with what the article was going for.
- thebillgonadz, on 11/07/2007, -0/+13No Flubber!?
- merr, on 11/07/2007, -0/+10I agree with What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? I rented this movie from Netflix and the disc stopped playing about 15 minutes in... which is fine because I was already disgusted with the film by that point.
- rz8472, on 11/07/2007, -1/+11I dont think The 6th Day should've been included. Any movie with two Arnolds is automatically awesome.
Adam Gibson: [Original Arnold Punches Out Clone]
Adam Gibson: That's for sleeping with my wife.
Adam Gibson: You should clone yourself now, while you're still alive.
Drucker: Why, so I can share your unique perspective?
Adam Gibson: No, so you can go screw yourself.
[Later, when Drucker's clone is lying on the real Drucker]
Adam Gibson: When I told you screw yourself, I didn't mean for you to take it literally. - inactive, on 11/07/2007, -0/+9what about waterworld?
- AllnightChemist, on 11/07/2007, -0/+9It's obscure, but there's room for THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE (1962) on this list. Sure, it won a BAFTA, but two nuclear bombs set off at the poles send the earth careening toward the sun? How can we stop it? If you said, c), detonating a series of nuclear bombs, you get a cookie.
Nuclear bombs: Science fiction's duct tape. - tyywebb, on 11/06/2007, -0/+9It's the only movie I know of that actually stayed true to the rule of "There is no sound in a vacuum."
- cybermort, on 11/07/2007, -2/+11Donnie Darko had science.. what donnie darko did you watched?
- Naruto28, on 11/07/2007, -0/+8Where the hell is Primer?
- doctechnical, on 11/06/2007, -1/+9Not so, in the scene with the shuttle docking I could plainly hear someone playing "The Blue Danube" on their space iPod.
- neuropsychguy, on 11/07/2007, -0/+8I thought the science in the Lord of the Rings was spot on. :P
- hunnie23, on 11/07/2007, -3/+10what about mystery science theater??
- gnick, on 11/06/2007, -0/+72001 was great, but what exactly made it "science based"?
- gnick, on 11/06/2007, -0/+7The Matrix was a great movie, but the science was a joke. The idea of using humans as power cells is ludicrous. I have no problem with suspending disbelief in favor of a useful plot point, but life is endothermic.
- slote, on 11/06/2007, -0/+7Nobody seems to remember that movie 10.5. Where else can you nuke the earths crust to fuse it together so California doesn't sink into the ocean.
The best part: California DOES end up in the drink - kamisama, on 11/07/2007, -9/+16At the risk of getting slammed hard. 2001 is a highly overrated film, it's almost as if you have to like it in order to be a true scifi fan. Well I guess I'm just not one of them because not only is it overrated it's also boring. The only thing it has going for it is that it was a marvel when it comes to techniques used at the time.
- ZenMojo, on 11/06/2007, -2/+9Donnie Darko was overwrought ***** and had nothing to do with science. It was New Age hoodoo. Terminator 2 just took the science from Terminator 1.
Gattaca definitely deserved to be at or near the top of the list. It's not only a well-made, beautifully-realized film, but the themes were extremely evocative and the science was sound. - Spectre77, on 11/07/2007, -0/+6Guess it was one of those "have to be there to get it" moments.
- zenerdiode, on 11/06/2007, -3/+9See this is why they don't make good, thought provoking sci-fi like Gattaca, Contact, 2001, or Solaris anymore.
Everybody just wants an action movie set in the future...not a drama/commentary on the human/technology interaction. Personally, I like having both. I'm a huge fan of The Matrix and Blade Runner, but Gattaca and Contact is equally as good, if not better. It just happens to be in a completely different genre...suprisingly. - gforce85, on 11/06/2007, -0/+6My favorite part about the awesome science in movies like the Core is that whenever they explain something 'scientific'. they always precede it with "Uh... Physics 101, Jim."
- doctechnical, on 11/07/2007, -0/+6Ok, I'll bite: just how long would it take to grow a whole new full-sized Schwarzenegger from scratch? It took his mom nine months, and she was just working on the *baby* version.
I'd say it requires more than *little* suspension of disbelief. - johnnick, on 11/06/2007, -0/+5And the use of the storage battery concept is just annoying when there are so many better plot devices to justify the same thing (say, overactive 3 Laws interpretation, just for starters - ie, the best way to protect mankind from hurting itself is to put it in an artificial world where mankind's destructive instincts can do no real harm).
- gnick, on 11/07/2007, -4/+9Watch Serenity.
- cybermort, on 11/06/2007, -0/+5you said it... it says nothing about fiction.
- cinder, on 11/06/2007, -0/+5I knew 'The Core' would be the worst one when I read the title. I'm a geology student, and a bunch of us recently got together to drink and make fun of that movie.
- ZenMojo, on 11/07/2007, -2/+7It's ***** GATTACA! Of course it deserves to be on the list.
- EarlOfLade, on 11/06/2007, -0/+5Ahhh The Core... It's also my #1 worst film, so bad it's becoming a cult movie...
Unobtainium... brilliant, love the computer display of crystals, the stupidity with thermo nuclear devices to restart the core's circulation, it's so bad it's good... - gnick, on 11/07/2007, -4/+9Super lag...
Picking the best and worst of anything will get you a lot of grief. So we applaud Sidney Perkowitz, an Emory University physics professor, for his courage in choosing the best and worst science-based movies of all time. Of course, we are outraged he didn’t include all our favorites among his top five. How could he leave out the wonderful Alec Guinness film The Man in the White Suit (about a chemist who invents a fabric that never gets dirty, never needs ironing, never wears out—and nearly causes a revolution because it is too perfect) Fortunately, Perkowitz does include The Day the Earth Stood Still (the film in which Patricia Neal delivers one of cinema’s most famous geek catchphrases: “Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!”). Here are Perkowitz’s top five picks (and his comments) for the best (he calls them Golden Eagles) and worst (Golden Turkeys) science-themed films. Check out his other choices in his new book, Hollywood Science: Movies, Science and the End of the World (Columbia University Press, $24.95).
The Best (Golden Eagles)
1 Gattaca (Andrew Niccol, 1997). Set in the not-too-distant future, without overt preaching or much scientific exposition, Gattaca uses the youthful dreams of Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) to tell an affectingly human story about the consequences of putting too much faith into DNA, genetic destiny, and stereotypes.
2 Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy builds girl” could be the tagline for this stunningly realized early futuristic film, as scientist C. A. Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) replaces the woman he loved with an erotic female robot. But Metropolis goes much deeper than it sounds, with audacious future projections of technology and its impact on society.
3 A tie! The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951) and On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959). Both films reflect the scientific and global realities of the cold war era. The Day the Earth Stood Still comments on the dangers of nuclear knowledge without corresponding human wisdom; On the Beach paints a despairing picture of a world destroyed through unbridled nuclear warfare.
4 A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard, 2001). Apart from the cinematic qualities that won it four Academy Awards, this film pulls off the difficult feat of presenting abstract mathematics on-screen—the idea called the Nash equilibrium, which had won the film’s protagonist, John Nash (played by Russell Crowe), a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994.
5 Contact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997). Jodie Foster believably evokes the psychology of a real scientist as rarely shown on screen when she plays Ellie Arroway, a dedicated radio astronomer. (However, not many actual scientists would bet their careers on the slim chance of finding advanced aliens.)
The Worst (Golden TURKEYs)
1 The Core (Jon Amiel, 2003). The Core’s characters include four physicists, a world-class computer hacker, and two astronauts, and the film got advice from some real scientific advisers. Nevertheless, it manages to impart record-setting amounts of scientific misinformation about basic physics (like elementary magnetism, electricity, and heat) in a mere 134 minutes.
2 What the #$*! Do We (K)now!? (William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, and Mark Vicente, 2004). Designed to resemble a documentary, this film works hard to convince us that quantum physics tells us we can change reality by our thoughts alone. This is good news for lead character Amanda (Marlee Matlin), but sadly, it’s not what quantum physicists say. Even one of the talking heads in this film was dismayed by how his comments were misconstrued. Of course, that hasn’t stopped it from becoming a New Age classic.
3 Chain Reaction (Andrew Davis, 1996). Fusion power—the production of clean, near-limitless energy by smashing hydrogen nuclei together—is a difficult process that has yet to be achieved. The garbled science in this film makes fusion power even more problematic, and the beautiful but ineffectual physicist Dr. Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz) doesn’t exactly help the cause of women in science.
4 Volcano (Mick Jackson, 1997). When the San Andreas Fault hiccups, a volcano grows in the heart of Los Angeles, forcing emergency services chief Mike Roark (Tommy Lee Jones) and geologist Dr. Amy Barnes (Anne Heche) to save the city. But the San Andreas Fault can produce only earthquakes, not volcanoes, making a flood of lava on Wilshire Boulevard very unlikely.
5 The 6th Day (Roger Spottiswoode, 2000). This film offers action scenes for Arnold Schwarzenegger, and it makes some sharp comments about science versus religion. But its plot device—a cloning process that produces an identical, fully grown copy of an adult human in just a few hours—is so far off-base that you just can’t suspend enough disbelief. - gnick, on 11/07/2007, -2/+7tyywebb8 - Watch Serenity. Besides, adhering to physics, IMHO, falls short of making a movie "science based".
- orlyfactor, on 11/06/2007, -0/+4He picked ***** Contact in the top 5? This man is a MORON.
- caboosemoose, on 11/06/2007, -0/+42001 is one of the best efforts in cinema history about being prophetic for the future development of current technology. It goes too far at times but consider:
Flat screen television
Video conferencing
Satelite communications networks and the proliferation of television channels (they watch BBC 12)
Permanently manned space stations
Now granted its set in 2001 so some of the further aspects, while reasonably realistically presented, have turned out to be early, such as commercial space flight, manned lunar bases. But this was the 60s in the middle of a serious space race, and on these two things I would not be surprised if they're both being realised in a form not totally disimilar to that portrayed in the film by 2030. HAL is the biggest question, we're certainly nowhere near creating computers with a heuristic capable of passing as similar to human intelligence.
Then of course, as already pointed out, it actually shows space travel in a remotely realistic light.
As far as the history of science fiction film making goes, Metropolis is extremely important, but realistically science based? Hardly. - Mabu, on 11/06/2007, -0/+4There is actual legitimate scientific evidence for that phenomenon. The gulf stream can be affected by global warming and fundamentally shift ocean currents which warm/cool various coasts.
- mjparme, on 11/07/2007, -3/+7I am with you. 2001 is a boring movie. I am a big Arthur C. Clarke fan but the movie isn't that good. You really have to read the book to make any sense of the movie whatsoever.
- raano, on 11/06/2007, -0/+4The focus was on science movies, not comedy
- ryodoan, on 11/06/2007, -1/+5yeah... because flux capacitors are definitely based in science.
- kingkilr, on 11/07/2007, -1/+4Admittingly the science was way off for it, but as a movie I still really enjoyed it.
- markp93, on 11/06/2007, -0/+3Wow, this list is on Digg and it's not from Cracked or Double Viking?
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